The Glade 4.0

Marvel Comic’s Captain America is the mightiest soldier with the super powerful secret soldier formula that makes him a super man. Sadly, this muscle bound hero that took on the whole Nazi army during WWII seems to be afraid of those American people who’ve joined the Tea Party movement. Not only is Cappy quaking in his little red booties, but he’s sure that the Tea Party folks are dangerous racists, too.

Isn’t it wonderful that a decades old American comic book hero is now being used to turn readers against our very political system, being used to slander folks that are standing up for real American principles in real life — and one called “Captain America” at that?

In issue number 602 of Captain America, a new story line has begun called “Two Americas.” In it the current Captain (there have been a few of them, apparently) is on the trail of a faux Captain America that is mentally deranged and getting chummy with some white supremacist, anti-government, survivalists types going by the name of “the Watchdogs.” While investigating this subversive group, Captain America and his partner The Falcon — a black super hero — have decided to try and infiltrate the secretive organization.

In preparation for the infiltration, Marvel Comics depicts the two super heroes out of costume and observing from a rooftop a street filled with what can only be described as a Tea Party protest. The scene shows crowds of people in city streets carrying signs that say, “stop the socialists,” “tea bag libs before they tea bag you,” and “no to new taxes.” Naturally, the people in these crowds are depicted as being filled with nothing but white folks.





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The black character asks the out of costume Captain, “What the hell is this?” And follows that with, “looks like some kind of anti-tax protest.” The Falcon character then snidely tells his partner the Captain, “So I guess this whole ‘hate the government’ vibe around here isn’t limited to the Watchdogs.”

The two then discuss their plan to infiltrate the subversive group that Marvel comics seems to be linking to the Tea Party movement. This discussion culminates in The Falcon wondering how a black man would do such a thing. “I don’t exactly see a black man from Harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry white folks,” he tells the incognito Captain America.

The Captain tells him, “no it’s perfect… this all fits right into my plan.” After this we find that the Captain’s plan is to send the black man into a redneck bar to pretend to be a black man working for the IRS and to get everyone all mad… because… well, you know that every white person is a racist that hates black civil servants, right?

So, there you have it, America. Tea Party protesters just “hate the government,” they are racists, they are all white folks, they are angry, and they associate with secretive white supremacist groups that want to over throw the U.S. government.

Bet you didn’t know that when you were indulging your right as a citizen to protest your government that you were a dangerous white supremacist that wants to destroy the country, did you? Bet you didn’t realize that your reverence for the U.S. Constitution was a subversive thing to do, did you? And I’ll also bet that you never imagined that you’d scare the little blue panties off of Captain America!

Nice going Marvel Comics. Thanks for making patriotic Americans into your newest super villains.

By the way this is so idiotic. Is that the intent? To piss me off? Or I suppose more to the point, to generate some intense political feeling either pro or con?

Marvel recently announced that their heroes would start acting like heroes again. So what were they doing, running crack houses?

After seven years of grim and grimmer story lines, including a superhero “civil war” that pitted Iron Man against Spider-Man and the death of Captain America, Marvel Comics will usher in a more optimistic “Heroic Age” approach in May.

“Heroes will be heroes again,” says Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada. “They’ve gone through hell and they’re back to being good guys — a throwback to the early days of the Marvel Universe, with more of a swashbuckling feel.”

What does “swashbuckling,” which refers to pirates, have to do with heroism? Quesada went on to explain that Captain America, Iron Man and Thor would be working together again instead of acting like foes. Suddenly, WTF? appears over the scene like the Batsignal. How does working together make them heroes exactly? In the “Dark Reign” series of stories at Marvel last year, a bunch of Super-villains led by Norman (Green Goblin) Osborn had taken over the Avengers and were “working together,” trying to kill off the real heroes. Under the guise of helping people. How progressive. But that’s not very heroic.

The problem is, Marvel, like DC to a large extent, is run by and largely created by Progs these days. People who mostly adhere to the “progressive” worldview. There isn’t much diversity of political thought over at these companies. Progs tend to exclude those who don’t follow the party line. They feel more comfortable in a groupthink environment. And this leads to a kind of “bubble mentality” that comes with living in an echo chamber. In the case of Marvel it sometimes becomes unintentionally rank — with a lot of Obama worship — from Spider-Man teaming up with the Prez to Captain America saluting and praising him in the “Who Will Wield the Shield.” There sure wasn’t too much positive being said about Bush during his administration in comics, when they mentioned him at all. But Obama has been praised and venerated from the get go. Like his Nobel prize for just showing up, the comic world’s been awfully uncritical of a president who’s sinking faster in the polls than any president since Eisenhower.

But coincidentally or not, Obama’s first year in office is also the year of the Dark Reign, where villains took over as “protectors” of America and increased the corruption in all the government agencies. Isn’t that ironic, as Alanis might sing? The heroes were on the run, but now there’s a new battle called Seige where the heroes are fighting back against the ersatz heroes of Dark Reign. Hopefully, that will reset things back to “normalcy” in the Marvel Universe.

But that doesn’t get around the fact that ugly politics occasionally show up in their books.

captAmer_teapartyfear

Disclosure time: I know Brian Michael Bendis, the architect of the current Marvel plot-lines like Dark Reign and Seige, very well. I also know Captain America writer Ed Brubaker fairly well, having known him almost since he was a teenager (and Bendis from back when he had hair). I like them, so I’m not going to bash them or anything. But I do need to point out where their politics can be a problem. Bendis is pretty smart about keeping his on the down low. From what I’ve read of his work, and I’ve read a lot, it generally doesn’t creep in that much. Just a dot here and there like you’d expect from a Hollywood writer. Brubaker lives in the San Francisco Bay area. And occasionally he’s thrown in some lefty views in his work. He generally doesn’t as a rule. But his latest Captain America crosses the line and it needs addressing.

Captain America #602, the latest issue, features a stand in for Cap, who was once his sidekick, Bucky Barnes. Bucky was “dead,” but has been revived from being a long term Soviet sleeper agent. He’s supposedly on our side again. Bucky/Cap and his sidekick, the Falcon, head to Idaho to stop a rogue version of Captain America from the 1950s (uh oh: 1950s = evil!) who’s allied himself with extremists, apparently. (The ’50s Captain America is from a classic 1970s story by Steve Englehart.) So what do they see when they go to Boise to find him? Why, marching “teabaggers,” of course.

As the Falcon (a black character) describes it: “A bunch of angry white folk.” And they’re carrying signs protesting high taxes and socialism. So naturally, they’re a bunch of evil rednecks, right? I mean, there are no “black faces there” not even the minstrel kind. Here is how Brubaker explains the story.

I’m trying not to put politics in the comics necessarily, but it’s hard when you’re doing a comic called Captain America not to reflect the world around you to some degree. I’d been planning this story for six months and suddenly there were all these tea parties everywhere. Since the tide has changed in government and the Democrats are in charge, the people who were in power for eight years are out in the wilderness, and they feel like they don’t have a voice anymore. And we’ve got this ’50s Cap who doesn’t know what he’s going to do. As I was planning this story, Obama won, and people start having tea parties and carrying signs that say “Obama is a Nazi” and it’s like “Oh God!” So I’m dealing a little with the disgruntled part of America in this storyline. It gets to both sides of it because I’m trying to be fair and balanced. [Laughs] I never set out to mock people…well, I do in life, but not in my work. I think whenever you’re writing a character you have to try and see their side of the story sympathetically. So this ’50s Cap as a character is someone who I’ve always seen sympathetically because his viewpoint is not mine, but I can get into his head and see where he’s coming from.

Well, first off he’s using the false premise so many Democrats have about the tea parties. That it’s specifically anti-Obama. That it’s all Republicans. All White people. Not surprising if Brubaker watched the usual MSM channels because that’s the narrative they’re selling. The truth is that many have left the Republican AND Democrats to become Independents because they’re sick of the way both parties have acted in the last decade. They’re tired of the games both parties have been playing. The tea party movement is Independent. And its anti-tax message is all about holding the government accountable for wasting our resources. Some tea partiers consider the wars a waste of money, some consider bureaucracy a waste. Many are sick of the nanny state. Many are sick of being pushed around and told that they’re stupid by media elites. But this comic has it that they’re all White (it’s set in Idaho, hello?). The Falcon goes into some redneck bar as a tax collector to get the attention of the ’50s Captain America and quickly gets pummeled by all the rednecks in Caterpillar hats — because that’s what they do to his kind around there, or something.

captAmer_teapartyfear

Needless to say, the scene is another classic lefty trope. But as #602 is part one, and the set up for part two, we’ll have to reserve judgement to see how he shows the “other side” in the next issue.

The subtext of this story is what’s the problem. Here we have Captain America going after people who are protesting government policies and taxation, which is not only their right, they’re doing it peacefully. But because they are protesting the government of Obama, that demands Captain America try to stop them? What kind of hero is this? OK, yes, he’s really there for the 50s Captain America who wants to be a “revolutionary.” But he’s somehow tied to the “tea baggers.” Again, tea party people aren’t violent. They cleaned up after their Washington DC protest site unlike the Obama inauguration people. But hey, any chance to stick it to the protesters. Because protest is wrong, man. When Democrats are in power, anyway.

So, let’s look at this in overview. The American government has put psychotic criminals in charge of the Avengers (still ongoing at the time of this story apparently), but the Bucky Captain America is trying to stop a peaceful protest of the government because that’s wrong? In other words, he is defending a fascist state and oppressing the little guy. That’s heroism, man! Stick it to those “teabaggers.”

Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, an Objectivist, famously asked a bunch of comic pros if they could define what a hero was, and they couldn’t. You have to wonder if he would get the same response from the comics writers at Marvel and DC today.

It’s a problem if these companies really want readers. They’ve alienated a lot of them since their last heyday, the early 1990s. Considering that this is a center-right country it’s really not a great idea to keep pushing politics that are increasingly unpopular. Better to not get political at all, or at least know what you’re talking about.

And if you want to write about heroes, know what the word really stands for.

It looks like Marvel Comic's Captain America is throwing his mighty shield at the Tea Party Movement. Warner Todd Huston wrote on his Publius forum blog that the super-powered soldier who fought the Nazis in WWII goes under-cover to take on Americans who seemingly are compared to Tea Party Movement protesters of today:

In issue number 602 of Captain America, a new story line has begun called “Two Americas.” In it the current Captain (there have been a few of them, apparently) is on the trail of a faux Captain America that is mentally deranged and getting chummy with some white supremacist, anti-government, survivalists types going by the name of “the Watchdogs.” While investigating this subversive group, Captain America and his partner The Falcon — a black super hero — have decided to try and infiltrate the secretive organization.

In preparation for the infiltration, Marvel Comics depicts the two super heroes out of costume and observing from a rooftop a street filled with what can only be described as a Tea Party protest. The scene shows crowds of people in city streets carrying signs that say, “stop the socialists,” “tea bag libs before they tea bag you,” and “no to new taxes.” Naturally, the people in these crowds are depicted as being filled with nothing but white folks.

Marvel Comics has responded to the controversy that has reached not just the conservative blogosphere but the comic book message boards as well. On the Cup O’ Joe column at Comic Book Resources, Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada defends the Captain America story line in issue number 602, but he apologizes for a panel in comic book that seems to identify the Tea Party movement with the fictional group portrayed in comic. (btw, for Marvel fans, there are spoilers in here):

Joe Quesada: Hold on. Before digging into this, you're starting from a false premise. There was zero discussion to include a group that looked like a Tea Party demonstration. Ed simply wrote in an anti-tax protest into his story to show one of the moods that currently exists in America. There was no thought that it represented a particular group.

And yes, what Ed said is absolutely true, he does shy away from labeling things and did exactly that in this instance. In Ed’s story, there was no connection to the Tea Party movement, that’s a screw up that happened after the fact and exactly what some people are getting upset about.

Joe Quesada: There is one legit criticism in there, and a lot of not so valid stuff, but let’s dive into this. By the way, for those that haven’t read "Captain America" #602, here’s your spoiler warning: read no further lest you want to know what’s going on.

In the story, our new Captain America – who is Steve Rogers’ old sidekick Bucky Barnes – and Sam Wilson the Falcon – another ex-sidekick of Steve Rogers – are in search of an armored super-militia group called the Watchdogs who attacked a sheriff and his squad and have set up roots in the hills outside of Boise, Idaho where they are building a weapon and planning an act of terrorism against the people in that town. Keep in mind that the Watchdogs have been villains in the Marvel Universe since 1987. Bucky and Sam hatch a plan to infiltrate this group and defeat it from within so they travel to Idaho. The idea behind this was to expose them both – in particular Sam (who has been portrayed most often as a leftist leaning character) – to other parts of America. While in Idaho in search of the Watchdogs, they come upon an anti-tax, anti-big government rally, which is something that Sam, in particular, hasn’t been personally exposed to, and it hits him the wrong way. Here, at this moment in the story, Sam is the fish out of water. This, however, is where Mr. Houston misreads what’s happening in the story. He assumes that the people protesting in the streets are the Watchdogs, when in fact they are not, so this is an element that is taken out of context. These protestors as written by Ed are no different than protesting crowds he wrote into issues of "Cap" last year. Only those protestors were angry about oil prices skyrocketing and the housing market problems. So in short, the Watchdogs, and the protestors aren’t connected, they just happen to be in the same story.

Where Mr. Houston is correct is in our accidently identifying in one of the held up signs, the group as being a part of the Tea Party instead of a generic protest group. That’s something that we need to apologize for and own up to, because it’s just one of those stupid mistakes that happened through a series of stupid incidents.

According to to Mr. Quesada, the book was ready to go to printer, but the panel in question had a group of protesters handling signs with no words on them, so the editor asked the letterer to "fudge in" some quick believable slogans at the last minute. The letterer referred to this sign as a sample to work from. Unfortunately, the reach of the Tea Party smear job from broadcast media affected a story line at Marvel Comics, regardless of error. While, comic book companies want to give fantasy characters a sense of current day realism, wading into areas of politics is guaranteed kryptonite for at least half their readership.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

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In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin