Comic Book / U.S. (1997)

aka: US

Sam has seen better days...

"Is he Uncle Sam - or one of U.S.?"

— Tagline in the first issue

U.S. is a 1997 two-issue limited series published by DC Comics under the Vertigo imprint. The series was written by Steve Darnall with art by Alex Ross.

The series stars an amnesiac man named Sam, a seeming lunatic who can only speak in patriotic soundbites. The series follows his journey through the American countryside while he slowly remembers who he is, and his connection to a mysterious woman from his past named "Bea", as well as his encounters with a man dressed like the spitting image of Uncle Sam who is dragging the country down the drain.

Apparently unrelated, despite all appearances, to the Quality Comics character who leads DC's Freedom Fighters team, according to Word of God.

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U.S. provides examples of:

• Affectionate Nickname: Sam always calls her "Bea", but her real name is Columbia.
• Always Wanted to Say That: Sam's Evil Counterpart, Uncle Sam, quotes from A Few Good Men's famous "You can't handle the truth!" scene and remarks on how he loves that line.
• Amnesiac Hero: Sam has forgotten who he is, or why he knows the things he does.
• Anachronic Order: The story is deliberately told in such a way that the reader is unable to ground himself in reality, with Sam going from scene to scene with nothing but his thoughts as a consistent throughline.
• An Aesop: One is "any nation whose first resort is violence is doomed to become just like the tyrants they fight". Another is "you have to face up to your country's problems, past and present, in order to fix them, instead of clinging to a false idealized notion of it."
• An Immigrant's Tale: One of the things Sam tries to recall is a family he knew, from he can't remember where, who came to America and worked hard at being good American citizens.
  Sam: 'Course, if they got TB or went blind or accidentally cut off a finger, they were told they weren't very good American at all. And slowly, over many years, the people realized they were not citizens. They were not members of a community. They were clocking in and punching out and killing time. They were employees.
  I try to recall that family's name. Then I remember it was a lot of names.
• Angel Unaware: Throughout the story, Sam is assisted several times by an old lady who resembles a woman he once knew, named Bea. Turns out, she's Columbia, an Anthropomorphic Personification of the U.S. Hence, "Bea".
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Many examples pop up, such as Britannia for Britain, Marianne for France, the Russian Bear for... well, Russia and Uncle Sam, the American Eagle and Columbia for the United States. Oddly, John Bull is nowhere to be seen.
  • The personifications of the United States are given some Cast Speciation as well. Sam represents America's people, the Eagle represents the American Dream and Columbia represents America's ideals. The fake Uncle Sam was created when the american people chose to reject Sam as the spirit of America so they could live in denial.
• Apathetic Citizens: The people of America, barring a few protesters, are portrayed as this when encountering Sam. One woman even says, in response to Sam rambling about talking to wooden toys and everything being unreal, "I'm SO sick of hearing that story!"
• Author Tract: While generally politically neutral, the book sometimes veers into this, such as when the evil Uncle Sam is depicted lounging on a throne made of televisions, and a line from Sam about children being born with deformities coupled with a shot of a plane leaving contrails over farmland implies that chemtrails are real in this 'verse. (Admittedly, this book was released just one year after the birth of said conspiracy theory and before the government and weather agencies took serious steps to disprove it.)
• The Backwards Я: The Russian Bear speaks like this, substituting Ч, Ф, Ц, Я and И for their English lookalikes.
• Bail Equals Freedom: Sam is arrested after attacking an actor at Senator Cannon's rally. A woman posts bail for him and he runs off. In Real Life, someone who is Mentally Disturbed and homeless like Sam is would probably be considered a flight risk and be denied bail, though it's implied that the aforementioned senator's campaign may have let Sam go because Cannon has enough bad press without bullying an old man.
• Barefoot Poverty: Double Subverted. Sam may be a Homeless Hero, but he abhors the idea of going barefoot, as it'll make his feet calloused. Nonetheless, he ends up Losing a Shoe in the Struggle and going barefoot until he finds a new pair of boots.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Sam has this feeling about the United States itself, wondering where it all went wrong. One of his final hallucinations, however, paints it in a different light, as he imagines himself gunning down Daniel Shays and his fellows who were rebelling against excessive taxation - the very thing that made the american colonies split from Britain in the first place. This was the incident that caused the the United States constitution to be written, thus creating the nation in its current form, leading Sam to the realization that maybe the U.S. never practiced what it preached.
• Behemoth Battle: The ending involves two colossal Uncle Sams duking it out.
• Break Them by Talking: Sam does a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Uncle Sam that results in the latter's Villainous Breakdown.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Sam yells this to one of his hallucinations. Uncle Sam yells it at him after the aforementioned Break Them by Talking.
• Crazy Homeless People: Sam is a drifter who has auditory and visual hallucinations and cannot speak coherent sentences.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sam sometimes slips into this, especially in his narration where he's more eloquent.
  Shop owner AKA Bea/Columbia: Well, call me if you need any help.
  Sam: (thinking) Sure. Excuse me, ma'am, but I can't seem to distinguish between past and present and fantasy and reality. What floor's that on?
• Deity of Mortal Creation: What the Anthropomorphic Personifications of the setting are.
• Double Meaning: While ranting to a few pedestrian, Sam accuses them of not understanding "common sense"... because he was just quoting from a pamphlet by Thomas Paine titled "Common Sense".
  • Double-Meaning Title: "U.S.", referring to the United States, Uncle Sam, and, well, US.
• Enemy Without: According to Columbia, the imposter Uncle Sam is one for Sam, and since he was created by the American public, he can count as one for them, too. Assuming, of course, that any of this is real...
• Establishing Character Moment: Sam's first scene is him rambling like a madman in a hospital while quoting from a dozen different sources at once while orderlies struggle to get him out.
• Evil Counterpart: Sam encounters a man dressed like the typical image of Uncle Sam who totally lacks any of his scruples and is willing to sell out the country to a corrupt politician if it means people will overlook America's problems. Both are Uncle Sam, the former being the original Uncle Sam and the latter being a new Uncle Sam created by the desire of the masses to ignore what the original represented.
• Eyed Screen: Smokey the Bear, of all people, is framed this way, his intense eyes boring into Sam's soul as he briefly hallucinates the poster saying "I want YOU", instead.
• Fat Bastard: Louis Cannon, the Sleazy Politician, is noticeably fatter and pudgier than his less underhanded competitor.
• Flying Face: One of Sam's first visual hallucinations is a floating head advancing closer and closer to him while spouting snippets of people doing immoral things.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Sam's Establishing Character Moment, he cries out that they can't put him out of the hospital because "there's a bear in the woods", referencing a famous campaign ad that preyed on America's fear of Russian expansion and the need to be prepared for "the bear, if there is a bear". Later in the second issue, we meet the Russian Bear, the russian national spirit.
  • Earlier, in Issue #1, Sam meets Britannia, the embodiment of Britain, and takes her shield to protect himself from rain - only, Britannia remarks that it isn't raining, meaning Sam is hallucinating the rain, thus implying that Britannia is real and he isn't imagining everything, which is confirmed later when we see that Sam himself is another such national embodiment.
• Full-Circle Revolution: Sam considers the incident where Daniel Shays' rebellion was quashed to be the equivalent of killing the American Dream in its crib, applying this trope in regards to the United States:
  Sam: But these aren't rebels. They're men who had their land confiscated by sheriffs and tax collectors. Paid for their sacrifice in scrip that bore no value. I fought with some of them. Why am I fighting against them now? Why can't I tell the commander what he must already know?
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Implied with the Russian Bear, who Sam comments looks very fragile, and, well, his country of origin has seen better days. And it's revealed that Sam's present circumstance may be a result of the American people rejecting him as a symbol.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: The evil Uncle Sam takes Evil Smoking to the next level by smoking a cigarette made out of dollar bills!
• Headphones Equal Isolation: Sam, after one of his hallucinations, muses on this trope, thinking that people must enjoy wearing headphones because for once, they get to hear sounds they meant to hear.
• Heroes Gone Fishing: While Sam is resting in the street, Britannia, the literal Anthropomorphic Personification of Great Britain, sits down to rest by his side as well. With her lion. And even SHE complains that Sam is seeing things that aren't there...
• Homeless Hero: Sam, our protagonist, is an archetypal homeless man who rummages through trash for food.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Uncle Sam character who supports Louis Cannon's campaign gives off this vibe, as he is a towering figure with freakishly-long legs whose body glows a faint white light. No one pays him any mind, as they assume he's an actor on stilts. Him and Sam also grow giant for their Final Battle.
• I Am What I Am: Sam gives such a speech to Uncle Sam in the ending, saying that he's not perfect, will never be perfect, but that he'll also never PRETEND to be perfect like the latter is doing.
• I Am Who?: Sam doesn't remember who he is, but it's strongly implied that he is the literal Uncle Sam, somehow turned into an Amnesiac Homeless Hero. The appearance of another, more authentic-looking Uncle Sam complicates things... but that one's evil. Turns out they're both Sam by the end.
• Identity Amnesia: What Sam suffers from. The literal embodiment of Great Britain comes sit next to him and he doesn't get the hint.
• Ignoring by Singing. Sam shuts out a hallucination of a disembodied head ranting various examples of unamerican behavior at him by doing this, though it only works when he stops doing this and instead resorts to a Big "SHUT UP!".
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Sam runs into the shop "All-American Antiques" once in each issue, but in different locations. Sam notes the second time that it wasn't there before.
• Living Lie Detector: Sam briefly demonstrates this ability during Louis Cannon's speech, hearing the "real" words behind Cannon's lies. Like everything, though, it's hard to tell if it's another hallucination or not.
• Living Shadow: In the second issue, a shadow that resembles a large eagle appears and intrudes on Sam's narration with its own blue thought balloons. It's implied that it is the personification of the American Dream that was never realized, hence why it's a shadow.
• Living Toys: While Sam is playing with the figurines at All-American Antiques, a Jocko toy comes to life and berates him, causing him to flash back to a slave being beaten to death while Jocko bemoans the lot of the former slaves after the emancipation.
• Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Sam gets mugged for his boots at one point and has to walk barefoot for a few scenes.
• Magical Homeless Person: Sam is a Living Lie Detector and has apparently lived longer than any normal human being ought to, if his memory is to be trusted. Comes with being the Anthropomorphic Personification of America.
• Mathematician's Answer: Sam does this in his narration while trying to remember the nationality of an immigrant family he knew. "Was it Ireland or Lithuania or China or Italy or Germany or Russia? (second thought balloon) That's right."
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Whether or not Sam is anything more than a Scatterbrained Senior is one of the mysteries of the story. He is, but A lot of the events that he goes through remain ambiguous even after the conclusion, such as whether he really did talk to the spirit of Abraham Lincoln in the guise of Ray Elliot or if it was another hallucination. After all, Sam is still clearly suffering mentally no matter what, and Ray calls him "Sam" without the latter ever telling him his name.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Sam. He's a Crazy Homeless Person who can think eloquently but speaks mostly in broken recitations of famous lines and can't remember who he is.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Related to the above, Sam sees Elliot's reflection as looking like Abraham Lincoln.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Uncle Sam says the trope name word for word while discussing his vision for America - as a country where everyone ignores everything bad that's being done in it because of Patriotic Fervor.
• Nations as People: The various Anthropomorphic Personifications of the U.S., Britain, Russia and France appear in the story, most of them in the second issue.
• Newhart Phone Call: Aside from Sam's lines and the rally scene, the vast majority of dialogue is comprised of snippets of news reports, snippets of songs, snippets of film and tv show dialogue, etc., with the purpose of making the reader feel as disoriented and overwhelmed as Sam himself.
• New Media Are Evil: Sam quotes Edward Murrow's speech wherein he warned that television was being used to "distract, delude, amuse and insulate" the public, and the evil Uncle Sam reclines on a throne made out of televisions that show signs of America's decadence, such as politicians getting away with crimes, sensationalist media and lying commercials.
• Non-Indicative Name: Lampshaded with the "Herald of Peace", a sculpture in the Columbian Exposition that depicts... a giant cannon.
• Noodle Incident: Just why was Sam in the hospital to begin with? Did he get sick, get mugged, or did he check himself in? It isn't explained.
• Nostalgia Filter: Sam has this for the U.S. at first, even becoming nostalgic over some racist memorabilia, one of whom (Jocko) gives him an earful about it.
  Sam: "I'm gonna slap a dirty little jap?" Heh. And that was the good war!
• Or Was It a Dream?: After all is said and done, Sam ends up jerked back to reality, with his circumstances seemingly no better than before... but then a passerby notes that he left money for him in his hat - and he realizes Uncle Sam's hat is in the ground next to him. He puts it on and starts singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy", reinvigorated.
• Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: Because Smokey the Bear is a property of the U.S. government itself, they have to add a disclaimer for his appearance in a couple of panels of the first issue.
• Patriotic Fervor: Sam yearns for the good old days of the U.S. and is constantly repeating famous lines from political ads, speech and other adjacent things. As the series goes on, he begins putting on Jade-Colored Glasses and realizing that the U.S. wasn't as perfect as he thought.
• Pretender Diss: Sam lashes out at Uncle Sam, declaring him to be an imposter. He takes it further in the second issue by saying that the other Sam's America is an imposter, too.
• Pun:
  • Sam says "these are the times that try men's..." and then notices a pair of boots and finishes with "soles", instead of "souls".
  • Before that, he accuses some pedestrians of not understanding "common sense", as in, common sense in general, but also the paper by Thomas Paine.
• Replacement Goldfish: It is revealed the American populace inadvertently created the new Uncle Sam that our Sam meets in the first issue so he could be this, as the old Uncle Sam was no longer compatible with their desires.
• The Reveal: The old woman who Sam hallucinated about, Bea, turns out to be Columbia, another Anthpomorphic Personification of the United States. She explains to him that He's the real-deal Uncle Sam, and his current state came about because the American public disowned him and replaced him with a new Uncle Sam who'd let them deny reality.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Sam is an old man who speaks in patriotic-sounding gibberish and goes through what appear to be fugue states during his hallucinations.
• Second-Face Smoke: Right before the Final Battle, Uncle Sam blows cigar smoke in Sam's face, showing how decadent he is.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: In the flashback where Sam remembers Bea, before he goes to war, she removes his shoes and says "while you're here..." before the scene cuts back to Sam in the present, thinking "wait, why the hell would someone remove your shoes if you were about to go to war?"
• Sheathe Your Sword: As hinted by the Russian Bear, the evil Uncle Sam can't be defeated with force - Sam Breaks Him By Talking, instead, and by refusing to go down.
• Shout-Out: Sam speaks almost entirely in these, at least at first. His narration includes some, too. A list of all of them will likely be incomplete until someone with an extensive politics background edits this page.
  • In his first scene alone, he references Dan Quayle's "What a waste it is to lose one's mind"^note which was a mangling of "a mind is a terrible thing to waste", George H. W. Bush's "I will never apologize for the United States", "I don't care what the facts are", "Message: I Care" and "Watch out - overdose of charisma", this one SNL skit where Phil Hartman played a parody of James Stockman who constantly yelled "GRIDLOCK!", Ronald Reagan's "There's a bear in the woods" and "I will outlaw Russia forever, we begin bombing in five minutes", WINS Radio's "You give us twenty-two minutes (and) we'll give you the world", finishing with a White Heat reference, "Top of the world, ma!" after he's forced out of the hospital.
  • From the rest of his narration and dialogue, we have DuPont's "Better Things for Better Living... Through Chemistry" slogan, the songs "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" and "Once in a Lifetime" (the former of which he sings and the latter of which he quotes the line "this is not my beautiful house/wife" from, in his narration), the Star Trek: The Original Series episode The Way To Eden, (specifically, he mumbles "Herbert, Herbert, Herbert"), some quotes from Mark Twain, Bozo the Clown, the war preparedness short "Duck and cover", Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind" (but altered with the line "how many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man" changed to "before you can call him fatigued), The Ballad of Davy Crockett, and an oblique reference to The Lone Ranger "with his faithful indian companion".
  • Shout-outs not provided by Sam include a Smokey the Bear poster, the "All-American Antiques" logo featuring Superman (which also has a Superman toy inside, as well as a Jocko), vinyls of the infamous Donald Duck short "Der Fuehrer's Face" and the Carson Robinson song "We're Gonna Have To Slap The Dirty Little Jap" (though Sam gets the name wrong), references made by the the aforementioned Jocko toy to various racist mascots such as Amos, Andy and Aunt Jemima, several songs overheard by Sam in the second issue's finale including Spice Girls' "Wannabe", Chuck E. Cheese appearing in one of the TV screens that comprised Uncle Sam's throne, and Uncle Sam telling Sam that the latter "couldn't HANDLE the truth!" and then commenting that he Always Wanted to Say That.
• Sizeshifter: Both Uncle Sams (Uncles Sam?) demonstrate this ability in the climax.
• Sleazy Politician: Senator Louis Cannon, whose speech is almost entirely comprised of lies and empty platitudes that Sam sees through. Ray Elliot, his competitor, avert by being an honest politician, but because his party is too afraid of offending their financial supporters - most of whom also provide support for Cannon - and because of Cannon's relentless attack ads, he drops out.
• Surrender Backfire: In a flashback, we see a tribe of native americans during 1832's Black Hawk War who were gunned down almost to a man after raising the white flag. "Thought they could decoy us", a soldier is heard saying.
• Teleportation: What might have happened to Sam when he went inside All-American Antiques the second time and found the Columbian Exposition poster. He touches it and right in the next panel, he's there, and it can't be a flashback because he notes he was never there.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Sam's hallucinations can be visual, and he sometimes sees images from America's history superimposed on scenes happening in "reality". Also that time he misread the words on a Smokey the bear poster.
• Uncle Sam Wants You: Surprisingly, the actual recruitment poster itself doesn't appear, but Sam and Uncle Sam are both based on the character. Also, Sam briefly hallucinates Smokey the Bear imitating the poster, but then it turns back to normal.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The people in Louis Cannon's rally seem to suffer from this at first, as they apparently think it's perfectly normal for an Uncle Sam with giant, spindly legs to be at the rally with them. Subverted, though, as it's later revealed that it was an actor on stilts. Sam was the only one who saw him as the bona fide Uncle Sam.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Sam refuses to fight him, Uncle Sam is reduced to yelling at him to shut up and finally ends up spouting the same kinds of soundbites that Sam used to speak in in the start of the story, which Sam lampshades.
• War Is Hell: Some of Sam's hallucinations deal with the subject, such as one where he cradles a dying soldier who refuses an offer of bread because he knows they have maggots (and Sam can't even offer him water because it's been tainted by the soldiers), or one where he writes home about the horrible conditions on the front.
• White Guilt: Sam feels very strongly about what the U.S. (and, by proxy, he) did to the natives, the africans, and immigrants. Some of his hallucinations in the first issue show particularly dark incidents involving them.
• Worst News Judgment Ever: Sam remarks that a news report spent a few seconds talking about a senator and then three minutes on a story about dandruff.

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