Conservatism seems to be a difficult topic for comics to deal with, especially for traditional superhero comics. Part of that could stem from the medium’s early liberalism (While Superman is considered a conservative character nowadays, his early adventures usually had him taking on wealthy corporate crooks and greedheads), but in general, most comics writers just seem to have trouble tying characters to political views. Even characters whose conservatism is considered well-established often have fairly vague political beliefs — how do we know, for example, that Hawkman is a conservative? Is it because he’s in favor of lower taxes or opposes gay marriage? No, it’s because he always gets into big arguments with Green Arrow, who is a liberal.

But sometimes, a creator comes up with a compelling character whose conservative political philosophy is not just specifically stated, but is an intrinsic part of the character’s personality. For instance: Steve Ditko’s Mr. A.

 

Ditko, of course, is the co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, the Creeper, Captain Atom, and dozens of other characters. But he’s had a bit of a snarky relationship with comics — he hasn’t given interviews or made personal appearances since the ’60s, and his general dissatisfaction with the current state of the comics industry is pretty well-known. Ditko is also a follower of author Ayn Rand’s conservative philosophy of Objectivism, and in 1967, he decided to create a hero embodying Objectivist principles.

The result, in the third issue of “witzend” magazine, was Mr. A. Named for the Randian “A is A” philosophy of the “Law of Identity,” Mr. A was really reporter Rex Graine. He never really had an origin — he just went out in his all-white suit and fedora and his solid steel mask and gloves, and fought crime. He leaves business cards that are half white and half black to signify his belief that there is only good and evil, with no moral gray space in the middle.

The typical Mr. A story focused on a character who convinces himself that he can do a small number of illegal acts without compromising his own inherent good nature. But those small crimes eventually snowball into larger and more serious crimes. They often try to justify their actions by blaming other people, the environment, or society for their own actions. People who commit only small crimes may only be delivered by Mr. A to the police for trial, but murderers are often left in a position where they must rely on Mr. A to save them, and he never lifts a finger to save the guilty, because they never lifted a finger to save the innocent.

 

Of course, Mr. A is indeed impossibly merciless, but that’s been done plenty often before. Mr. A wasn’t really written in order to be realistic or to be a thrilling adventure tale — its primary purpose is to promote Objectivism. Does it do that job well? On the one hand, there’s not much way to doubt that Mr. A is as close as you’re going to get to an Ultimate Objectivist — he never compromises or bends his principles; he absolutely does not believe that evil is subjective; he’s a moral, intellectual and physical super-specimen, especially compared to most other people; and he’s a really, really preachy guy.

The big problem for Mr. A as a piece of Objectivist propaganda is that the only people who think Mr. A is an appealing role model are people who are already Objectivists. You wouldn’t want to hang out with a guy like Mr. A, getting all scowly and condemnatory if your favorite football team got too many penalties. You wouldn’t even want him to be a cop, ’cause he’s the type of guy who’d haul you off to jail for jaywalking. You wouldn’t want to hang out with Mr. A, and there probably aren’t too many folks who’d want to be him, either.

But “Mr. A” is still a series and a character that I feel a lot of respect for. He’s a well-realized character with conservative beliefs that don’t derive from whatever the latest shouting points are on right-wing thug radio, or devolve into cartoonish parody. And besides that, Ditko’s artwork is fun to look at, too. 🙂

 

And of course, Mr. A is closely related to another Ditko character, the Question, who got his start very close to the same time as Mr. A. Originally a Charlton Comics character, the Question was another vengeful Objectivist, though it’s been a few decades since the Question was portrayed that way. And Mr. A also has ties to Rorschach, the uncompromisingly conservative vigilante who co-starred in Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” series in the mid-1980s.

(For more on Ditko and Mr. A, be sure to read Dial B for Blog’s Mr. A series.)

 

I’m going to assume that you all know about the huge Chinese earthquake on May 12th, right? Tens of thousands of people dead, probably the biggest and most tragic natural disaster we’ve seen in the past several years.

Well, there’s a Chinese cartoonist named Coco Wang, and she decided she’d draw what she’d seen.

 

Steel yourself. This is utterly heartbreaking stuff, completely soul-crackingly sad and triumphant stories, beautiful stories of death and survival, horror and humor. But you need to read these comics. Read Coco’s introduction, then read the “5.12 Earthquake Strips” over in the sidebar. They’re all pretty short, so it won’t take long. But go read them.

And look at that art style, too. It’s not complex or realistic at all. It’s deceptively simple cartooning. Some of the most powerful stories can be told with simple and straightforward art. It drags you into the narrative, because it’s easier for any reader to picture himself or herself as part of the story.

Beautiful work. Please go read it.

 

I read this comic for the first time not that long ago. It was originally published by SteelDragon Comics, and later by Marvel’s Epic Comics imprint, and it was created by Will Shetterly and Vince Stone. The series ran from the mid-80s to the early-90s. I’d read something about it elsewhere, in which someone assumed, not having read the comic, that it was a pro-Confederacy, pro-racism, pro-Treason-in-Defense-of-Slavery hack job.

It’s not a comic for kids. There’s sex, violence, and a number of very bad and very hurtful words. But I think I can report that it isn’t racist.

Background: The story is set in an alternate history where the South successfully won independence from the North in the Civil War. From there, the rest of North America balkanized into a number of different countries, including the Republic of Texas, Deseret, the Great Spirit Alliance, the People’s Republic of California, and the Louisiana Free State. And in the Confederate States of America, the prime motivator of the Civil War quickly becomes a moot point, as the slaves are freed all over the South. It doesn’t make the CSA a haven of racial harmony, though, as non-whites are second-class citizens. A lot of the bad guys use racist slurs — even some of the heroes use racist slurs.

Which brings us to our main characters — four actors, two white and two black, who are given a super-soldier serum so they can function as a combination of superheroes and propaganda figures for the government. The two white actors become Captain Confederacy and Miss Dixie, defenders of the South, while the two black actors become their opponents, designed to demonize black activists who wanted equal rights. But one of the actors decides to defect to the North, and the government, fearful that their fake superheroes are going to be exposed, brings the hammer down, forcing the actors to decide whether they want to keep pretending to be heroes or go out and become heroes for real…

Shetterly and Stone are reprinting the full comic series in blog form — frankly, their current format is a bit difficult to navigate from within their site, so here are links to the individual chapters.

• Pages 1-20
• Pages 21-40
• Pages 41-60
• Pages 61-80
• Pages 81-100
• Pages 101-120
• Pages 121-140
• Pages 141-157

Again, this is a comic for adults. If you can’t handle sex, violence, extremely bad language, or critiques of racial politics, DO NOT click on those links.

The comic uses a great deal of racist language. But I’ve never believed that racist language alone causes a work of fiction to be racist itself. As a writer, if you’re putting together a story about a deeply racist society, like the CSA in “Captain Confederacy,” if you leave that kind of language out, you make everything look sugar-coated and fake. And this comic, though it has characters who use racist language, comes across as an actively anti-racist book. The villains are people who are working to keep an entire class of people subjugated. The heroes are people who are working to change society for the better. They’re not trying to overthrow the Confederacy, but they are trying to turn it into a vastly less oppressive nation.

As for the story itself, I think of it more as alternate-history science fiction. Altered Civil War settings are one of the more popular styles of alternate-history sci-fi. But you can’t have a story like this without addressing racial issues — sure, they’re somewhat fictionalized, but you can’t live anywhere in the South — heck, anywhere in America — for long before you realize that, no matter how improved we are from decades or centuries past, we ain’t got anywhere near a truly free and racially-equal society. We still got people who think it’s okay to drop the N-word in casual conversation. We still got politicians who’ll kiss up to racist groups for the sake of politics. We still got hardcore racists all over the ‘Net. We still got schoolkids who think nooses are a joke.

There ain’t a comic book in the world that can change that (though comic creators have been trying since Lee and Kirby’s “X-Men #1” in 1963), but it doesn’t hurt at all for comics to try to change what they can.

Is this not the weirdest political season you’ve seen in a while? It seems particularly unusual for us Texans — when was the last time that we actually had a say in helping to pick any of the nominees? Usually, the candidates have been narrowed to one-per-party long before the Texas primary hits. But this year, we’re still in play. Seems to make a lot of people much more interested in the presidential race than normal.

We’ve already had ol’ Bubba in town to talk up Hillary’s candidacy. Right now, Obama’s currently disappointing a lot of folks who were hoping he’d come to town, too. So right now, everyone’s thinking about matters political. And hey, I’m a shameless attention hound, so I figured I’d hunt down nice presidential-themed comic covers for your amusement.

 

Ya ever wondered who various superheroes would vote for? I figure Wonder Woman would be endorsing Hillary, right?

 

Captain America’s got a military background — I figure he’d pull the lever for McCain.

 

Green Arrow? While he hasn’t run for president, he did get elected as mayor of Star City not too long ago. I think he’d definitely be a Kucinich supporter, though I’m sure he complained that Kucinich was a bit too conservative for his tastes.

 

Hey, good ol’ Prez Rickard, the 18-year-old president from the old ’70s DC series. I’m betting Prez would write in whoever was running as the Green candidate. Crazy ’70s hippie weirdo presidents…

 

Yeah, the Savage Dragon was briefly the president. Who would he support in this election? Definitely the Greens. Get it? Get it? Oh, man, I’m hilarious.

 

No reason not to let the villains in on the act. In DC’s continuity, Lex Luthor actually got elected president of the U.S. back in 2000. He wasn’t considered too bad a president either, though he eventually got booted out of office after turning supervillain. As for who he’d vote for? I figure Lex would write himself in. Crazy megalomaniac ex-presidents…

 

I think I’m the only person in the world who liked the “Emperor Joker” storyline that ran in the Superman comics a few years ago. Sure, he’s not exactly presidential, but being an all-powerful emperor counts for something, I guess. I’m not sure the Joker would think any of the candidates were crazy enough for him. Maybe Alan Keyes. That dude’s craaaaaaazy. Maybe Huckabee, if he keeps talking up that garbage about making America a theocracy…

 

Whoa, looks like Superman’s endorsing Obama.

So who are your picks for the nation’s top job?

UPDATE: Can’t believe I forgot Howard the Duck!

I figure Howard would vote for Mallard Fillmore or Andrew Quackson…

 

Persepolis

If you haven’t heard the news yet, “Persepolis” was nominated for an Academy Award yesterday for Best Animated Feature Film, so this seems like a pretty good time to review the graphic novel that the movie is based on.

“Persepolis” is a story written by Marjane Satrapi about her youth in Iran during the post-revolution era. She writes about the weird fundamentalism of life there, about having to learn the right things to wear to keep from angering the authorities, about buying punk rock on the black market, about meeting your heroic uncle for the first time and later hearing that he’s been executed unjustly as a spy. She also writes about her parents sending her to high school in Austria to get her away from the fundamentalists, about living her life alone in a strange country, and about later returning to her home country.

This is a really excellent book, very engrossing and fascinating. Satrapi tells so many interesting stories, sometimes as simple throwaway anecdotes — her friend from school who gets killed by a missile during the Iran-Iraq War, another friend who’s been crippled by the war, her many roommates during her stay in Austria. Some of the most interesting moments come when you realize that Satrapi had been ostracized in Iran as a dangerously outspoken woman who reads books about politics and philosophy, and was later ostracized in Europe solely because she was an Iranian and “everyone knows those Iranians are crazy fundamentalists.”

Satrapi’s artwork is really wonderful, too. Like a lot of autobiographical comics, the book uses a deceptively cartoonish style — the artwork looks simple, but it’s great for showing emotion and building drama — and yes, for spotlighting funny stuff. There really is some funny stuff that goes on here — at the very least, the goofy surrealism of trying to live in an autocratic society that actually freaks out about the right way to wear a headscarf. Satrapi’s teenaged angst is also written about very humorously.

Verdict: A very big thumbs up. Iran is in the news a lot these days — apparentally, some folks think we should go bomb ’em a bit, maybe because we ain’t involved in enough pointless Middle Eastern wars on brown people yet — and I figure it sure won’t hurt you to learn a little bit about an unfamiliar culture. Plus, with the movie out, they’ve released the entire four-volume series in a single book, so it’s a lot more affordable. Go check it out.

Via Occasional Superheroine: Someone asked presidential candidate Ron Paul who his favorite superhero was… and, well, check out his answer:

“My favorite comic book superhero is Baruch Wane, otherwise known as Batman, in The Batman Chronicles. “The Berlin Batman,” #11 in the series by Paul Pope, details Batman’s attempts to rescue the confiscated works of persecuted Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, from Nazi Party hands.

“Batman’s assistant Robin writes in the memoirs, “[Mises] was an advocate of individual liberty, free speech, and free thinking… and so, should I add, the Berlin Batman.” Batman, a Jew in hiding in Nazi Austria, was willing to risk his life for the sake of the promulgation of freedom, and I find this to be super-heroic.”

(Most of this original post was inadvertently lost, thanks to a programming glitch, and unfortunately forgotten. I suspect the rest of my commentary here was along the lines of “Well, isn’t this interesting? I wonder if other presidential candidates could come up with sound ideological reasoning if asked to pick out their favorite superhero?”)

 

Special Forces #1

Kyle Baker must have one of the more varied resumes of any cartoonist out there, except for maybe Jack Cole. Baker does Warner Brothers-esque animation cartooning like “Plastic Man,” he does dead-serious superhero fare like “Truth: Red, White and Black,” and he does everything in between. And the guy’s got serious interests in politics, race, and social justice — hence the aforementioned “Red, White and Black,” hence “Birth of a Nation” with Aaron McGruder and Reginald Hudlin, hence his series on Nat Turner, leader of one of the most significant slave rebellions of the old South.

And then there’s this comic, which takes as one of its inspirations an incident in which an autistic teenager was recruited by the Army and then released from his enlistment contract when the scandal went public. So our story is about a recruitment officer who’s given an ultimatum — make his recruitment quota, or he ships out to Iraq. Desperate, he signs up a bunch of completely unfit losers but just barely misses quota, so he is assigned command of the soldiers he recruited. And as you’d expect, complete disaster ensues. Our two main characters here are Felony, a juvenile delinquent whose torn mini-T and short-shorts don’t seem to be standard military issue, and Zone, an autistic soldier who, despite his other difficulties, is the perfect soldier.

The cover makes this look like it’s a comedy, but it isn’t. Holy cow, is this ever one non-funny comic book. The first page features a closeup of a guy’s head exploding. And it doesn’t get any cleaner from there. The comic is jam-packed with blood, guts, death, cussing — and not fun stuff, not a bit of it. This isn’t some “War is All Glory, Salute for Uncle Sam” action movie — this is violent, chaotic, terrifying, depressing stuff. And the characters really do draw you into the action — these guys aren’t Sgt. Rock or Nick Fury or recruiting-poster supermen — they’re schlubs, like you and me and 90% of the civilian populace. Seeing action heroes get blown up by RPGs wouldn’t be as affecting as seeing truly ordinary people get dusted. ‘Cause that could be you or me. And the real soldiers, with the actual training, are going through this every single day over there.

Artistically, this is pretty great stuff. I quibble with the way Felony is depicted — she’s got eyes like dinner plates and cheekbones you could land a jet on — but man alive, can Baker ever draw action. The chopper crash is one of the most exciting and cinematic pieces of artwork I’ve ever seen, and the first and last pages really do pack a big punch.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is harrowing stuff, but it’s really masterful storytelling.

 

The Spirit #10

And there is another beautiful cover. The guy’s name is Darwyn Cooke, ladies and gentlemen. You should go hunt down everything he’s done, ’cause it’s all that good looking.

This is a bit of an odd issue. It’s basically a combination of murder mystery and media parody. Someone is killing off the political punditocracy, and instead of sitting back, cracking open a cherry coke, and enjoying the culling, the Spirit decides to track down the killer. If you’re idea of a good time is watching a crazed killer hunt down barely-disguised versions of Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Stephen Colbert, Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper, Hannity and Colmes, and more, then you’re gonna have a plenty good time with the fictional schadenfreude.

And yes, it is making a fairly serious, though screamingly unsubtle, point about the rotten state of our TV news media. And though some parts of it are a bit preachy, I particularly liked some bits — there’s a page where a bunch of news anchors blather about their colleagues getting wiped out, and the crawls at the bottom of the screens are about horrible disasters and tragedies — real news shoved aside for the sake of ego-inflated pundits talking about themselves.

But it’s still fun. The mystery was actually excellent — the solution is wildly improbable, but it’s still got the oomph that a good mystery needs.

And the entire comic is jam-packed with Darwyn Cooke’s gorgeous, gorgeous artwork. Why ain’tcha run out to the store to buy it yet?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Didn’t you hear me tell you to go get it?

Richard Jewell, 1962-2007

Five’ll gitcha ten, you don’t remember who this guy was. Heck, there are people who would really prefer that you forget him. He’s an embarrassment, a reminder of their own failure and foolishness and hate.

And you might be wondering why the guy running the comic book blog is writing about a guy you’ve never heard of.

Let me refresh your memory.

In 1996, Atlanta was playing host to the Summer Olympics. Big money, big TV audience, big publicity. The U.S. picked up 101 medals. Muhammad Ali lit the torch in the opening ceremonies, and everyone thought that was pretty much awesome. Kerri Strug injured her ankle and still landed a near-perfect score on the vault. Kurt Angle, before he became a professional wrestler, won a gold medal in freestyle wrestling with a severely injured neck.

Richard Jewell was a nobody, overweight, unremarkable, unsuccessful, living with his mother. He got a job as a lowly security guard at Centennial Olympic Park during a concert on July 27. He noticed a stray knapsack lying under a bench, got suspicious, called it in, and started moving people away from the area. Three pipe bombs inside the knapsack exploded, killing one woman and injuring 111 people. A Turkish cameraman died of a heart attack while rushing to film the incident.

Jewell was hailed as a hero who certainly prevented the deaths of dozens of people. But after four days, the FBI decided he might be a suspect. They tipped off the media. And for the next several weeks, while the feds repeatedly searched his mother’s house, many media companies all but declared him guilty of the bombing.

The FBI eventually had to announce that he wasn’t a suspect, and the press slinked away, probably looking for some small cute animal they could stab. Jewell had gone from nobody to hero to villain… but instead of being hailed, again, as the hero of the Olympic Park bombing, he just went back to being a nobody. He had trouble getting jobs because many still believed he was the bomber. He got settlements from the New York Post and NBC, though the Atlanta Journal-Constitution fought his suit clear ’til his death.

Turns out the bomber was a psychotic “Christian Identity” terrorist named Eric Rudolph. Rudolph later bombed a lesbian bar and two abortion clinics, setting secondary bombs that would target police, fire, and emergency medical personnel. When the cops finally identified him, he went into hiding for over five years. When he was caught, he took a plea bargain solely to avoid the death penalty. He’s expressed no regrets, and he sends out letters that are generally considered harassment against his victims and incitement for his supporters to commit more violence. He’s scum, a racist, and a terrorist, and I’m thoroughly happy that he’ll die in prison.

Last year, Georgia governor Sonny Perdue officially commended Jewell for his heroism. I gotta tell you, from what I’ve read, Perdue hasn’t been the greatest governor around, but when I heard that he’d done that for Jewell, my admiration for him jumped sky-high. He got the chance to take a guy who’s been dumped on by life, despite the good he’d done, he brought him back before the public, and said, “This guy’s a hero. Give him the respect he deserves.” That’s a beautiful thing to do for someone. It doesn’t make up for all the crap he’d had to put up with, but it was great to see that someone remembered him.

Jewell was diagnosed with diabetes early this year, and his kidneys were failing. He died on August 29th. The media reported his death, but too many omitted their parts in trying to put a hero in prison.

If we lived in the Marvel Universe, Captain America would’ve shaken Richard Jewell’s hand on national TV, lectured us about our fickle loyalties, and made sure Nick Fury gave Jewell a good job in SHIELD. If we lived in the DC Universe, Batman would’ve cleared Jewell in two days, had Rudolph in custody in three, and the Wayne Foundation would’ve made sure Jewell and his mom spent the rest of the rest of their lives comfortably well-off and suitably respected by everyone.

We live in the real world, where people have fan websites for murderous terrorists like Eric Rudolph, and where there are no statues honoring heroes like Richard Jewell.

That’s insane, and that’s all there is to say about it.

 

Here’s an online comic book about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, created by Josh Neufeld, the guy who illustrates Harvey Pekar’s comics. And here’s an article about the creation of the comic.

The way that comics react to real-life disasters is one of the things I think is interesting about the medium. Sometimes, the reaction is extremely swift — just weeks after September 11th, Marvel produced the beautiful tribute jambook, “Heroes.”

 

Hulk by Sam Keith

And a few weeks after that, there was “Amazing Spider-Man #36” by J. Michael Straczynkski and John Romita, Jr.

 

Spidey at Ground Zero

DC came out with some tribute books, but they didn’t really have the same power. DC has worked for years to insulate itself from real-world events by setting its comics in fictional cities like Metropolis and Gotham and Opal City. Many of Marvel’s best-known characters are based in New York City, so there was a personal stake for Marvel.

In contrast, comics have taken much longer to respond to Katrina. In addition to Neufeld’s “A.D.” comic I mentioned above, the only one I’ve found is an upcoming issue of “Thor.”

 

And these few “Thor” panels illustrate a common theme of superhero comics that react to real-world disasters: Why didn’t the heroes help? Why didn’t the X-Men’s Storm help shut down the hurricane? Why didn’t Mr. Fantastic use his super-scientific know-how to strengthen the levees? Why didn’t the Avengers assist with evacuation? Why didn’t government agencies that spend billions on stuff like SHIELD heli-carriers use some of that taxpayer cash to help rebuild?

There’s never a good — or at least a credible — reason, mainly because superheroes can never actually do anything to help in the midst of real disasters, since they don’t really exist. But the question isn’t really directed at the fictional superpeople — it’s the comic writer’s way of asking real people who could have helped, whether the government, the military, common apathetic citizens, or whoever, why New Orleans still looks like a war zone two years after the hurricane. It’s the writer’s way of expressing frustration over 24 months of inaction and suffering and sorrow.

Still, real-world disasters are a difficult issue for superhero comics, and they nearly never get covered right. Because in the comics, it’s just not realistic to imagine that Superman, Wonder Woman, or the Fantastic Four wouldn’t have done something to reduce the suffering in the wake of a monstrous disaster like Katrina. Pretending they had more important things to do makes them look needlessly callous and cruel, and you’re not supposed to make your big heroes look like uncaring buttmonkeys.

And I gotta say, that’s why I always seem to find myself preferring the comics, like “A.D.”, that address real-world disasters from a real-world perspective. In a terrifying situation like Katrina, you don’t need spandex-clad do-gooders to amp up the drama.