Comic Books and the Culture War
Originally posted to Thinkspot on January 22nd, 2022.
The other day a youtuber that I follow, Comics by Perch asked "what would happen if you just didn't worry about the culture war?" I won't address that directly, because in the world of comic books, we have unquestionably lost the culture war. Leftists with no true love of the genre slowly took over the industry and have destroyed American comics.
Instead, I want to talk about why comic books are important.
Andrew Brietbart has often been quoted as saying "Politics is downstream from culture." Even in an age where superhero movies dominate, most people would wonder why what they perceive as a child's medium is important to our society. To be frank, these days it isn't. It should be, but it isn't. The movies which everyone is so familiar with are often quite bad at getting across the point of the comics on which they are supposedly based.
Take for example, recent depictions of Batman in cinema. Batman drives a tank. Batman scars criminals with a literal branding iron. The movies are about the spectacle. People pay billions to see the Dark Knight in action. But that isn't the point. Batman is really about is a man trying to making sure no child ever again has to go through what he did.
The superhero/ dark knight detective stuff is cool, but it's worthless if you don't understand that.
Well... they used to be, anyway. Religion never quite worked for me. I was a weird, lost kid. God knows what I could have been taken in by and ended up doing. Instead, I found comic books. I found worlds where good men and women stand up for those who can't defend themselves. At the time, that would have been people like me. The moral foundation that wasn't provided in me by Catholicism was given freely by comics. In Christianity, you are taught to do the right thing so that you can go to Heaven when you die. In comics, we were taught to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing. There may be no reward. You may suffer as a result. But in order for the world to function, good people have to stand up, even when the world is intent on knocking them down. Especially then.
As a side note, one of the few superhero movies to really get it was Into the Spiderverse. The entire point of the movie is that Spider-man suffers constantly as a result of his heroism. But no matter how many times he gets knocked down, he keeps getting up.
In addition to moral benefits, we also had a community. People of all stripes. Sure, it was a small community. We were treated as losers for the thing we loved. Back then, WE were the outcasts and that was what united us.
Then came the 21st century.
A new generation of writers came in, with new ideas. I call the first ten years the Watchmen Era. The stories were more modern. Many had a deconstructionist take on these age old characters. And while I love the comics from that era, there was a definite shift. Suddenly, comic books were being written for adults. Adult comic books have been around since before I was born. I was reading Preacher at the age of 15. But this was different. Characters like Spider-man and Batman were now being written for men in their 30s. Gone were the simple morality plays that inspired children to be better versions of themselves.
And then in the last decade we've gotten an even newer generation of writers and editors. Comics entered the Social Justice Era. People with no love of comics and an apparent hatred of its history took over and brought the culture war to our doorstep. We were told that we were bigoted old white men who were simply gatekeeping. This was news to us. Not all of us were white. Not every comics fan was straight. Not every comics fan was male. And the average comic book store - the good ones, anyway- was a place of community for everyone. A place where weird, socially awkward people could be themselves. What is more inclusive than that?
Slowly, but surely we were pushed out. I'm not entirely sad about that. What I'm sad for is the loss of innocence. If a child walks into a comic book store and picks up Batman, there's a good chance he or she will be seeing Batman's penis. Or the Flash losing control and murdering a few dozen of his friends and allies and then covering up the crime. Or Spider-man and the Black Cat having wild sex that destroys a hotel room (which they then sneak out of without consequence).
Losing the culture war isn't about me losing my church. Its about tens of thousands of kids who won't have heroes to look to and think "I wish that were me". When I was a kid, it didn't matter what the superhero or the comic book creator looked like. There were no Filipino/ Italian superheroes- there still aren't. I admired them for their deeds. I could relate to Cyclops (my favorite character), a crippled, lonely white guy, even though I was never crippled nor -strictly speaking- white. I could want to be like Jim Lee (a renowned artist of Korean descent) or Chuck Dixon (white conservative writer) or Christopher Priest (black liberal writer). I could read comics by Louise Simonson, love them and never give it a second thought, because there wasn't an article written every month about what it means to be a female writer in comics.
That's the norm now. You aren't told that a creator is talented because their body of work is beloved. No, they're the GOAT because they're gay or trans or feminist or whatever else, despite the fact that there aren't nearly as many people reading American comics now. Comic book characters are important for largely the same reasons. Hey kids! You're allowed to like and read a comic book now because there is a character who has the same skin tone/ genitals/ whatever as you!
We aren't teaching kids to be heroes. We're teaching them to be adjectives.
That's why the culture war is important. We have one job as adults: protect children. That's it. And we aren't doing our jobs.
We should be teaching them that it doesn't matter what you are. It only matters what you do.
***If you're wondering why I never mentioned Comicsgate, it's because it's nonsense. Comicsgate is made up of two youtube creators and then a small crop of other youtubers trying to ride their coattails. When the media refers to comicsgate, they're trying to associate people like me with it. In other words they're trying to make old fans look like bigots. It's bullshit. It doesn't matter whether you lean Left or Right politically, if you just want comics to go back to telling stories instead of pushing the private agendas of writers and editors, you are called comicsgate.
#comics #culturewar
