remember when captain america punched hitler in the face on the cover of his first issue
Like the X-Men and Luke Cage weren’t created during the Civil Right’s Movement during the 60’s for no fucking reason at all…
Remember that the comics that really got the industry up and running where created by Jews in response to antisemitism and what was happening to Jews during the Holocaust.
But sure nothing at all related to social justice and equality there at all /sarcasm/
also, that book isn’t even about Superman fighting the KKK in a fictional story either, like, it’s about a guy named Stetson Kennedy who went undercover and infiltrated the KKK, then gave all their secret codes and handshakes to the Superman writers so they could do a bunch of stories where Superman fights the Klan, in order to reinforce the Klan as both villainous and worthy of ridicule.
It worked really well, too, the iteration of the Ku Klux Klan that existed at the time (before it was revived by modern white supremacists) was largely DISBANDED because of this Superman storyline, after a lot of Klan leaders went home and saw their kids Playing Superman, beating up pretend Klansmen who happened to be using their actual codes and titles.
Getting social issues involved in comics has had an actual tangible effect on dynamics in the real world, and having Superman fight the KKK in fiction actually managed to adequately shame the majority of Klansmen into disbanding their organization.
So, it makes sense to write fictional heroes as being opposed to real villains, because superheroes play a big part in forming kids’ conception of right and wrong
I got in a fight with someone recently who told me not to “make the Captain America movies all political” like. Come on. Sweaty.
Comics have always been inherently political, people may have just been too obtuse and unobservant to notice.
Nothing wrong with being an unobservant kid. Staying that way as an adult is another matter.
Someone thinking that comics didn’t used to be political in the golden/silver/bronze age is perfectly understandable provided of course that person is someone who has never actually read like 95% of any of the comic books written in the golden, silver and bronze age
I mean for the love of god, Fake Fanboys…Mike Friedrich, Chris Claremont, John Ostrander…fucking JERRY SIEGEL AND JOE SHUSTER and Jack “The King” Kirby…
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