Hope you’re enjoying your snow day vacation, thrill-seekers, and using the extra time to tweak your Superhero Icon paper for Monday between snowball fights and hot cocoa. Meanwhile, a real brouhaha over comic book politics has crept into the headlines.
The upcoming Captain America #602 originally had this panel of what closely resembles Tea Party protesters with The Falcon musing, “I don’t exactly see a Black man from Harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry White folks.” FOX News jumped all over it as racist and a political smear by writer Brubaker to discredit the Tea Party movement as “loonies.” Amidst a firestorm from the outraged Right Wing blogosphere, Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada agreed to edit out the panel he explains as a mistake, despite the fact that the slogans and demographics are indeed based upon actual Tea Party protests (see the ‘update’ here). Meanwhile, Marvel issued an official apology “for having a story align too closely to the politics of the moment.” Ironically enough, the story arc of Cap’s death-cheating return is called “TWO AMERICAS.”
Despite a history of Nazi-busting then Commie-crushing traditionalism embraced by conservatives, this isn’t the first time RightWing Pundits have gone after the post-Watergate Captain America for being a “traitor and appeaser,” raising questions over exactly what kind of America Cap stands for as our leading super-patriot. Related to our discussion of GL/GA last week, this episode also begs questions about the plus and minus of telling “relevant” sagas about currently divisive socio-political issues, the limits of superhero storytelling as mass-marketed commodity, and their conflicting rhetorical functions as ideological fantasy and existentially self-reflective myths.
Captain America #193 (1976)
Just a clarification here. This book actually shipped on January 20th to your local favorite comic stores. It sat on shelves largely unnoticed until a right-wing blog nut decided to make a point about it here: http://www.publiusforum.com/2010/02/08/marvel-comics-captain-america-says-tea-parties-are-dangerous-and-racist/
(That is the first comment on the entire topic I have been able to find anywhere.)
The “removal” of the offending sign will apply to any collected editions published in the future. A classic example of superhero comics’ love/hate relationship with mass-media attention. A few years ago when they killed Captain America, Marvel couldn’t flog it hard enough to the mass media. In this situation, they can’t run from the spotlight fast enough.
By: morefuntim on February 13, 2010
at 2:50 pm
Good points, Tim. Here is a fanboy who GOES OFF on the idiocy on his blog to make the following point: “When Captain America is written properly, its uncritically patriotic Americans who are ALWAYS the most important problem…”
By: Doc T on February 21, 2010
at 9:03 am
And the relevant issues keep getting weirder and more timely.
By: Doc T on February 24, 2010
at 4:59 pm