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During the 90s, there were a lot of dumb public service announcements, and they all felt as if they were competing with each other to try and be the dumbest. I was looking through Superman: The Man of Steel 20 (which has other weird elements as well) and imagine my face when I saw The Flash slam-dunking a basketball in the name of AIDS prevention.
The public service announcement starts by saying “you may think it’s not your problem” and basically says not to be a dick to people with AIDS. One kid, who has AIDS I guess, offers the other kid a sip of soda, and the reaction is not good. The kids in the announcement look like they are from elementary school. So how did these kids get AIDS? Were they shooting up heroin or picking up prostitutes, perhaps? Hard to say.
That is not the best part though. You see, The Flash hates AIDS. We know this because he shows up out of no-where and tells one of the kids that his jokes suck and that he is going to drink their soda. He then steals their basketball and does a slam dunk. He was so condescending that I half-expected Flash to tear off one of their heads and dribble it down the court, then drop-kick it into the basket.
When Superheroes Played Basketball to Fight Disease: A Look at the Weird World of 90s Comic Book PSAs
The 90s were a golden age of weird. Not just for comics, but for the strange, often tone-deaf public service announcements that came stapled into them. And nothing captures that chaotic energy quite like the time The Flash slam dunked a basketball to stop AIDS stigma. But this wasn’t a one-off. It was part of a larger trend where superheroes were drafted into the war on drugs, disease, and bullying — often with the subtlety of a jackhammer.
Take Spider-Man: Skating on Thin Ice, where Peter Parker teaches kids about the dangers of cocaine while wearing rollerblades. Or Batman: A Word to the Wise, where the Dark Knight lectures teens about peer pressure like a substitute teacher who just discovered slang. These PSAs weren’t just awkward, they were surreal. They dropped costumed vigilantes into real-world issues with zero context and expected kids to take it seriously.
The Flash’s soda-stealing slam dunk in Superman: The Man of Steel 20 is just the tip of the spandex iceberg. These moments weren’t about nuance. They were about spectacle. They assumed that if a superhero said “don’t do drugs” or “be nice to people with AIDS,” kids would immediately change their worldview. And maybe some did. But for most readers, these PSAs became legendary for how bizarrely they clashed with the rest of the comic.
Today, they’re collector’s curiosities — relics of a time when comics tried to be moral compasses and ended up being meme fuel. So if you ever stumble across a superhero PSA where someone gets dunked on for being insensitive, just remember: it was the 90s. And in the 90s, even disease prevention came with a side of basketball.