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NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



So a little while ago I wandered into the Libertarian thread in D&D and saw they were talking about Libertarian fiction. A lot of it was about sci-fi lit but then it moved on to comics, specifically they discussed if Batman was a Libertarian fantasy. Now, as I'm sure we're all aware, there are so many "Batmen" out there that it be pretty impossible to label him as anything. But I found the general idea interesting and I was encouraged to start this thread. I have no idea if it will go anywhere but what's the harm in trying?

I did hold off on going through with it until I said I was gonna check out The Dark Knight Returns and was told about Frank Miller's right wing politics. I also was watching a video with Linkara from AT4W where he mentioned "Holy Terror." I guess what I'm saying is I didn't want to make a thread about abstract interpretations - I didn't know if that would go anywhere or have any interest. But some comics have plain as day politics which you can further support by looking at their writer. I was hoping something more concrete like that would make this thread generate some serious replies.

So, yeah. What comics have very forward political messages and what are those messages?

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Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

NikkolasKing posted:

I did hold off on going through with it until I said I was gonna check out The Dark Knight Returns and was told about Frank Miller's right wing politics. I also was watching a video with Linkara from AT4W where he mentioned "Holy Terror."

IMO don't do this. His analysis is jejune as hell and comes from a deeply fanboyish perspective. That might be acceptable if he was funny or charismatic instead of obnoxious as gently caress.

NikkolasKing posted:

So, yeah. What comics have very forward political messages and what are those messages?

Are you asking what comics are specifically political, as in they're basically illustrated manifestos or which ones display the writer's politics, inadvertently or not in a totally unambiguous way, perhaps even inorganically? Or both?

Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Apr 14, 2017

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Lightning Lord posted:

Are you asking what comics are specifically political, as in they're basically illustrated manifestos or which ones display the writer's politics in a totally unambiguous way, perhaps even inorganically? Or both?

Both work since I'd like to hear about either or. I haven't read many comics I could describe as political, which is why I made this thread to try and learn. I hear V For Vendetta is a good example of a writer being fully transparent with his politics

Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

NikkolasKing posted:

Both. I haven't read many comics I could describe as political, which is why I made this thread to try and learn.

Bill Willingham regularly injected his politics outright into Fables, often in a clumsy way. The most blatant example is "The Israel Analogy"

Its a spoiler if you're concerned:





Other characters like Snow White regularly talk poo poo about things like abortion, and there's even a character presented as monstrous who's basically powered by the spirits of those poor babies that never got to live. An ancient, nigh-unchanging immortal fairy tale person having a negative view of something like abortion might be a satisfactory in-universe justification if you accept those.

NikkolasKing posted:

I hear V For Vendetta is a good example of a writer being fully transparent with his politics

V for Vendetta is a good example, yes. Alan Moore is an anarchist and while V might not be one or at least not in the same fashion, he definitely uses the character to explore that philosophy. It's a case where a creator is willing to show the possible negative aspects of their own philosophy and how it might be twisted to bad ends, or at least abused in the name of the ends justifying the means.

Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

Also speaking of Alan Moore and politics you might be interested in Brought to Light, which with Bill Sienkiewicz is a circa 1988 history of the CIA and their foreign interventions.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Lightning Lord posted:

Also speaking of Alan Moore and politics you might be interested in Brought to Light, which with Bill Sienkiewicz is a circa 1988 history of the CIA and their foreign interventions.

Wow, I've never heard of this and Cold War American dickery has always been something I had an interest in. Thank you.

fritz
Jul 26, 2003

NikkolasKing posted:

So, yeah. What comics have very forward political messages and what are those messages?

Does Dave Sim's Cerebus count? (the message is "women are evil")

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




fritz posted:

Does Dave Sim's Cerebus count? (the message is "women are evil")

It wasn't until Reads that Dave Sim went completely insane (Jaka's Story is one of the best comics about a female character for example), but Cerebus is full of politics. Like High Society which is about an Conan-esque character (Cerebus) running for office in a fantasy setting and Church and State which is about....church and state.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition
There's a pretty good critical line of argument that gets brought up from time to time about Ellis's Transmetropolitan as a direct reaction to the Tony Blair era in British politics, and about the influence of Margaret Thatcher's era on British genre fiction of the '80s and '90s. There's a ton of it in the first and third volumes of The Invisibles, for example.

Lightning Lord posted:

Bill Willingham regularly injected his politics outright into Fables, often in a clumsy way.

For whatever it's worth, it's not just Fables. Much of his work on the Comico series Elementals is a sort of right-wing reaction to the popular comics of the mid-'80s, and in a few ways, is well ahead of its time (the protagonists are at least as willing to kill as the Authority would be 15 years later), but there are more than a couple of conservative screeds during his run. It's a very Reagan sort of superhero comic.

I also remember at least one pretty right-wing speech delivered by Detective Chimp, of all characters, in Shadowpact. Willingham is an interesting writer, but every so often, his siege mentality over being a conservative in the comics industry gets the better of him.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Wanderer posted:

There's a pretty good critical line of argument that gets brought up from time to time about Ellis's Transmetropolitan as a direct reaction to the Tony Blair era in British politics, and about the influence of Margaret Thatcher's era on British genre fiction of the '80s and '90s. There's a ton of it in the first and third volumes of The Invisibles, for example.


I think it's safe to say that the hatred british comic artists had towards Thatcher was so strong that it could provide power for a small country:

(From Planetary which also had story where a literal spook is sent by the government to kill the Messiah).
Hellblazer had a story where demons cheers for Thatcher, V For Vendetta was written because Alan Moore was horrified about her, in Nemesis the Warlock the fascist rulers idolizes her and the list goes on and on.

Neurosis
Jun 10, 2003
Fallen Rib
Another Warren Ellis book with pretty blatant politics is Black Summer, which is basically him admonishing people who really advocate revolution against democratic governments. It's okay.

Cla$$war is about the most obvious other example I can think of - which I haven't read because I can't find a digital copy.

NikkolasKing posted:

So a little while ago I wandered into the Libertarian thread in D&D and saw they were talking about Libertarian fiction. A lot of it was about sci-fi lit but then it moved on to comics, specifically they discussed if Batman was a Libertarian fantasy. Now, as I'm sure we're all aware, there are so many "Batmen" out there that it be pretty impossible to label him as anything. But I found the general idea interesting and I was encouraged to start this thread. I have no idea if it will go anywhere but what's the harm in trying?

I did hold off on going through with it until I said I was gonna check out The Dark Knight Returns and was told about Frank Miller's right wing politics. I also was watching a video with Linkara from AT4W where he mentioned "Holy Terror." I guess what I'm saying is I didn't want to make a thread about abstract interpretations - I didn't know if that would go anywhere or have any interest. But some comics have plain as day politics which you can further support by looking at their writer. I was hoping something more concrete like that would make this thread generate some serious replies.

So, yeah. What comics have very forward political messages and what are those messages?

Do read DKR, it's deservedly a classic, whatever the politics involved.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

Neurosis posted:

Another Warren Ellis book with pretty blatant politics is Black Summer, which is basically him admonishing people who really advocate revolution against democratic governments. It's okay.

I'd quibble with that reading. I've put a lot of thought into that book in particular since an acquaintance, back when it came out in 2007, would not shut up about how Black Summer was a slap in the face to American conservatives.

Above all else, Black Summer is part of Ellis's "Beware the Superman" trilogy, where he's deconstructing some stereotypical superhero plot or another, along with No Hero and Supergod. Black Summer in particular has a lot bound up in it about the death penalty, the value of violent revolution, and vigilantism. It does have a couple of different sequences where a character goes off on a rant about something or another, but I don't think those rants work as Ellis putting his own perspectives into the characters' mouths, as those rants tend to come from characters who have been thoroughly compromised in one way or another. Kathryn has a big pro-death penalty argument at one point, but Kathryn is depicted as an extremist even before she starts jamming homemade cybernetics into her body; Tom Noir has the somewhat-famous "Lee Harvey Oswald" speech that closes out the book, but Tom is a suicidal wreck who spends almost the entire story making poor decisions.

To be fair to the political reading, I don't think the book would exist at all if not for the George W. Bush years, and specifically the controversy that surrounded Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies. You could rewrite it to be about any presidential administration by changing all of one word balloon in one issue, but still, it's explicitly a book about an A-list superhero deciding the best thing to do at that point in time is to bust into the White House and crush the president's skull.

That said, the big rant directed at John Horus that closes the book is mostly an admonishment about naivete, I think, rather than an attack against the idea of revolution. It's a rant about how crazy you'd have to be, given history and common sense, to think that simply removing the guy at the head of the table is going to bring about systemic change. Basically, the idea in the book is that sometimes violence is your only option, but you have to be very careful with it or you end up a monster, and there's no guarantee that you'll get the reaction you want.

Neurosis
Jun 10, 2003
Fallen Rib
Fair observations. How violence can backfire has been on my mind lately with the mounting civil strife in the US, and I'm a right leaning liberal (in the European sense of the word - which probably puts me in the centre in American politics) who thinks institutions are important, both of which probably colour my memory of the series.

There was a study that found it tends to have perverse outcomes from surveying anti-government movements, though I haven't closely read it.

Anyway, I might have to dig up my Black Summer books.

Edit: I'd be interested on what thoughts you have on Supergods and No Hero, too; my memories of them are pretty hazy - No Hero is about heroes as status quo-enforcers ala the Avengers, Supergods is a riff on the Miracleman take on superheroes as transcendental posthumans?

Neurosis fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Apr 16, 2017

Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

Alhazred posted:

Hellblazer had a story where demons cheers for Thatcher

That issue has one of the most iconic panels of early Hellblazer IMO

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

Neurosis posted:

Edit: I'd be interested on what thoughts you have on Supergods and No Hero, too; my memories of them are pretty hazy - No Hero is about heroes as status quo-enforcers ala the Avengers, Supergods is a riff on the Miracleman take on superheroes as transcendental posthumans?

I don't think either of them are anywhere near as strong as Black Summer. Supergods has that Ellis problem where it doesn't end so much as it just kind of stops, and is basically a Cold War story from what I recall; various nations design custom superhumans until a couple of them get too powerful to stop. I haven't reread it since it came out.

No Hero is an interesting alternate history, but I think its ending (and its level of gore, and even its protagonist...) does it a serious disservice. It's definitely an attack on the idea of the superhero as an agent of the status quo, except here, it's rather explicitly their preferred status quo; the group in the book is led by a shady Lex Luthor/Charles Xavier-type who has done some none-too-subtle tinkering with the world to make it the way he wants it, which includes racial segregation and some forcible disarmament. He's also made himself and his organization so crucial to that status quo that, when they're removed, the entire world starts to burn down about ten minutes later.

Neither are as aggressively political as Black Summer turned out to be; both are shorter, and neither have as strong a central concept or cast. More importantly, Supergods is well outside the remit of a thread about political comics, and No Hero is only there if you turn your head and squint.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Lightning Lord posted:

That issue has one of the most iconic panels of early Hellblazer IMO



Is this the same arc where one of the royals, heavily implied to be Prince Charles, is into demonic BDSM?

ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

Erik Larsen has had most of the living presidents as well as some of the running candidates show up in Savage Dragon at one point or another.

Superpatriot giving it Bill Clinton.





Dragon giving it to W. (it turns out he's been kidnapped and a doppelganger took his place).





Dragon ran for office at one point too.



Dragon gave Obama an endorsement as well.





Remember that time Bin Laden's corpse got irradiated and he became godzilla? Me too.

Lonos Oboe
Jun 7, 2014
It's funny, No Hero, Supergods and to an extent Black Summer all felt more like horror books to me. I suppose a lot of Ellis' work can fall into that. Supergods certainly suffers from an overabundance of ideas and not enough time/ issues to fill it out. The main thrust of that comic seems more about theology/ philosophy than politics. The concept of humans trying to create gods to impose a God upon the universe. That self destructive urge given form. The most Warren Ellis feeling line in that book is the mushroom god made from the astronauts talking to the main character and telling him that religion is humanity's addiction It's "stash" I agree with a lot of the posts about Black Summer. It's a mish-mash of ideas rolled into one. As for No-Hero, I feel that one was a bit anti-climactic and not left to cook long enough. I did like the idea of all the super heros being hosed up on drugs or borderline psyche cases and the weird transformation scene was incredible. I would love a print of that to never hang up.

Ironically, one of the more controversial moments of politics in comics in my experience is one that a lot of people outside of my home country may dismiss. In Preacher when they flashback to Cassidy fighting in the Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Dublin, Ireland.

Now, in Ireland, there is a huge deal made of that rebellion and last year there was a huge centennial celebration made about it. To cut a long story short, The Irish insurgents (It's what I call them because that's what they were) who were rebelling against English rule launched a botched operation to seize key buildings and took over a few places in the city like the post office, Dublin Castle and a few others. It was a complete mess as some of the rebel command did not know it was going ahead. After a lot of hassle, the English came up the Liffey river in Dublin and shelled the ever living gently caress out of the outnumbered boys in there. (I am really simplifying poo poo here) Many survivors were shot by the British in the aftermath by firing squad and this caused a huge amount of support for the rebels and led to the eventual formation of the Republic after more misery and bloodshed.

Now, when I was being brought up, most people were related to someone in the IRA. Michael Collins was like a god to some people and all the people who led the rising like Pearse and Connolly were like Washington or Grant in the States. Great patriots, idolised. I had extended family involved in the rising and after. And I inherited a lack of glorification of the men who liberated Ireland. It's a complex moral issue and not as simple as most people make it.

To get to my point. Garth Ennis who wrote Preacher in case you never guessed is Irish and lived up North which is still British owned and suffered horrific violence for decades very much like Ennis describes. He references the troubles a lot, but in my opinion the most controversial is when Cassidy's brother kicks Michael Collins in the balls and basically denounces the leaders of the Irish revolutionaries going as far as saying they are the ones who should be shot. Now, he is kinda preempting history here as it's argued that Pearse wanted martyrs for the rising to get behind. But for Ennis to come right out and say that, especially in the early 90's when blood was still being spilled over the issue is a very controversial thing to do. Whatever about Ennis' schoolboy attitude towards most things, this was fairly strong stuff. There is an unpopular argument (which I think Ennis is getting towards) is that the rebellion should not have happened at all. Ireland was going to get home rule anyway and that could have paved the way to a peaceful split. It has caused many a heated discussion over drinks.

bobkatt013
Oct 8, 2006

You’re telling me Peter Parker is ...... Spider-man!?

zoux posted:

Is this the same arc where one of the royals, heavily implied to be Prince Charles, is into demonic BDSM?

Nope that panel is when demons are collecting souls and trading them like stocks. Its issue 3. The one with Prince Charles is from Ennis run issue 54

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Neurosis posted:

Do read DKR, it's deservedly a classic, whatever the politics involved.

I don't mind disagreeable politics in my fiction so long as the fiction itself is enjoyable. So I definitely will check out DKR once I have some money to spend.


Lonos Oboe posted:

It's funny, No Hero, Supergods and to an extent Black Summer all felt more like horror books to me. I suppose a lot of Ellis' work can fall into that. Supergods certainly suffers from an overabundance of ideas and not enough time/ issues to fill it out. The main thrust of that comic seems more about theology/ philosophy than politics. The concept of humans trying to create gods to impose a God upon the universe. That self destructive urge given form. The most Warren Ellis feeling line in that book is the mushroom god made from the astronauts talking to the main character and telling him that religion is humanity's addiction It's "stash" I agree with a lot of the posts about Black Summer. It's a mish-mash of ideas rolled into one. As for No-Hero, I feel that one was a bit anti-climactic and not left to cook long enough. I did like the idea of all the super heros being hosed up on drugs or borderline psyche cases and the weird transformation scene was incredible. I would love a print of that to never hang up.

Ironically, one of the more controversial moments of politics in comics in my experience is one that a lot of people outside of my home country may dismiss. In Preacher when they flashback to Cassidy fighting in the Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Dublin, Ireland.

Now, in Ireland, there is a huge deal made of that rebellion and last year there was a huge centennial celebration made about it. To cut a long story short, The Irish insurgents (It's what I call them because that's what they were) who were rebelling against English rule launched a botched operation to seize key buildings and took over a few places in the city like the post office, Dublin Castle and a few others. It was a complete mess as some of the rebel command did not know it was going ahead. After a lot of hassle, the English came up the Liffey river in Dublin and shelled the ever living gently caress out of the outnumbered boys in there. (I am really simplifying poo poo here) Many survivors were shot by the British in the aftermath by firing squad and this caused a huge amount of support for the rebels and led to the eventual formation of the Republic after more misery and bloodshed.

Now, when I was being brought up, most people were related to someone in the IRA. Michael Collins was like a god to some people and all the people who led the rising like Pearse and Connolly were like Washington or Grant in the States. Great patriots, idolised. I had extended family involved in the rising and after. And I inherited a lack of glorification of the men who liberated Ireland. It's a complex moral issue and not as simple as most people make it.

To get to my point. Garth Ennis who wrote Preacher in case you never guessed is Irish and lived up North which is still British owned and suffered horrific violence for decades very much like Ennis describes. He references the troubles a lot, but in my opinion the most controversial is when Cassidy's brother kicks Michael Collins in the balls and basically denounces the leaders of the Irish revolutionaries going as far as saying they are the ones who should be shot. Now, he is kinda preempting history here as it's argued that Pearse wanted martyrs for the rising to get behind. But for Ennis to come right out and say that, especially in the early 90's when blood was still being spilled over the issue is a very controversial thing to do. Whatever about Ennis' schoolboy attitude towards most things, this was fairly strong stuff. There is an unpopular argument (which I think Ennis is getting towards) is that the rebellion should not have happened at all. Ireland was going to get home rule anyway and that could have paved the way to a peaceful split. It has caused many a heated discussion over drinks.

I've never liked Ennis and now I really don't like him. Thank you for the info, though. I'm kind of surprised I've never heard of this before. I have heard a lot about Preacher over the years.


@Comic Writers making GBS threads on Thatcher

Are there any Conservative comic writers besides Miller and Dixon? A post in the DC Comics thread got me thinking about stufff I had heard about Dixon so I went to investigate.
https://www.inverse.com/article/22361-spider-gwen-miles-morales-romance-marvel-hook-up-comics

"Clinton Cash" certainly sounds like it fits this thread.

But are Miller and Dixon alone? We all know Fox News and their assorted assholes love to rant on about how the liberals control everything but it does seem to me like comic books might indeed be a predominantly liberal or Left Wing industry.

NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Apr 18, 2017

Zachack
Jun 1, 2000




NikkolasKing posted:

I don't mind disagreeable politics in my fiction so long as the fiction itself is enjoyable. So I definitely will check out DKR once I have some money to spend.
I'll add to keep in mind the era that Miller wrote DKR (and later, Martha Washington) in.

quote:

But are Miller and Dixon alone? We all know Fox News and their assorted assholes love to rant on about how the liberals control everything but it does seem to me like comic books might indeed be a predominantly liberal or Left Wing industry.
Ditko is the obvious example (hard Randian, at least back in the day). Willinghelm was mentioned. Of the little I've read of early Hate I'm inclined to say Bagge, but again, era and I could be totally off. Generally though I don't think there are many creators who both have what would be considered "fully right-wing" beliefs and also inject that into comics. Like, is Dave Sim even right wing? He has (or had) some severely bad thoughts on women, and the end of Cerebus indicated that extended further into his weird religion, but he could be a rabid socialist environmentalist and pro-gay marriage provided it's only dudes.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Zachack posted:

I'll add to keep in mind the era that Miller wrote DKR (and later, Martha Washington) in.

The Regan years? Was DKR a response to the Reagan Revolution like the aforementioned British writers were responding to Thatcherism?

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

NikkolasKing posted:


But are Miller and Dixon alone? We all know Fox News and their assorted assholes love to rant on about how the liberals control everything but it does seem to me like comic books might indeed be a predominantly liberal or Left Wing industry.

Chuck Dixon is a right wing guy and has become more so over the years as far as I know. Nathan Edmundson, who wrote a pretty controversial and pretty lovely Punisher series, is also in deep with various conservative positions, some of them apparently pretty extreme. Mitch Gerads, who penciled that series, also caught some flak but I don't know to what extent he kind of just got caught up in it. I do recall him doing some kind of design work for a group named after Chris Kyle, the guy from American Sniper and Ales Kot going after him for that. You could maybe make a case for Jim Shooter too-- whether they were politically motivated or economically motivated or whatever, his editorial policies about depicting (or rather, not depicting) queer characters could pretty fairly be read as homophobic.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

NikkolasKing posted:

But are Miller and Dixon alone? We all know Fox News and their assorted assholes love to rant on about how the liberals control everything but it does seem to me like comic books might indeed be a predominantly liberal or Left Wing industry.

Ethan Van Sciver is conservative. I remember he used to get into big Twitter arguments with people like Gail Simone, and glancing at that now, he's still pretty right-wing.

There's also a penciler for DC Comics named Mike S. Miller (he's in the rotation of artists for the Injustice weekly comic) who's a favorite punching bag over in the D&D political cartoons thread. He had a webcomic for about ten minutes called "Electronic Tigers" that was nothing but right-wing Socratic arguments (let me explain why the theory of evolution is wrong by using Yu-Go-Oh cards), often being delivered to his half-Asian fantasy girlfriend.

Being predominantly liberal/left-wing, at least by American standards, isn't unique to comic books. It's the case for most creative fields in North America. (It's part of what gave rise to that whole Sad Puppies clusterfuck. A handful of Science Fiction Writers' Guild members felt they were being marginalized due to their political beliefs.) That, in turn, is probably some combination of simple geography (most of the big publishers, film studios, TV stations, and music producers are based in New York or California, which are both reliably more left-wing than much of the rest of the country) and how big a tent "left of center" has become in modern American political discourse. It does not take very much at all in 2017 America to be considered a liberal.

fritz
Jul 26, 2003

Lonos Oboe posted:


To get to my point. Garth Ennis who wrote Preacher in case you never guessed is Irish and lived up North which is still British owned and suffered horrific violence for decades very much like Ennis describes. He references the troubles a lot, but in my opinion the most controversial is when Cassidy's brother kicks Michael Collins in the balls and basically denounces the leaders of the Irish revolutionaries going as far as saying they are the ones who should be shot. Now, he is kinda preempting history here as it's argued that Pearse wanted martyrs for the rising to get behind. But for Ennis to come right out and say that, especially in the early 90's when blood was still being spilled over the issue is a very controversial thing to do. Whatever about Ennis' schoolboy attitude towards most things, this was fairly strong stuff. There is an unpopular argument (which I think Ennis is getting towards) is that the rebellion should not have happened at all. Ireland was going to get home rule anyway and that could have paved the way to a peaceful split. It has caused many a heated discussion over drinks.

I think the only Ennis I've read is Hitman, which had an arc where British special forces were going after the mc and everybody in Gotham City was freaking out over how competent and dangerous they were.

Lonos Oboe
Jun 7, 2014
Looking over my comics shelf, it's hard to pick out anything really political aside from the 80's Thatcher stuff. Most of it is more along the lines of social commentary. Even Ex Machina (which is ostensibly a comic about a politician super-hero) can be lighter than an episode of The West Wing. DMZ (New York is ground zero for a second American civil war.) Is more about the people that drive political ideas rather than the ideas themselves. I was always curious about Scalped How accurate is the stuff in that? I can imagine a lot of the details are right, like the high level of diabetes and alcoholism mixed with poverty. But is the crime level high on a reservation? I would be very interested to read a book on the modern native American struggle if there are any recommendations.

I do remember reading that Israel bit in Fables though. I had borrowed the series off of a friend of mine and was powering through them. I had picked up on the Jewish diaspora thing and I had heard the writer was controversial but could not remember why. That Israel comment felt so jarring and out of character. It really soured the book for me. It was less about the political statement (which was beyond simplistic) and more that it was really the writer waving at the audience saying:



For me, one of the consistently great comics when it comes to politics and social issues is Judge Dredd when he is written by John Wagner. Over the last 40 odd years the comic has been a dark mirror of what has been happening. There are many Dredd stories where the innocent suffer because of the whims of the faceless justice system. Since 9/11 the commentary has gotten a lot more real with civil rights being almost non existent in Mega City One. There are literally hundreds of cutting jabs at the establishment, all the way from Thatcher & Reagan to Blair & Bush and on. A fantastic example is a storyline called Total War. (It's available in trade) A group of pro-democracy terrorists plant nuclear bombs all over Mega-City One and it's a race against time for Dredd to stop them. He spies, tortures, manipulates, bullies and kills his way through. Dredd is the good guy and arguably the bad guys deserve it. For me, this panel from a previous issue sums up the subtle beauty of Dredd where one person who reads it can see Jack Bauer and someone else could see it differently:



It's probably one of my favorite Dredd panels because it hides it's irony so well.


fritz posted:

I think the only Ennis I've read is Hitman, which had an arc where British special forces were going after the mc and everybody in Gotham City was freaking out over how competent and dangerous they were.
Yeah, there is even a prologue scene set in Northern Ireland where they kill a member of the I.R.A. Ennis has an almost fetishistic attitude towards special forces soldiers. Especially the S.A.S. I think it's in his contract that at least one character in every story he writes has to be in the S.A.S.

I always had a soft spot for Ennis. maybe it's because he represents Irish people in comics. His issue of Hellblazer where John goes on a pub crawl around Dublin with the ghost of his friend was so accurately drawn. Having drank in all those pubs it felt very real. His issue of The Boys about St. Paddy's day was another one. It's rare you see something in popular culture as an Irish person that captures that exact feeling. Granted, it's all either about alcohol or the troubles in Northern Ireland. But we take what we can get.

Jedi
Feb 27, 2002


Lonos Oboe posted:

Ennis has an almost fetishistic attitude towards special forces soldiers. Especially the S.A.S. I think it's in his contract that at least one character in every story he writes has to be in the S.A.S.

I think it's all soldiers in general. He did Battlefields and War Stories as well.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition
Going back, "Who Dares Wins" seems like it's set in some kind of offshoot of the primary DCU, rather than being ostensibly in the main continuity. It's bad enough that, at this point, Tommy has killed hundreds of low-level mobsters and Z-list supervillains without Batman crawling up his nose again (although as the series points out, Hitman was running concurrently with a bunch of big Bat-stories like "No Man's Land," so Batman was busy as hell), but then four SAS guys show up and between them, wipe out an entire crime family. It's one of those stories that is actually penalized by being part of a shared universe, because by rights, the larger DCU should've been more involved than it was.

Also, Ennis was 25 when Hitman started. That blows my mind.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Wanderer posted:

Going back, "Who Dares Wins" seems like it's set in some kind of offshoot of the primary DCU, rather than being ostensibly in the main continuity. It's bad enough that, at this point, Tommy has killed hundreds of low-level mobsters and Z-list supervillains without Batman crawling up his nose again (although as the series points out, Hitman was running concurrently with a bunch of big Bat-stories like "No Man's Land," so Batman was busy as hell), but then four SAS guys show up and between them, wipe out an entire crime family. It's one of those stories that is actually penalized by being part of a shared universe, because by rights, the larger DCU should've been more involved than it was.

Also, Ennis was 25 when Hitman started. That blows my mind.

Don't look up when Jim Shooter started with Marvel.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
Chris Claremont was 25 at the outset of his Uncanny X-Men tenure and IIRC he already had a bunch of pretty decent-to-good series under his belt by then.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




I think Heartland is pretty decent. Its more about how absurd growing up in Ireland was and doesn't really take any sides:

Kal-L
Jan 18, 2005

Heh... Spider-man... Web searches... That's funny. I should've trademarked that one. Could've made a mint.
I have a couple that might interest you. First one is mexican author Rius entire body of work, which is mostly educational comics about a wide variety of themes, but all showing some of his left-leaning politics. He even did entire books about Cuba, Marx and my favorite, The Trikky History of Kapitalism.

And the most notable is that he started this in the '60s in Mexico, during the worst years of our 70 year one-party rule. Some have even called his work "the alternative Secretary of Education". If you don't like politics, his works also include history, economy, philosophy, religion and drugs.



The second one is The Eternaut, one of the best sci-fi comics ever done and from Argentina. Created by artist Francisco Solano López and writer Hector Oesterheld. I alwasy found Oesterheld the most fascinating of the two, since (from Wikipedia):

quote:

Through his comics, Oesterheld criticized the numerous military dictatorships that beleaguered the country in different periods ranging from 1955 to 1983, as well as different facets of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, choosing a subtle criticism in his early comics during the 50's and early 60's, and a stronger and direct approach in his later work, after the murder of Che Guevara in 1967, and onwards from then on: in 1968 he wrote a biographical comic of Che Guevara, which was subsequently banned by the Argentinian dictatorship ruling at the time.[1]

During the Argentina's last civil-military dictatorship, he and his daughters joined the Montoneros, a leftist (and former peronist) guerrilla group that opposed the military junta. HGO continued to publish works in clandestine form while hidden in secret locations, but he was ultimately kidnapped and disappeared. His daughters were also arrested and disappeared, as were his sons-in-law. Only HGO's wife, Elsa, escaped the family's tragic fate.

The Eternaut's story goes like this: One night, Oesterheld is visited by a strange man called Juan Salvo, who claims to be from a world where South America is suffering an extraterrestrial invasion. It all started with radioactive snowfall that killed almost everyone, since being the middle of summer there, most people had their windows open.

Juan and his friends make a special suit to allow him to go outside and gather food and weapons, find other survivors and try to contact the government. But then they presence an entire jet squadron being annihilated by a strange laser weapon, and realize they're being invaded from another world.

They and other survivors try and fight against the foreign... uh, I mean extraterretrial invaders who have superior weapons, and an army made of beings from other planets and even enslaved humans. Juan and his friends discover that even the ones who are directing the invasion in site are also slaves of more sinister and powerful beings, who don't care about the devastation and loss of lives that they provoke in a far away world.

Surely I don't have to explain who the extraterrestrials are supposed to be, right? :v:



It's one of my favorite comics ever, and I remember one of my first threads here was about it, but it's just such a large story that I couldn't do it justice.

Otherkinsey Scale
Jul 17, 2012

Just a little bit of sunshine!

fritz posted:

Does Dave Sim's Cerebus count? (the message is "women are evil")

I feel the need to link this interview. Though that might be the wrong phrasing.

quote:

Ever the oblique leftist. I don't "feel." If I "felt," I would never have gotten the book done. I'd be off "feeling" somewhere.

Jedi
Feb 27, 2002


zoux posted:

Don't look up when Jim Shooter started with Marvel in comics.

FTFY - he worked for DC for a decent while before that.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Otherkinsey Scale posted:

I feel the need to link this interview. Though that might be the wrong phrasing.
drat that sucker's like 13 years old now. Time flies. I've heard rumors he has somewhat mellowed out? Or at least regrets having put so much focus on his bitching about feminism?

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Did anyone read JMS' Supreme Power series? It had a fair mount of the US Government is Evil in it but I'm not sure if that was actually supposed to be a political statement or if it was just a mechanic for subverting the Superman ideal.

Supreme Power was one of the first comics I ever read and it holds a special place in my heart. Volume 1, anyway.

Or is it Sputnik
Aug 22, 2009

Oh, Ho-oh oh oh, oh whoa oh oh oh
I'll get 'em caught, show Oak what I've got

Jedi posted:

FTFY - he worked for DC for a decent while before that.
Yeah, Jim Shooter is probably the only comics professional who quit comics to finish high school.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Lurdiak made a really good post about Ditko/objectivism in the Politoons thread in D&D and I wanted to share it here.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3803673&perpage=40&pagenumber=388#post472028431

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



zoux posted:

Lurdiak made a really good post about Ditko/objectivism in the Politoons thread in D&D and I wanted to share it here.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3803673&perpage=40&pagenumber=388#post472028431

Thank you for sharing this. Very interesting.

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zoux
Apr 28, 2006

NikkolasKing posted:

Thank you for sharing this. Very interesting.

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this thread title was Ditko and Mr. A so I'm glad someone did an effort post about it.

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