Superheroes Span Red-Blue Divide ("Comic Book Icons Like Superman & Spiderman Tackling Politics")

CBS News.com ^ | 05/28/2006 | Randy Dotinga (Christian Science Monitor)

[GeronL]

Superheroes used to do what the government pretended to do, save people and now they want them to be good little socialists within the system... not so super anymore

[sig226]

Maybe the lefties could have Super Djugashvili, the Man of Steel! :)

[LenS]

I collected mostly X-Men comics for almost twenty years. But I stopped recently because I was tired of the writers inserting their grade-school liberalism into the stories and then patting themselves on their backs for being so creative and intelligent.

[A message]

Don't know haven't read it yet. But fans are clamoring to read #2.

[GeronL]

They're fans. Thats what fans do.

[A message]

Heck, I don't disagree with that. I'm certainly one to support, if you don't like it don't read it.

The left pervades everything in the entertainment industry, whether the comic, book or need I say movie industry.

But there is still plenty out there in comics for the conservative to read.

[Darkwolf377]

LOL!!!

First laugh of the day. Thanks!

[Darkwolf377]

James O'Barr, the creator of 'The Crow' complained once in an interview that most comic book artists never draw from life; they draw essentially from each other, and as a result, their figurative work becomes even more exaggerated--like the very worst of the rococo artists of the eighteenth century.

Good post.

I have to agree with the above point completely. I loved comics as a kid, but one of the things that made me kick them cold turkey was when I started reading more novels. I started reading adult books when I was in second grade, but really concnetrated on certain science fiction books by a handful of authors who had very potent styles. By the time I hit high school, comics and SF novels made up almost all of my reading.

But when I hit high school and started reading a much wider variety of SF and mainstream novels because I was able to travel to the city and its many bookstores, I saw comics as being very insulated from real life, and the varieties of expression available. They all seemed to be written by the same person, with the same point of view. They bored me.

I agree that there is hugh potential in comics, and when you can look at mere entertainment books like X-Men, The Spirit and Cerberus the Aardvark and those that shoot a little higher like Watchmen (the go-to comic for those trying to prove comics are "adult"--20 years old, is it?), you see that it's not a limitation of the medium itself--comics CAN be individual works. But there's something basically juvenile about them, always retreating to either superheroics or high school-level cynicism or serial killers or whatever.

[Darkwolf377]

Ah, Dark oh so cynical.

That's a really childish reaction--someone doesn't like elves, so therefore they're a cynic?

LOTR is nothing more than fantasy, yet Tolkien was truly a masterful storyteller. Elves, Wizards,.. fantasy. I suppose you consider LOTR, Silmarillion, Hobbit just childs play or for that matter C.S. Lewis's Perelandra series that was based in a sci fi / fantasy format.

No, I don't. Your "argument" completely collapses when you simply invent a position for me and then attack it without asking if it IS my position.

Everyone who wants to defend elves and dragons goes to Tolkien. Well, Tolkien was rooted in tons of research into myths and legends, and invented his own language from that basis. 99% of fantasy that we're talking about is rooted in Tolkien. That's the difference between an innovator--someone who did the groundbreaking into Western and Northern European mythology and pieced together archetypes from British legend with certain Christian concempts (Tolkien pointed out that there are no churches in LOTR because the whole story takes place on a level where so much of his belief system is being played out)--and the hacks who simply spin variations on that one model.

Fans of little people with pointy ears and dragons and juvenile sex fantasies always try to justify their continuing to hang around the playground long after they've graduated by going to Tolkien or Lewis. Well, OK, I guess you're saying you only read Tolkien or Lewis and not all that gawdawful crap clogging the shelves at the bookstores, and the same goes for ALL the people buying that garbage--they're just using it all to prop up their studies of Christian symbolism in Tolkien and the uses of faith in Lewis. Yeah, ok.

As far as Laurell Hamilton, hell I haven't read her work and probably never will,

Then maybe you shouldn't point to her as evidence that comic books have grown up?

but that hack is going to be signing her book Danse Macarbre all over the dang country, and that hack is getting the "Borders" crowd into the direct market comic store looking for her Anita Blake title. That hack sells books.

OK, she sells books--what does that have to do with the point you made?

Are you seriously saying that because she sells books, that's evidence of some kind of literary worth? Because you pointed to her as proof that comics were not just for kids. Her books are crap--trust me, I know, and wish I didn't.

But lets look at a book like Deogratias by Jean Philip Stassen. It is a story set during the Hutu, Tutsi genocide. The main character, Deogratias, is a young Hutu who is cynical and thinks everyone is out to poison him in his food and drink, and the ethnic strife has turned him insane and dependent. He desires banana beer each night for without he thinks he turns into a dog. The metaphor and allegory is striking and is a thought provoking exploration of the insanity of those times.

If you say so.

Or lets take a look at Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This title is her autobiography of growing up as a young Iranian girl shortly after the Mullahs took over in Iran through the mid 90's. Very fascinating and very relevant.

You're making the same point you inadvertently made with your Tolkien reference--you're using these tiny niche books as some kind of evidence that the comic book has grown up. YOU are the one who pointed to Hamilton selling books as proof of something--are you now going to tell me that 99% of comic books sold are hard-hitting "relevent" titles about Iranian girls? Or are 99% of the comic books sold (to kids a lot older than 18) boring superhero crap?

I tell you Darkwolf, the comic industry is so much different all over the world except in the United States , where so many people here still hold up their noses and think oh what a childish things these comic books when in reality so many people don't know a dang thing they talk about.

I couldn't care less what idiots around the world do with their reading time--their view of America proves that all they've been doing is reading comic books. And trust me, as someone whose best friend is an illustrator; who sells short genre fiction; who has another friend who works for a comic book distributor; and who works at a school where I have daily conversations with three kids who read comic books, one who reads that Anita Blake bisexual werewolf crap, and one kid who draws his own comics, I know a lot more than you seem to think. But of course, I have a different opinion from you, so therefore I mustn't know anything?

That sophomoric attitude proves my point completely. Adults know that two people can be informed about an issue and have different opinions. That you are so threatened by mine that you have to quote sales figures, two tiny niche books while ignoring the mass of books that actually "sell" (which you think is of major importance) and the opinnion of those oh-so-more-sophisticated foreign idiots as "proof" only shows that you, my friend, are the one who doesn't know a danged thing about why someone who actually reads and lives in the real world has no time for funny books.

[LS]

In the '60s, Marvel used to be solidly American. I mean, "Captain America?" They had a character the Fantastic Four fought called the "Hate Monger," who turned out to be Hitler; there was the "Red Ghost" and his commie apes. By the late 60s, they started to get more PC. Now, Marvel is much like the rest, although the treatment of SpiderMan 2 was good.

[LS]

Although it's a good movie, X-3 is really a metaphor for homosexuals: the government finds a "cure" for mutants, and offers it voluntarily, and there are all these speeches about how mutants aren't "diseased" etc. Sad.

Marvel was so great in the early 60s. I disagree with those who say modern comics are well done, either artistically or in terms of story. I find them plodding, tedious, and incredibly overdrawn.

[Fintan]

I'll stick with more intellectual pursuits...

[mewzilla]

Civil War, for instance, explores the issue of civil liberties in the wake of a deadly explosion in a Connecticut neighborhood during the filming of a superhero reality show. Soon, superheroes are at war over mandatory registration, with dissenters facing terms in a prison that will remind readers of Guantánamo Bay.

Snort.

[mewzilla]

Soon we will see comic works by renown writers such as Laurell Hamilton

=8-0

[sig226]

And here he is:

[Free ThinkerNY]

The Red Ghost