DUMB KIND OF HERO

SOME KIND OF HERO (1982)
dir: Michael Pressman

DUMB KIND OF HERO
MAD #235, December 1982
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

Eddie Keller (Richard Pryor) is a soldier in the Vietnam War that gets captured and becomes a Prisoner or War while going to the bathroom (literally caught with his pants down). The first half of the movie shows him there.

The helicopter saying “Coppola Go Home” refers to Coppola's Vietnam tour de force Apocalypse Now.

In POW Camp Eddie meets Vinnie D' Angelo (Ray Sharkey)

In the first panel the name tag refers to actor Keye Luke from the Charlie Chan movies.

Vinnie is put in solitary confinement and Eddie proposes letting him out on the condition he wins a basketball game. Instead he must sign a confession. Later the war is over, Eddie flies home, he finds out he's a father, and everything seems to be going well for him.

When Eddie reuinites with his wife Lisa (Lynne Moody), that's when the other shoe drops. She's fallen in love with his business partner and is filing for divorce. He finds out his mother's had a stroke and is about to be evicted from her home (not dead as depicted here), and all his money's gone. He drowns his sorrows at a bar and meets a prostitute named Toni (Margot Kidder). It's only her occupation and the two of them start seeing each other.

Margot Kidder is best known for plaing Lois Lane.

Eddie cant get back pay from the government because of the confession he signed so he resorts to desperate measures. He's turned down for a loan and tries to rob the bank himself with a squirt gun, but it leaks in his pants and everyone thinks he wet himself. He sees bank employees walking out with a suitcase, follows them, and holds them up at a bathroom in another building.

The suitcase Eddie gets is full of bonds, which he arranges to sell to gangsters for cash at the hotel where he's staying. They meet him there but plan to kill him and leave with the bonds and the cash they promised. He outsmarts them and leaves the hotel unassumingly as the cops come in, then Toni comes to pick him up and they ride off into the sunset (well, really the horizon because it's night).