The Four Color Media Monitor

GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry said something that, if he'd been a Democrat, would've made headlines, but because he's a Republican, did not:

MANCHESTER, N.H. — You can just call him Superman.

At least, that’s what Governor Rick Perry of Texas told a nine-year-old boy at a Manchester house party Saturday, when the boy, Ari, asked him which superhero he would be, if he could posses superhuman powers.

“I’m going to show you my age a little bit, Ari, because I don’t know any of the real current superheroes,” Mr. Perry said, gamely fielding the question. “But there was one back in my day named Superman, and Superman came to save the United States.”

So he was a Super-fan back in the day, eh? That's pretty remarkable. However, as of now, when I looked at most comic book sites, they had zero to say about this, in contrast to when any fandom Obama has for comics was cited. On the other hand, a handful of leftist sites, rather than be flattered by this, chose instead to exploit the occasion to attack him. For example, on Death and Taxes, a kind of ultra-cheap variant on The Nation, they said (and also revealed a few more details about just how depressing the DCnU will be):

While Perry’s remark makes him look a bit more grandfatherly than gaucho, DC Comics‘ recent rebook skews the candidate’s historical understanding of Superman — but speaks volumes about where we are in America today.

DC Comics, publisher of Superman, Batman and other well-known titles, relaunched its entire superhero line. Superheroes are new, including Superman, who is living in a darker, more “cynical” world, one we’ll see in Grant Morrison’s version of the iconic title ‘Action Comics.’ He’s more violent, more angry and less likely to work with the police.

“I think right now, we’re all feeling that way,” said Morrison. “Nobody has much faith in their elected leaders in the same way that they did. We all have a lot more cynicism and a lot more doubt about the people who are running our lives than we did when Superman was a ‘Boy Scout.’” It’s worth noting that Perry’s a diehard fan of the Boy Scouts.

But it’s not just Superman who’s getting darker: the ‘Justice League’ shows the teams early, acrimonious days — the first issue has Batman and the Green Lantern duking it out, and, next month, Superman will throw down against the Dark Knight.

Meanwhile, the decidedly somber ‘Animal Man,’ previously penned by Morrison, is back, being written by Jeff Lemire, and bleeding out of his eyes. And ‘Justice League Dark’ will surely show the DC Universe’s bleaker side.

This new DC Universe more accurately reflects the state of our nation, rather than the long lost Golden Age in which Perry and Superman grew up.

But even before the DC rebooted Superman, the Man of Steel famously gave up his U.S. citizenship to avoid war with Iran. The right wing, Rick Perry’s base, were predictably upset. Fox News contributor Cal Thomas wondered, “Who has hijacked Superman and turned him into a U.N. loving Anti-American?” Something tells me that Perry, like all UN-loathing Republicans, would agree.

And if not with that, he’s sure to scoff at the new version of Superman, whom Morrison describes as “a bit more of a liberal activist”.

That’s definitely not the type of hero Perry would like to be, is it?

What a shame. The poor buffoon who wrote that balderdash clearly seems to think that Perry's fandom for the Man of Steel must be based upon the direction taken by current writers instead of the character and core concept in itself. Worst, he's pulled an act not unlike various comics writers of recent have done - he's exploited the Man of Steel subject and Perry's own comments for the sake of attacking a politician all because he doesn't like conservatives.

If Perry still takes note of comic books, surely we shouldn't wish he would talk about how sad it is that, instead of offering some optimistic entertainment, all the writers and editors can do is knock our heads with unremitting gloom and unpleasant violence, to say nothing of the aggravating leftist politics that have become more commonplace this past decade? Alas, in all their dismal moonbat bias, that's not what leftists like those are doing.

To make matters worse, another leftist has even hijacked the whole subject for the sake of calling Superman an illegal immigrant. I think that's going a bit far to literally compare sci-fi/fantasy characters to illegal immigrants, and even insulting to Siegel and Shuster, who certainly didn't create Superman in their time for the sake of that. Infant Kal-El was rocketed to Earth from a devastated planet (Krypton) and didn't exactly have a choice of where to go. He is not an illegal but a refugee from a wrecked world. The same could be said about princess Koriand'r of the New Teen Titans, who's an escaped alien slave from the planet Tamaran - handed over to an enemy alien race by her pathetic father as an act of appeasement - who fled to Earth in 1980, where she was taken in by the NTT. I hesitate to think of just what kind of exploitation Thor would undergo by the left if Perry signaled he was a fan of Marvel's take on the Norse pagan deity. They'd probably say he was an illegal immigrant whose own father sent him as a secret interloper in New York. Yes, even Marvel's got a few protagonists who could become victims of politicized exploitation.

I find it hard to swallow that those leftists are really comics fans; otherwise, they wouldn't have exploited Perry's words so blatantly. All they're doing is taking the fun out of classic concepts. Let us be clear: sci-fi creations as we know them shouldn't have to be compared to real life issues, and doing so only spoils everything.

If this had been Obama who'd voiced any fandom for Superman, it'd be all over the headlines in a positive way. But this is a GOP member who's spoken, so they won't show any appreciation at all. A shame, because fandom for comics, in itself, is something to appreciate and political standings shouldn't have to dictate how we look at these things.

Update: this blogger is right: the whole idiotic argument comparing Supes to an illegal should be put to bed.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, politics, Superman, violence