Like this:

A pretty interesting tête-à-tête at Bleeding Cool on politically Liberal storylines hurting comics sales versus the Conservative tendencies of the genre. Although both authors seem to be arguing past the other, it certainly raises recurring questions over conflicted political ideologies within superhero comics. To me, the more intriguing rhetorical issue of such sweeping metacritiques is that the argument often misses a more important point about shallow stereotypes made by ‘The Comics Professor‘ (a contributor to the Blackwell ‘Philosophy and Popular Culture’ series):

“Furthermore, it contributes to the perception that our political affiliations define us. If Superhero A is conservative and Superhero B is liberal, many people will take those facts to determine much more about their characters than seems appropriate. There’s a lot of room for widely different types of liberals and conservatives in this world (not to mention all the people who reject both labels). And I like to believe that most liberals and conservatives (excluding the ones on the extreme fringe of each group) have more in common than not.”

We’ve examined several instances of presumed ‘political bias‘ in superhero comics and characters on numerous occasions, positing that such mythic American tensions are precisely why these politically-charged fantasies matter still.

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