The Four Color Media Monitor

James Hudnall at Big Hollywood has written about the Capt. America vs Tea Party monstrosity, and come up with a pretty good slang for "progressives", pronounced as "progs". Yep, they're one of the biggest problems with today's industry. And as for the comment Sam Wilson makes about a black man not fitting in with a bunch of "angry white folks", what's really absurd about it is that back in the 1970s, the Falcon was characterized as an angry black man - he had ancestors who were slaves, and harbored some resentment for white society. So what are they trying to say here, really?

There's one thing here I must note though:

Disclosure time: I know Brian Michael Bendis, the architect of the current Marvel plot-lines like Dark Reign and Seige, very well. I also know Captain America writer Ed Brubaker fairly well, having known him almost since he was a teenager (and Bendis from back when he had hair). I like them, so I’m not going to bash them or anything. But I do need to point out where their politics can be a problem. Bendis is pretty smart about keeping his on the down low. From what I’ve read of his work, and I’ve read a lot, it generally doesn’t creep in that much. Just a dot here and there like you’d expect from a Hollywood writer. Brubaker lives in the San Francisco Bay area. And occasionally he’s thrown in some lefty views in his work. He generally doesn’t as a rule. But his latest Captain America crosses the line and it needs addressing.

Look, I understand that knowing them personally, Hudnall feels he's got to be polite. However, I'd just like to offer a reminder that, even if Bendis is capable of keeping his politics to a minimum, that still doesn't make his writing worth reading. And it's not. He was the writer who degraded the Avengers 6 years ago, and beat up on Tigra almost 3 years later, and I don't think he's suited to put the Avengers "back together" if he couldn't disband them tastefully years before.

The point here is that, even if politics aren't the problem, there's still some very seriously bad writing that's dragging down what remains of mainstream comics today, and refraining from ultra-leftist politics alone isn't going to stand them erect again. Series like Superman and Spider-Man with a brighter viewpoint have to be toned down from some of the R-rated violence that's poured into them, and continuity and good characterization have to be respected. They also need to quit resorting to shock tactic deaths and villification, not to mention the horrid crossovers that have brought things to a standstill.

The Capt. America story has certainly drawn a lot of attention. I gotta say, it's rather amazing it took this kind of leftist nonsense to get the conservative movement, or any movement with common sense, to sit up and take notice of how something's gone wrong with mainstream books. Quesada has allegedly apologized for this, but frankly, I doubt he's any more sorry he allowed this than Brubaker is. It's about time they be taken to task for their disrespect for the audience and much of the wider public, as Brubaker's crummy story is doing. And for those who want to protest, maybe I can suggest a little something that's been tried for network television: contact their advertisers and ask them to pull their advertising in Marvel and DC's output. After all, advertising is one of the ways most comic book companies usually gain part of their revenue, just like television, and without it, they certainly won't have much to help them. I think it's a very worthy idea to try out, and a shame nobody's thought of it yet.

One more thing worth noting: it seems that Mark Waid:

is humiliated and mortified on behalf of my entire industry that Fox News is able to bully us into apologizing to lunatics.

Poor Mark, he has really lost himself. He should've stayed out of this, and now, he's only making it worse.

Labels: bad editors, Captain America, dreadful writers, marvel comics, politics