The Four Color Media Monitor

So Marvel's idea of how to exploit the current electoral climate is to have the alternate world take on the Star-Spangled Avenger become First Citizen of the USA. But if I'm seeing correctly, there's some definite bias lurking in the story:

Sometimes, desperate times call for politically disparate measures. So Marvel Comics — in a story line laced with comment on the current climate — will elect the First Avenger as the country’s next commander in chief in Ultimate Comics Ultimates No. 15-16, a story arc that hits stores and shelves Wednesday. In the alterna-universe of the Ultimates, the star-spangled “Cap” (a.k.a. Steve Rogers) is a non-campaigning write-in patriot who. despite the electorate’s deep fissures, wins by a landslide and agrees to answer “the people’s call.”

On one level, jaded real-life Americans might see the election of Ultimate Captain America as another narrative stunt intended to juice comics sales like so much Super-Soldier Serum. Yet on a creative level, having a superhero assume the presidency allows Marvel to amplify, on a wild fantasy-scape, some points of contention and dissension on the election-year landscape.

“We wanted to dramatize an extreme version of what we see in America today,” Ultimates writer Sam Humphries says. “In the face of all [this] divisiveness, what do we have in common? What does it mean to be an American? What can we agree on? And what makes America the place that it is?”

And what are the consequences, Humphries asks, of “the nation dissolving in front of our eyes?”

“This is a United States that’s being torn asunder by special interest groups — by opportunists looking to divide and conquer,” Marvel Entertainment Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso says in an exclusive to The Washington Post. “This is a metaphor for what goes on in real life, but on steroids.”

And how do we know this isn't going to be another subtle assault on conservatism? I know that the Ultimate Cap has been said to be what they won't allow the 616 universe Cap to be today - a patriot and a possible right-winger. But if that's how they characterize Ultimate Captain America, what if that signals that this'll turn out to be quite an embarrassment? For all we know, Alonso could be hinting at the Tea Party with his comments, and given how disrespectful they've become of the heroes whose books they publish, it wouldn't be surprising if this turns out to be quite a dismay of a story.

On the surface, they'll surely try to make it seem like they're not taking sides, but past efforts have shown why we shouldn't be fooled.

Labels: bad editors, Captain America, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics