The Betrayal of Captain America - A White Paper by Medved Lackner

I'm not sure if this has been posted, so I though I'd point it out.

They aren't fond of some recent series, to say the least:

'For nearly three generations, comic books have exploited dark, disturbing, and violent themes – painful transformations, isolated freaks and killers, corruption in high places, and criminal conspiracies. The new emphasis, however, goes further than ever before – imputing guilt not only to a few malevolent tycoons and their henchmen, but to the American military establishment and the nation at large.'

The entire article is at:
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/usr_doc/ Captain_America_color.pdf

Tuskegee Experiments.

Look it up one of these days.

Outstanding! Couldn't agree more.

I had high hopes for the new Cap series, but after only a few issues, the political angle became all too clear. So I bailed.

The USAgent.

I suppose an argument could be made that Anarky is a libertarian of sorts, but he's really more of an ultra-left than ultra-right character. It all sort of comes full circle when you hit anarchism, though.

<<Has there ever been a comic book in the past 15 years that's mainstream superhero and conservative or libertarian by US standards (and not just in the sense of 'he supports the status quo and he turns crooks over to the police'?>>

Hawkman? Icon? Actually most comic book characters are rather apolitical. The closest they come is a general trend towards social liberalism. Discussion of liberal politics is almost absent from comics (and since most comics tend to be super hero action stories it would be hard to work a lot of it in).

<<So I take the term here to mean Washington neo-Conservative in tune with Bush administration values....

I would say the Avengers when they adopted pre-emption as a policy.>>

But the Bush administrations foreign policy is really rather anomalous in American history. Traditionally in the US it is liberal administrations who are the hawks and conservatives who are the doves.

Hostility to Saddam is not a solely conservative virtue.

Gah? What alternate reality are you inhabiting?

Justin Bacon

Of course, that's not a *positive* portrayal, a conservative could plausibly argue.

And there was Frank Miller's take on The Question in DK2, but I'm trying to scrub the memory of that series from my brain.

Rucka was made noise about a Question back-up feature in 'Detective.' I have to wonder where, if anywhere, he might take the character's politics.

Going from the url alone, I already fear. After reading over the article, the gist of it seems to be, 'how dare Marvel express their left-wing liberal hippie views in their comics when they should be Supporting Our Troops and Our Commander-In-Chief because it's the American Thing to Do?' Or am I overreacting?

I seem to recall a Cap storyline from the '70s (was it the Secret Empire?) where the villain of the piece was unmasked as... President Nixon! Anti-establishment stories are nothing new in comics, or at least Marvel.

Anyways, any article that uses the phrase 'concerned citizens' doesn't get much merit from me. Well, speaking as a left-wing liberal hippie, that is.

No, it wasn't Ken. It was Vietnam in TALES OF SUSPENSE #39, not Korea. The Korean War had been over for nine years by the time Iron Man made his debut in 1962.

IIRC, Eisenhower sent the first military advisers into Vietnam in 1960. followed by Kennedy sending more advisers and, later, troops.

Actually, while Steve Englehart intended for Number One to be President Nixon, Number One was never explicitly identified as such, and he is never seen as Nixon [the old keep the identifying features offscreen trick]. He is only identified as a senior government official in the text of CAPTAIN AMERICA #175 itself.

Earlier in the issue, when the Secret Empire's airship lands on the grounds of the White House, Englehart has reporters inform the public that the President is safely at Camp David.

Even though we are meant to believe that Number One is Nixon, the text itself leaves sufficient wriggle-room for him not to be Nixon.