Thing about that Chuck Dixon quote is that he doesn't walk the walk. His comics are often highly political and guided by his religious beliefs, in terms of who in any argument is right or wrong, over how events are judged by characters or by "nature."

His opposition, for instance, to a character dying of AIDS in someone else's book, because that might be inappropriate to kids reading a superhero comic, or to homosexual relationships in kid-friendly comics, is a political choice of omission, as much as his choice to write a pregnant teen mother or an mixed-race Green Arrow were. He's good at keeping a character's perspective or beliefs steady, to a degree (when people kept saying GA was gay, Dixon sorta overnighted him into a sexgod who'd just been a deeply-inexperienced virgin a moment before), but putting religion or politics into a comic is more than just if a character acknowledges the Pope or is an avatar of Shiva. It's about the moral judgments the fictional universe makes, the consequences of actions or correlations being established.

So, when he pretends he's keeping his politics out of comics, it just rubs me wrong.

He's better than some when it comes to writing some already-established characters, yeah, but he doesn't keep his politics or his "how things work" moral structure out of his comics writing. No more or less so than, say, Alan Grant, but Grant's less likely to deny when something's a political or ethical choice.

It's so commonplace with DC and Marvel that when there's a giant disaster, the broken up heroes all get together in a Christian church, bow their heads, someone gives a rousing speech, that we're supposed to accept the church as neutral ground or "universal," but it's not. It's like the people who got literally upset because the Marvel anime shows were set mostly in Japan, which is not - as one IMdB poster put it - "the center of the world," but have no problem with them all being set in New York. We're probably less bothered by moral orders, or by habits and happenstance that agrees with our expectations, but it doesn't make ours any more true.

Depends on what their worldview is.

I think the distinction between what you're talking about vs. what Chuck Dixon is addressing is the difference between letting your work reflect your worldview vs. co-opting a character as a mouthpiece for certain political positions that doesn't jive with established characterization.

Depends on what their worldview is.