Bass
Nexus of the World
There is an article receiving much (bad) press about how liberal rhetoric in comics is killing the medium.
It's getting a lot of bad press, even on Let's Be Friends. And I had a bit of a twitter-debate with Cully Hamner on this.
While I disagree with Darin Wagner on the conclusions that liberalism is destroying comics, what irks me so much is how people are just saying it's "dumb" when the article seems rather level-headed and reasonable. But more than that, is that people are criticizing him for a point of view he never expresses.
He never states there should be more conservatism. I wish someone could find me that passage. I've read it a few times and cannot find any such statement. What he argues for is less politics. He says you can make any character, even Robin Hood, liberal or conservative, if you want, but that you shouldn't because art isn't necessarily a space for political rhetoric (unless, it's appropriate as in the case of Hawk & Dove, which he mentions). He's talking about the liberal side of comics, not the conservative side, and so his opinions of whether there are too much or too little or if comics would do better with less or more conservatism is not only irrelevant, it's never brought up.
His argument is very clear that there's too much casual liberalism in a genre of storytelling in which political rhetoric is inappropriate, and it should be lessened, because it's killing comic book sales.
I would only contend with the notion that it's a key factor in the loss of sales, because there are far greater problems than it. But even I, in my left-wing Ivory tower can agree that there's too much casual liberal rhetoric.
I feel bad for the guy and pretty much the comic book world. Everyone is savaging this guy and missing out on, I think, an important point: If you're an artist and you want to make political comments about the current landscape of the US, shoehorning them into your Superman comic is probably not the best way to express yourself.
It's getting a lot of bad press, even on Let's Be Friends. And I had a bit of a twitter-debate with Cully Hamner on this.
While I disagree with Darin Wagner on the conclusions that liberalism is destroying comics, what irks me so much is how people are just saying it's "dumb" when the article seems rather level-headed and reasonable. But more than that, is that people are criticizing him for a point of view he never expresses.
He never states there should be more conservatism. I wish someone could find me that passage. I've read it a few times and cannot find any such statement. What he argues for is less politics. He says you can make any character, even Robin Hood, liberal or conservative, if you want, but that you shouldn't because art isn't necessarily a space for political rhetoric (unless, it's appropriate as in the case of Hawk & Dove, which he mentions). He's talking about the liberal side of comics, not the conservative side, and so his opinions of whether there are too much or too little or if comics would do better with less or more conservatism is not only irrelevant, it's never brought up.
His argument is very clear that there's too much casual liberalism in a genre of storytelling in which political rhetoric is inappropriate, and it should be lessened, because it's killing comic book sales.
I would only contend with the notion that it's a key factor in the loss of sales, because there are far greater problems than it. But even I, in my left-wing Ivory tower can agree that there's too much casual liberal rhetoric.
I feel bad for the guy and pretty much the comic book world. Everyone is savaging this guy and missing out on, I think, an important point: If you're an artist and you want to make political comments about the current landscape of the US, shoehorning them into your Superman comic is probably not the best way to express yourself.
Last edited: