As we have noted many times, wingnuts just don't get pop culture. (Ted Cruz is simply the worst of the bunch on that note.) They either think it's corrupting America, or complain pop culture was once as far to the right as they are, at least before women and minorities ruined it. Or they just plain get it wrong, as if the original "Star Trek" had been a tale of Goldwater Conservatism in space, when at most it was Kennedy liberalism in space, complete with Klingons to stand in for the commies. The latest pimple to burst on the perpetually angry face of the culture warriors is a rant from The Federalist about the imminent doom of the Big Two comics publishers, Marvel and DC, because they've gone and forced politics into superhero comics, as if Green Lantern and Green Arrow had never made embarrassingly stilted forays into racial politics in 1970.
You see, kids, nobody's reading comics anymore, because publishers have completely erased muscular white men from their offerings, at least outside all those extremely profitable movies with guys named Chris in them. Federalist columnist Jon Del Arroz explains:
Marvel launched a new run of Captain America by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote a rant in The Atlantic arguing the election of Donald Trump surfaced a long-standing culture of "white supremacy" in the country.
His handling of the character came soon after Nick Spencer, right after Trump's inauguration in 2017, turned Captain America into an allegorical Nazi in order to attack right-wing America. Spencer wasn't fired for his offensive performance on the patriotic character, but rewarded with a higher-profile book: "The Amazing Spider-Man."
Translation: Oh, sure, maybe there's nothing (yet) to bitch about in Coates's treatment of Captain America, but let me bitch about the previous writer and about other stuff Coates wrote. Also, excuse us, but (spoiler warning!) Cap's seeming transformation was due to an evil doppelganger, and if that's not a traditional comic book plot line, what is?
Also, DC comics has gone and gotten all political, as if Superman hadn't been a full on New Deal Liberal from the get-go, saving folks from crooked bankers and always standing up for the little guy. Just think, the Social Justice Warriors have even gotten to Superman!
Such political correctness! In 1949. But DC for some reason saw the need to reprint it in 2017, and isn't that shocking? Oh, but look, the catalog of horrors just keeps rolling on, eek, scary:
The Batgirl comic recently moralized about how terrible it is to be "misgendered," which is social justice-speak for someone mistakenly calling a person by the pronoun that accurately describes his or her sex.
DC followed up on gender identity politics by running a storyline about Supergirl having a "non-binary friend," a rare mental illness where a person believes he or she is neither male nor female.
Even more horrifying, DC recently announced a comic to be written by one of Gamergate's chief targets, Zoe Quinn, who Del Arroz dismisses as "an ex-nude model famous for exploiting gender politics for her career advancement." Oh, and he mentions she "claims" she was harassed online, and that the lamestream media reported extensively on her "alleged harassment" without even once examining "her provocative antics," which surely was what brought all that hell down on her.
Fortunately, all this insanity that is ruining comics, at least for very fragile white guys, is about to end immediately, because all of America's comics readers are going to #WalkAway from the liberal indoctrination of the Big Two. You know this from the Federalist's headline: "Crowdfunded Rebellion Against Identity Politics In Comics Nets $1.25 Million And Counting." Yessir, the age of the pajama boy socialists is over and the Alpha Superheroes are back. But still gallivanting around in their underwear. Even pajamas.
Now, if you don't read the article itself, as plenty of people on Twitter didn't, you might be under the impression that somebody has actually started a GoFundMe for White People Comics that has raised a million-plus bucks. You would be wrong. Instead, Del Arroz notes that several anti-social justice jackholes have launched successful crowdfunding efforts for their own comics over the past few years, and if you total them all together, you get that $1.25 million, which certainly ought to strike fear into the hearts of Marvel and DC. Or at least it might if they weren't so busy rolling around in the billions of dollars coming from their movie adaptations.
But yes, the comics side of the comics biz is down a bit, although as The Atlantic notes, that probably has far more to do with the same troubles other publications are having as more and more of their audience looks for entertainment online, plus some problems with the comics industry model itself, than with readers' imagined disgust with diverse heroes -- in fact, the rebooted titles with women and minority heroes often outperform the white male ones.
Like so many conservative boasts of the incredible market power of rightwing consumers, Del Arroz's insistence that comics better stop being on the wrong side of the culture wars is a just-so story for dissatisfied wingnuts who fly into a tizzy about gay people in TV ads. And how's this for a guy who firmly rejects identity politics? In the Indiegogo fundraiser for his own comic, Del Arroz is described as
a #1 Amazon Bestselling author, "the leading Hispanic voice in science fiction," according to PJ Media.com, and winner of the 2018 CLFA Book Of The Year Award.
In case you're wondering, that would be an award from the Conservative Libertarian Fiction Alliance. You know, for people who can't stand how comics and popular culture are always cramming politics down your throat.
[The Federalist / Vulture / Atlantic / NYT]
