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Goading the Gadfly: Dirk Armstrong, Muckraker

Sometimes interesting stuff, even interesting political material, occurs in unlikely places. Therefore, when I picked up a copy of the Superman Transformed trade paperback, a book which reprints the stories leading up to Superman's transformation into his unpopular blue form, I noted with some surprise the presence of a character clearly based on Rush Limbaugh. His proxy, within DC's Metropolis, bears the name "Dirk Armstrong."

Comics, from time to time, dabbles in the malicious caricature, sometimes with the intention to make some individual appear ridiculous for personal reasons (for instance, Stan Lee caricature Funky Flashman), and sometimes for polemical purpose.

Given the frequently-shallow nature of such embedded caricatures, a reader should not come to expect much depth from the derivative characters that reflect some well-disliked prototype. Therefore, DC's version of political talk radio celebrity Rush Limbaugh seems somewhat exceptional; they had many opportunities to make of the man a dead, two-dimensional, and empty character, yet various hands came together to produce a caricature more likeable than the original.

Between several writers on Superman books - Jurgens, Kesel, Michelinie, and Simonson - we found a very human portrayal of a flawed but redeemable human being, until the character seemed to serve an independent storytelling purpose. Somewhere along the way, Dirk Armstrong became a thing unto himself, with the derisive intent pushed to the rear.

Dirk's Archetype

If you spend any amount of time around people who drink, and who, furthermore, have strong opinions on politics, I much advise a policy of rapid retreat when the name "Rush Limbaugh" comes up. While some of his vans view him in a kind of Van Helsing role, as the slayer of modern political folly, more view him in a less benign light. Some folks seem very ready to swell until their heads explode if you make the mistake of mentioning the man's name.

Examine the inset picture. Even without resort to politics, can you deny that someone with that face would tend to annoy people? The very expression suggests a kind of glee in the art of nuisance. So, if I describe Rush Limbaugh as playing the role of a gadfly, understand that this transcends his politics. I suspect that the man would find some way to drive his fellow man to mayhem even if he subscribed to no particular philosophy useful to the selection of targets. Where a George Will might come off snide and a William Buckley might seem ironic in their own espousals of conservative viewpoints, Limbaugh, in a similar role does not shy away from delivering offense in bombastic packages.

I personally took a disliking to Limbaugh before I learned his subject on his show. I turned on for five minutes, heard about four consecutive statements of self-congratulation, and turned off again, vowing not to endure him. My own experience suggests to me that Limbaugh could, in a fairly nonpolitical context, manage to annoy a great many people; and, in his chosen trade of conservative critic of liberal politicians, we can expect that he might attract the assembled insults that attached to all the generations of his political creed since Franklin Roosevelt began his own political experiments as President. For some, the messenger too perfectly reflects the message, and their passions follow the fact that Limbaugh presents too perfect a target for them.

Hyperbolic language and imprudent opinion much attend the man, both when credited with a messianic political role and when accused with a kind of political diabolism. I've seen people yell about him, sneer about him, curse about him, brag about him, lie about his failings and lie about his virtues, but I have yet to hear a calm, detached discussion about the man. Therefore I won't presume to explore the truth or falsehood of his many claims about public policy; let us retire the description of the man by agreeing that he espouses a right-wing world view, loyalties to the Republican Party of the United States of America, and a following of fans ("Dittoheads") as well as an explosive body of detractors.

Dirk's Apologia

That Dirk Armstrong's prototype should elicit such ill-will perhaps struck Dan Jurgens as somewhat excessive. Alternately, some editor suggested - and one can take an editor's suggestion as a command - that Jurgens might, perhaps, take it easy on Armstrong for a variety of reasons, including the possibility of litigation (though the courts would probably allow DC much more leeway than they have chosen to take with this character) and a distaste for the overheated opinions of the True Believer, either for or against the man.

Through whatever channel, Dan Jurgens wrote Armstrong in a more humane fashion than one might expect if anger represented the only motivation here. Returning to Kirby's Stan Lee caricature, the legendary Funky Flashman, we can see a case where malice prevailed; Kirby intended to make Lee look ridiculous, and evidently did manage to completely flabbergast his onetime editor. Flashman played the role of swindler, fraud, and cheat; little could redeem him, and no writer would bother attempting to tone the character down to a generally accepted minimum of decency just to spare the feelings of his archetype.

This benevolent portrayal thus appears somewhat mysterious. If not motivated by the desire to tone down overblown political bombast (which Limbaugh receives, mainly, because he also produces it), perhaps Armstrong enjoyed the vicarious virtue imparted to him from the heroic view of the newsman as a kind of philosopher for everyman, who seeks the truth in the streets, courtrooms, and police stations of America. Such politically diverse figures as Matt Drudge and Geraldo Rivera both, somewhat, subscribe to this view of the newsman; and one need not stretch the imagination far to see that the authors of comics could have a similar view.

Dirk the Skinflint

One would expect a caricature of Limbaugh to show a kind of petty obsession with money, and for two reasons. First, this accusation tends to follow those who suggest public policy with less taxing and less spending, two themes that conservative politics sometimes light upon.

Secondly, Limbaugh personally has a reputation for liking the green stuff, including tales that suggest he sometimes spends it on bizarre extravagant displays that implicate him as one of the newly-rich. One particularly grotesque story involves a golden toilet seat; I would die happier never knowing the truth of this story.

Jurgens' stories show this side, through Dirk's ridiculous tendency to pinch pennies. What should we make of someone who shows up, uninvited, in the morning, bearing day-old donuts, and offering one each to the Kents, evidently quite smug in his delusions of generosity?

That Dirk would skimp on the trifling sum necessary to buy a few donuts - and, further, that he would skimp when bringing them as a peace offering to the Kents - impugns him as a small man who lets tiny things (pennies) become bigger than himself. Given no positive traits, Dirk would appear genuinely loathsome. DC did not choose to take the low and easy road here; instead, they combined various small traits with big ones, overall creating a more complicated Dirk Armstrong.

Dirk the Gallant

If a caricature behaves heroically, should we deem it a caricature? Or does it, instead, enter the territory of flattery? Again, where opportunity, ability, and almost certainly motive existed, DC took the high road and failed to attack Armstrong's character.

Superman's tragic-comic nemesis the Atomic Skull chose to appear just as Superman began noticing strange changes in his recently-restored powers. The Skull, Superman fans might recall, suffers from a delusion of heroism, borrowing his history from a movie serial about a similar character; and his fantasy casts Krypton's last son as his enemy and Lois Lane as his own companion.

In the middle of a blackout in Metropolis, then, the Atomic Skull broke free from the containment that kept him stable and harmless and began his usual (self-proclaimed) heroics, much to the detriment of Metropolis in general and Lois Lane in particular. Yet when Lois seemed at risk of the Skull's formidable ability to inflict damage, Dirk Armstrong hurtled between the two and dragged Lois to safety, although the effort did leave him panting, helpless, and worn out, much as one might expect of the obvious consumer of many helpless jelly donuts.

Lois, herself, praises the man for his heroism.

Dirk the Bald

Dirk, in the occasional barb, endured feints made at Limbaugh, for whom he acts as a proxy; and though DC seems (admirably) to have refrained from gibing about the man's sometime weight problem, the artists who handled Dirk Armstrong felt no similar restraint should prevent the occasional gag about his hairline. Scot Eaton portrayed him with an obvious toupee, badly mismatched to the natural color of his hair (see illustration, below); and Jon Bogdonove, a source of frequent humor during his tenure on Superman books, chose to depict an elaborate sight gag with a gust of wind and Armstrong's comb-over (see illustration, further below, where Dirk's pants have fallen down).

People in general do not consider baldness a character flaw, in spite of the amount of humor that attends an unfortunate sign of aging. Adults can typically look beyond the outward symptoms of (transient) youth and dispense with irrelevant traits that don't matter much outside of the dating cattle call. And history itself shows that a denuded scalp does not define the content of a man's soul - contemporaries Benito Mussolini and Mohandas Gandhi both showed their nude heads to the world, but few would bother to attempt to demonstrate that this united them in temperament or philosophy.

When we don't like someone, however, baldness provides a cheap and easy prod. Since human vanity so easily provides a target for mischief, through creating real but trite vulnerabilities, we tend to note the baldness of people we don't like.

The frequently futile efforts of aging men to conceal the advance of baldness, furthermore, can provide a fertile source of humor. The "comb-over," or use of hair from elsewhere on the head to cover a naked scalp, has become a kind of kitschy cultural thing, a source of high camp humor as well as unkind derision. But worse than this, in the harsh view of public scrutiny, stands the bad toupee. A toupee offends by deception; a bad toupee offends again by the implied insult of suggesting that a pathetic camouflage would suffice to convince the average man in the street.

Dirk the Muckraker

In its earliest usage, one might doubt that the term "muckraker" implied anything particularly heroic. Given that the term muck euphemized all kinds of foulness - especially sewage - the suggestion that someone filtered through puddles of slime looking for something about which to make trouble does not particularly commend such an investigator.

Superhero comics, for instance, enjoy the presence of Marvel's resident muckraker J. Jonah Jameson, who fails to epitomize several central journalistic virtues, including fairness, honesty, and objectivity. If, therefore, Dirk seems somewhat wanting on this same set of traits, consider that he, nonetheless, comes off better than the editor of the Daily Bugle.

In this sense, we see Dirk Armstrong taking the role of muckraker. After watching Superman's early transformation into his short-lived energy form, and the accompanying carnage that beset Superman's unfortunate confrontation with the Atomic Skull, Dirk (probably rightly) raised the question of Superman's role in Metropolis.

For less noble motives, the young-clone version of Luthor had raised similar questions, centered around the notion that perhaps Superman attracted menaces to Metropolis as well as repelling them when they appeared.

In this, we see the closest thing to real criticism of Limbaugh through the deeds of Armstrong. That Dirk fails to recognize Superman as a greater good than menace points out a flaw in his reasoning process; someone who doubts Superman, after all, either doubts out of habit or endures some kind of character flaw that sane human beings will tend to recognize as a danger signal.

Someone who would malign Superman in the press would probably dig up (or invent) dirt on anyone, so the writers intend us to believe; and this view does not wander far astray from some criticisms of Limbaugh, his enthusiasms, and his methods.

Where Did the Malice Go?

In a previous Public Square column (here), I explored the portrayal of the Clintons in a recent issue of Supreme: The Return. In that case, it became difficult to classify the depiction as "political" or "not political."

The political character of the persons rendered in caricature, on one side of the argument, forces the depiction into the category "political;" but the deliberate absence of real political themes and concepts from the story as a whole render it equally into the "not political" category.

With this piece, similarly, we have the same quandary. At least within the pages of Superman Transformed, no real exploration into Armstrong / Limbaugh's values occurs; I suspect a number of talents working in comics at the time would have much enjoyed the opportunity to condemn (likely) or absolve (less likely) the man, either directly or vicariously.

However, since comics intend to entertain more often than they attempt to educate, edify, or indoctrinate, this in no way impedes the unfolding of an amusing story. As a refutation of Limbaugh, we can declare Armstrong a failure. However, the context suggests that DC didn't really intend to try anything so polemical.