Posted on 01/06/2012 5:34:36 PM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
If you are a conservative like me, you’ve been reading fewer and fewer comic books over the last 12 years. For those of you who know what I’m talking about, the weekly visit to the comic book shop has become either an exercise in irritation or a monotonous drill.
You pick up a superhero comic book featuring a childhood favorite of yours, hoping to reignite some of that magic you felt way back when and you see that the opening sequence in the comic deals with an oil rig disaster. You immediately and disappointingly know what’s going to be said, either by your childhood favorite or by some other character given credibility within the story. You turn the page, and sure enough, your childhood favorite grumbles about his/her country’s dependency on oil or how inherently dangerous oil drilling is to the environment and how it’s not worth it or simply mutters to him-or-herself briefly about the evils of corporate America. That’s when you put the comic back on the shelf and your local retailer loses a sale. (Sound familiar? Brightest Day #5 contained a similar scenario featuring Aquaman.)
You pick up another comic book featuring a superhero team you used to really enjoy and there’s a member on the team who shares a lot of the same socio-political views you do, but he doesn’t articulate them very well (by design, you can tell) and gets everything wrong (again, by design) and you realize that he’s the “team jackass” precisely because he is supposed to represent you. (Another Brightest Day example of this; issue #7 where Steve Ditko creation Hawk says he wrecked a restaurant’s juke box because it was playing a Dixie Chicks song. Hawk was created to represent conservatism during the Vietnam War era, but today he’s apparently a reckless caveman who doesn’t understand the very conservative idea of private property rights.) So you put that comic book back on the shelf and if you haven’t walked out by now, you’re sure to get at least three more experiences like these before finding a superhero comic that is, at best, not very political.
We see this all the time, don’t we? Black Canary just happens to make a comment about how supposedly unsafe SUVs are while pursuing a villain in one in the pages of Birds Of Prey. Over on the Marvel side, in the pages of Alpha Flight, a Canadian man parks in front of a fire hydrant while attempting to vote and he’s given a ticket for doing so. The man accuses the cop (Snowbird’s alter ego) of voter suppression and how she’s “harassing the patriots who are trying to change things”… to which she responds “Please, sir. We’re Canadian.”
Sure these little jabs and nods are individually nothing that can’t be dismissed… but they have a cumulative effect. They wear us down and eventually the excitement and magic of comic book superheroes becomes outweighed by our being annoyed. It’s happening more and more over the last dozen years: The people behind the scenes allowing their personal politics to bleed through into the stories of otherwise apolitical superheroes whose adventures are meant for everyone to enjoy. This in-and-of-itself wouldn’t be quite so bad if it weren’t always the same political views repeated over-and-over ad nauseum.
Simply put, there’s too much liberalism in comic books today....
I know comics are created by artists. I know that Marvel and DC offices are in New York City. I realized before I started typing this that asking for authentic conservatism in comic books from the Big Two to counter constant jabs, references and snide, preachy copy they print is like asking the mob to please leave garbage alone. I get that…
…but for the good of the comic book industry, this escalation and domination of liberal sentiment has got to stop and it’s gotta stop quick.
Everybody knows that when an entertainer goes political, he/she runs the very serious risk of cutting their audience by at least half. The comic book audience has been getting smaller and smaller and I think it’s time to honestly consider that a big part of the problem is the content...
The NEW Spiderman is gay.........
hey surely someone has a superhero in his pen or trackball which does justice to “old fashioned” causes. what’s a disaster for liberals (and it might be the influence of the publishers as much as or more than that of the artists) might be a gold mine for someone else.
thpiderman!
DC Comics went on the hippie bandwagon long ago. It certainly drove me away then. (I was never really a Marvel guy, for some reason.)
It’s not just comic books, but movies, everything. Hell, look what’s happened to Ann Coulter.
I can’t read anything by DC because they’ve become a bunch of preachy left wing goofballs.
Most everything by Marvel sucks too except the recent Punisher series.
Interestingly, there’s a ton of good stuff being released by small comic publishers and a lot of manga is pretty good.
I never cared for superhero comics. In my youth I preferred Roy Rogers or Gene Autry and THE CISCO KID.
In my teens I collected the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED comics and some THRILLER or good Sifi along with COMBAT comics.
“Hell, look what’s happened to Ann Coulter.” And Noonan——”Noonan: Newt an angry ‘attack muffin’”
It’s been 55 years since I read a comic book.
I’d be interested in seeing anything new from Frank Miller, who has become quite conservative since 9/11, especially recently.
The DUmmies have been seriesly hating on him due to some of the posts on his blog recently.
Mark
Couldn’t agree more with over 20000 books they have pretty much forced me into only buying older books - though I’m sorely tempted by some of the artistry in the new books it just cannot overcome the political swing and dead story lines - there was a time when green arrow and others were the libs that took on the remaining crew (70s) in DC and seemed to be more balanced but that time is long past. Now the story lines are all about grandiose large scale epics with minimal character development or plotlines. So I seek out the holes in my collection instead. Sigh...
I love this from the article as I use it often:
“Now, you might say, “Darin, you’re obviously unaware that Green Arrow is based on Robin Hood and as EVERYBODY ELSE KNOWS, Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He’d be an Occupier today.” Well, yeah, that’s how those on the left view Robin Hood… but if you look more closely at Robin Hood you will find that the character more accurately stole from the state and gave back to the people… so one could just as easily say that Robin Hood would be a Tea Partier today and, therefore, Green Arrow could be too.”
It’s a good article for those interested in the area.
I love this from the article as I use it often:
“Now, you might say, “Darin, you’re obviously unaware that Green Arrow is based on Robin Hood and as EVERYBODY ELSE KNOWS, Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He’d be an Occupier today.” Well, yeah, that’s how those on the left view Robin Hood… but if you look more closely at Robin Hood you will find that the character more accurately stole from the state and gave back to the people… so one could just as easily say that Robin Hood would be a Tea Partier today and, therefore, Green Arrow could be too.”
It’s a good article for those interested in the area.
Yeah Alan Moore had the gall to say comics were too conservative. But neither has produced much since their heyday in the 80s and 90s.
A complete 180 degree turn from the glory days when Stan Lee was writing every Marvel title in the sixties: Half the villains were Communists (Crimson Dynamo, the Red Ghost, etc.). Those days (and their enormous sales) are long gone.
I used to love the Avengers when I was a kid. Thor and the Scarlet Witch were my favorites. Now she is insane and he comes off like a pansy. Wouldn’t waste my cash on any of the new comics.
Mid to late 80s mostly and the only one I liked was GI Joe. However some of the Devil’s Due and one other after that weren’t too bad.
I can live with Wikipedia summaries of comic book characters.
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