In Which Batman Makes the Most Baffling Trump Reference Ever

Putting cultural references in your work is a double-edged sword. In the short term, you’ll get nods or chuckles from your audience. But future readers will likely be left scratching their heads–or, worse, they’ll turn into that Edgar Allen Poe meme as they try to square more recent developments with your now-outdated reference. Take this panel from Iron Man #244:

This appears to be about talk show host and all-around jerk Morton Downey Jr., but that is absolutely not who came to mind when you read that dialogue.

And then there is Justice League of America #77.

Writer Dennis O’Neil took over the book 11 issues earlier and wasted no time striking a more serious tone. That included giving the League’s honorary member Snapper Carr, an unpowered teenager who once tagged along on their missions while incessantly spouting slang, such an inferiority complex that he tried to eradicate all superheroes.

After being bullied about his super-friends, Snapper bumps into John Dough. Dough is the leader of a movement that venerates the “average” while advocating for the downfall of the heroes that he feels are preventing the normies from developing their talents.

At Dough’s direction, Snapper entraps Batman, whom Dough leaves tied up at an undisclosed location to kill later, after defeating the rest of the League. Batman can only watch on TV as his teammates are forced to flee a stadium of angry, mind-controlled people.

But of course, the Caped Crusader does not remain trapped for long. He improvises a bomb and blasts himself free. When he gets outside, he finds out where he was held hostage…

Shocked and horrified, I searched the internet to figure out what Bats was talking about. Did the Trump family make forays into the space industry in 1969, when this comic was published? Not as far as I can tell. What, then?

As difficult as it may be to believe, just as there is more than one Downey, there is more than one Trump.

I’m still not totally sure what O’Neil was going for–he could have been making some pointed commentary about the New York Trumps that I don’t understand–but he’s probably talking about Christopher Trump, who worked with NASA at about this time.

Batman escapes in time to help the JLA stop Dough from bombing a press conference. Wonder Woman lassos Snapper, who says he still believes in Dough’s message about how superheroes are too “blasted different” from the people who “do the world’s work,” which sounds like a nonsense excuse to support his previous assertion that he felt like a “nothing” in the League’s shadow. Green Arrow doesn’t buy it either and speechifies about how difference–diversity, if you will–makes the world go ’round.

Oh, and Dough was secretly the Joker this whole time. So the Joker started a nationwide anti-superhero movement just to annoy Batman? Seems silly, but the Joker is a silly guy, so whatever.

It’s very likely that this issue was a deliberate statement against those angry at the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam movement, and so forth–people now demanding respect for and recognition that they differed from the mainstream. There might even be a message about how the people who scream the loudest about their normality are the true extremists and should be avoided.

I admit I don’t have evidence for these interpretations, but considering the JLA’s next villain is a pollution-loving alien from the barren planet Monsan(to), I have trouble believing that politics never entered O’Neil’s mind at all. Either way, the message is as relevant today as it was in the ’60s.