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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2015 2:09:24 GMT -5
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Post by DE Sinclair on Oct 28, 2015 8:05:11 GMT -5
Much as I hate to inject a controversial viewpoint into a political thread, I have to stand up and say... pina coladas are delicious. There even used to be a regional soda company that had a pina colada flavored soda that was a favorite in my household. Still kind of miss that. Beware, a new trend is to add bananas to Pina Colada, so you may sit back and relax with your icy treat only to get a mouthful of banana!  -M Thank you for once again illustrating the pervasive nature of pure evil. |
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Post by Randle-El on Oct 28, 2015 10:21:02 GMT -5
WWII era comics get a pass because people were pretty unified in their stance against the Nazis. Sure, they may have been political, but it wasn't hard to put Hitler in a villain role, and you weren't going to find much opposition to that in the U.S. It's sort of like when Mark Waid decides to write a story using white supremacists as the villains (something he's done several times over his career)... you're not going to get too much of an outcry saying the story is too political. Today, we cast North Korea or Islamic fundamentalists (or made-to-resemble Islamic fundamentalists) in villain roles because they are not the target audience of our books, comics, movies, and TV shows, and nobody in the U.S. is going to make much fuss over that. Now try assigning the villain role to Planned Parenthood, or the Tea Party, and you'll get a lot more pushback because there are significant numbers of American citizens that are sympathetic to both. Now all of a sudden the fictional work is getting "too political".
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 28, 2015 10:47:17 GMT -5
Political comics!  |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2015 11:31:00 GMT -5
WWII era comics get a pass because people were pretty unified in their stance against the Nazis. Sure, they may have been political, but it wasn't hard to put Hitler in a villain role, and you weren't going to find much opposition to that in the U.S. It's sort of like when Mark Waid decides to write a story using white supremacists as the villains (something he's done several times over his career)... you're not going to get too much of an outcry saying the story is too political. Today, we cast North Korea or Islamic fundamentalists (or made-to-resemble Islamic fundamentalists) in villain roles because they are not the target audience of our books, comics, movies, and TV shows, and nobody in the U.S. is going to make much fuss over that. Now try assigning the villain role to Planned Parenthood, or the Tea Party, and you'll get a lot more pushback because there are significant numbers of American citizens that are sympathetic to both. Now all of a sudden the fictional work is getting "too political". Except the propaganda started pre-War when American opinion was divided about the War in Europe, and not unified. And continued into the Silver Age with anti-red propaganda which continued into the Reagan 80s in comics, and so on and so forth, pushing forward political ideas which were hardly non-divisive in American culture. Read some of the letters pages where the editors actually ran commentary (rather than burying controversial letters in the circular file) and you get a glimpse of the divisive nature of it. Now the commentary on such issues is not under the thumb of the editor but out there for everyone to see on the net. It's not the content or political nature of comics that have changed but the access to the commentary by the public which has. Comics have always had divisive, controversial political elements, but in the internet age the reaction to these is more out there for people to see and loud, but not really representative, opinions get a lot of attention because they make a lot of noise, while the vast majority of consumers remain silent but make their voice heard with the dollars they spend continuing to buy the products. A lot of people think this is a new element to comics because it's the first they noticed it, but they just weren't paying attention to what was going on before-and no one was screaming and pointing fingers at things via the internet and 24 hour news networks looking to fill lulls in the newscycles; plus comics have become fair game as a target because the movies have put them on people's radar in a way they haven't been since Wertham's crusade. The attempt to sanitize comics of anything controversial may have been new to the Wertham era, today's it's old hat except a new group of people are looking at what comics are doing for the firs ttime even though what they are doing is what they have been doing all along. -M |
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 28, 2015 12:17:29 GMT -5
What mrp writes in his last post is quite perceptive.
And, granted that World War Two was a great unifier of public sentiment and that the Cold War was a great dampener of same, Kurtzman's war comics at least, and I'm sure some others, evinced an anti-war tone that was not in line with the mainstream.
The war comics had a tough row to hoe in the 70s, but Kanigher and Kubert often used the World War Two settings to make points about the futility of the Vietnam War (Remember the "Make War No More" messages at the end of each story?), and even the Sgt. Fury stories became a tad more thoughtful and metaphorical. And they resorted to metaphor and sub-text because comics set in Vietnam went nowhere back then. It was very difficult to see our enemy there as the moral equivalents of Hitler and the Nazis.
It's why Western comics could not be taken seriously if they were done in the style that had been so popular in the 50s. Western comics, however few in number they were, were perhaps the most political of titles there for a while. Witness Tomahawk going from fighting the Frontier Frankenstein to dealing with anti-black and anti-Native American prejudice in the space of a few issues. And there were other more modern Westerns, like Firehair, and Scalphunter and Marvel's Gunhawks. Some were more derivative than other but all in a sense "grew up," sometimes bass ackwards, but at least the editors and writers realized that the landscape had changed.
The appeal of Nazis as all-purpose soulless villains was acknowledged in the third (and final) Indiana Jones movie. Setting one in the 50s with Russians as bad guys would never work, would it?
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 28, 2015 12:39:39 GMT -5
(...) And continued into the Silver Age with anti-red propaganda which continued into the Reagan 80s in comics, and so on and so forth, pushing forward political ideas which were hardly non-divisive in American culture. I found it very ironic that the final issue of Merc (one of the New Universe titles) is basically a paean to the brave islamic freedom fighters in Afghanistan. How quickly things change... |
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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 28, 2015 15:09:39 GMT -5
I guess we know how Erik Larsen feels about politics in comics:   |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Oct 28, 2015 19:11:06 GMT -5
Go back to the very beginnings of comics and you'll find tons of politics. It begins with single panel comic illustrations which the majority dealt with political issues or political satire. It evolved to newspaper strips and many remained political. The Yellow Kid, Little Orphan Annie and others had definite political views. Unless you believe comic books should remain immature fantasy, there is a place for politics
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Post by dupersuper on Oct 28, 2015 19:33:02 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2015 20:45:56 GMT -5
WWII era comics get a pass because people were pretty unified in their stance against the Nazis. Sure, they may have been political, but it wasn't hard to put Hitler in a villain role, and you weren't going to find much opposition to that in the U.S. It's sort of like when Mark Waid decides to write a story using white supremacists as the villains (something he's done several times over his career)... you're not going to get too much of an outcry saying the story is too political. Today, we cast North Korea or Islamic fundamentalists (or made-to-resemble Islamic fundamentalists) in villain roles because they are not the target audience of our books, comics, movies, and TV shows, and nobody in the U.S. is going to make much fuss over that. Now try assigning the villain role to Planned Parenthood, or the Tea Party, and you'll get a lot more pushback because there are significant numbers of American citizens that are sympathetic to both. Now all of a sudden the fictional work is getting "too political". This is where a writer has to decide if he's writing a story or marketing a product. Do you think Mark Twain cared who his potential demographic was or what they liked? Also, I'm pretty sure the suits at WB and Disney know what they're doing. The outraged Tea Party crowd is actually probably one of the smaller demographics they've offended with their output over the years. |
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Post by dupersuper on Oct 29, 2015 19:01:12 GMT -5
I have trouble imagining most Tea Party types enjoying comics in the first place. All the social justice and liberal views...even Archie Comics have a gay character now...
Mainstream comics worrying about them seems like TV writers worrying how the Amish will react to their show.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2015 19:09:54 GMT -5
Mainstream comics worrying about them seems like TV writers worrying how the Amish will react to their show.  -M |
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Post by senatortombstone on Oct 29, 2015 23:01:01 GMT -5
I have trouble imagining most Tea Party types enjoying comics in the first place. All the social justice and liberal views...even Archie Comics have a gay character now... Mainstream comics worrying about them seems like TV writers worrying how the Amish will react to their show. That's a good point. I read, have read, and own a lot of comic books, but I don't into the comic book culture; and I have noticed that those who do are probably not the sort to be put off by some of the more left-wing views promoted in certain books. Again, my objection to the politicization of comic books is that it can create continuity conflicts and often times the writers caricature the opposition, instead of trying to accurately present it as a different, albeit still valid point of view. I prefer the latter, because it allows the reader to decide. I remember an issue of Uncanny X-Men 400~(?) in which Jean Grey says something to the effect that she is tired of pretending to be normal, in order to not scare republicans. Now, if mutants with Jean Grey's level of power existed, I would think that everyone - regardless of their political views - would want to see some sort of government action to control them. For the most part, it is democrats who support gun control, not republicans; so if there existed beings with the ability to kill thousands with a mere thought and gesture, I would think that the democrats, who often don't trust average people to own hand guns, would be the first to demand their regulation. I am not trying to start anything with anyone, but this is one reason why I object to the politicization of comic books - the writers often times do a poor job of it, to the point it insults the readers' intelligence. I also thought it was hypocritical of how Marvel promoted gun control in certain issues of Spider-Man, while glorifying gun violence in the Punisher books. I do recall that Aunt May's long decease fiancé, Nathan, shot some youths in a subway (ala Bernie Goetz), and when Nathan was acquitted and hailed a public hero, those teens came looking for revenge. I thought that was a fair portrayal of varying view points, but that was nearly 30 years ago. |
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Post by Spike-X on Oct 30, 2015 1:29:39 GMT -5
I have trouble imagining most Tea Party types enjoying comics in the first place. All the social justice and liberal views...even Archie Comics have a gay character now... Not to mention all that reading. |
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