The Four Color Media Monitor

I decided to look around and see what the reaction was by liberals in the medium to Chuck Dixon and Paul Rivoche's WSJ article. As expected, there are some out there who resent that someone's letting the world know how dominant leftism's become, much as they might try to conceal that and pretend it's not the case. One of the people who spoke against them was - sigh - Janelle Asselin, starting with these two tweets here.

What Dixon And Rivoche Get Wrong About The Comics Industry - A Wall Street Journal article by conservative... http://t.co/j0QaSDby0z
— Janelle Asselin (@gimpnelly) June 11, 2014

@UnGajje thank you! I also trend super left. So. I consider your opinion valid. :)
— Janelle Asselin (@gimpnelly) June 11, 2014

I realized she was surely that far out there, but still, what a shame. Now, here's her response on Comics Alliance, and she doesn't start out well:

[...]Beating familiar conservative pundit drums like jingoistic nostalgia and referencing a lot of demonstrably incorrect information, these two experienced pros manage to paint a picture of an industry tottering on the edge of moral collapse to an audience — readers of WSJ — that knows little about what’s actually going on in cape comics and the American comics industry in general.

I don't think she's making a very good case if she resorts to slurs like "jingoism", which is basically a leftist's way of saying "patriotism = bad". Big mistake. That's more like saying pride in American identity was wrong from the start. It even suggests she's not a fan of the famous artists who drew Superman and Capt. America with an Old Glory flag alongside them. As for the newspaper's audience not knowing anything about the industry, well duh, that's because a lot of the insiders have no intention of telling anyone, and sadly, she appears intent on taking the same approach with issues like this.

The goal here, of course, is to sell comics. By complaining to WSJ’s ostensibly conservative audience about how liberals have taken over the American medium, conservatives Dixon and Rivoche attempt to persuade non-comics readers to buy their new book, an adaptation of Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man, as an exercise in political activism.

Really, you don't say. And if Warren Ellis went on the air to chat about what he thinks is great with the medium today and brings up a new book of his, will she say he's trying to discourage an audience from applying? If not, then she'd do better not suggest something's wrong with Rivoche and Dixon promoting theirs. Funny thing is, she might be right about the WSJ's audience being "ostensibly" conservative, if only because their modern MO could've become more leftist after the Saudi prince al-Walid bin Talal bought into NewsCorp. But then, why does she have any problem with the paper?

Like many conservative comics fans, Dixon and Rivoche bemoan the lack of conservative comics being published today, and a perceived liberal bent of the industry, while limiting their definition of comics primarily to superhero books published by Marvel and DC Comics.

The problem is not with their politics; it’s with their misrepresentation of the industry and its history.

In that case, the problem is not with her politics either, it's with how she fails to make a certain distinction between the liberals of yesteryear and those of modern times who've lost their way. Sure, maybe they could've been more specific about how liberals during WW1 and WW2 were more in favor of fighting to help the persecuted, but she fails to do any better. And I don't think they just limited their POV to superhero comics. What they're doing, if anything, is telling how these famous figures have been brought down to the gutter by too much leftism, which was present since the late 60s-early 70s, but became worse as truly awful editors came aboard years later. Asselin's living in denial, unwilling to admit she worked with those kind of people back at the time she was a staffer at DC. Worse, she sounds intent on acting as if no rightists could possibly care about the medium, and no leftists will buy Shlaes/Dixon/Rivoche's book either. I guess she doesn't have it on her holiday list.

And what's wrong with sticking up for superhero books? Is she claiming they're "left-wing property" and no conservative may dare add their views to those products? To me, this hints at a resentment some modern leftists have, wherein they perceive superheroes and other such adventure fare as only "belonging" to them, even though there have been some conservatives throughout history who had a hand in creating them, like Joe Simon and Steve Ditko.

Dixon and Rivoche have drawn their line in the sand, then, as “conservative = American with a sense of right and wrong,” and “liberal = morally ambiguous.” The term “moral relativism” is beloved by conservatives when talking about liberals. The term is often used incorrectly, however, or misunderstood.

There are different kinds of moral relativism, including descriptive moral relativism — the idea that there are widespread moral disagreements across different societies as a fact, and that those disagreements are more significant than agreements — and meta-ethical moral relativism — the idea that moral judgments are not absolute, but instead relative to individual groups. Just using the term “moral relativism” is actually not all that helpful or accurate.

Oh really? From what I can tell, their point is that modern liberals are acting like the beliefs they've taken up come the 21st century are and were the only legitimate way things should be done. But take a look at most of the Golden/Silver/Bronze Age books: sure, there were liberals at work in those times, but even then, they didn't deny, for example, that communism and socialism were harmful ideologies. Nor did they act en masse like the creation of the USA in itself was a mistake and only stands for all that's wrong with the world. Let's remember that in the mid-60s, Stan Lee and company took on issues of communism. So "misunderstood"? Tell us about it.

The way this idea gets tied into liberalism for conservatives seems to be two-fold. One; many liberals preach tolerance and acceptance for cultures and people whose ideals differ from our own. This is often assumed to be related to moral relativism, but is not in fact considered such by actual philosophers who write about these things. Two; moral relativism leads to moral ambiguity. Accepting the morals of other cultures will lead to the downfall of American society, which has for hundreds of years been primarily Judeo-Christian in its moral view. In other words: dogs and cats living together — mass hysteria.

I believe she has unmasked and let everyone know she thinks Judeo-Christian values are 100 percent worthless, with nothing to learn from. And if she thinks preaching acceptance of other cultures/ideals she doesn't even have the courage to name is positive, then does that mean leftists who preach in favor of communism, Islamofascism and Marxism are doing the right thing? Moral ambiguity was exactly Rivoche and Dixon's point; she's not making a good argument based on that.

Now, to be fair, the issue of Action Comics that Dixon and Rivoche cite is a particularly political one, but since when has it been okay to claim that only conservatives are patriotic? Or that it’s “politically correct” for someone to care about what happens beyond the boundaries of their own country? Why wouldn’t an alien from another planet want to help his entire adopted home planet, versus just his home country? You could argue, as this issue of Action does implicitly, that limiting Superman to just America is like limiting a Green Lantern to one half of a planet in his sector.

But the merits of David S. Goyer and Miguel Sepulveda’s comic are a discussion for another time, really. The problem here is that Dixon and Rivoche are pretending before an ignorant audience that within that story, Superman has forsworn his home country because of those damn liberals and in a particularly dramatic way. The truth is that this was a short story in anniversary issue filled with them, and one that really didn’t matter in the long run. Was it a political story? Yes. Did it ultimately impact the tone of other Superman stories? Not at all. Indeed, Goyer’s own Man of Steel script goes out of its way to identify Superman as a firmly American character when he tells a military commander, “I’m from Kansas; I’m as American as it gets.”

She misses the point here: the whole story was petty and pointless to begin with. Superman may talk with an American accent, but it's not like past writers made a big deal in past stories whether he was an authentic citizen with a passport while in costume (and with his powers, he could surely mimic many accents), so while Clark Kent may be a citizen, it's not like Kal-El has to claim he is, any more than Batman and other heroes with secret IDs. But citizen or not, he's not a politician, has no employment with the US government and thinks for himself, so why should he have to care what politicians with questionable approaches think of him? It's also worth noting that some of the Outsiders like Batman, Black Lightning, Looker and Metamorpho are American citizens, yet they operated outside the USA without letting the government or anyone else's positions concern them back in the 80s. In that case, David Goyer should've just had Supes tell the government liason he's his own man and doesn't take orders from politicians whose own sincerity is in question.

In fact, Goyer's screenplay line where Superman lets know he's from Kansas could actually be a flaw: why give an idea of where exactly you're from while growing up? Wouldn't that make it easier to piece together clues of his origins and figure out his ID as Clark Kent?

And that's not the only point Asselin missed: what about Superman's failure to bring down the Iranian dictatorship and not just float around between the two sides, refusing to make distinctions? That bizarre part of the tale completely escapes her. As I've said before, the story structure does not hold up well since the Iranian dictatorship is still in place, and does little more than insult Iranians in the process.

Superman is “wonderfully American,” but Dixon’s criteria for that judgement might be ignoring other pieces of the Superman mythos that would seem to be at odds with contemporary conservative values. Is Superman not the ultimate “illegal alien”? He wasn’t born in the U.S., his biological parents weren’t born in the U.S. ether, and he didn’t enter the country in any state-approved way — plus he’s literally an alien. Yet he’s built his life in the U.S., continues to work in the country, and, one short story notwithstanding, identifies as a proud American.

Real-life humans whose stories reflect that dimension of Superman are as a group frequently targeted by conservative politics, so it’s Interesting that the Man of Steel is the figure being upheld by Dixon and Rivoche as the conservative ideal.

Oh, so now she's dragging more politics into the mess, not willing to view Supes as the ultimate infant refugee from another planet. His home world exploded, and his parents sent him to Earth for his own survival - what was supposed to be done? Were the Kents really supposed to turn him over to authorities who might've exploited him for bad purposes, or just left him to fend for himself without guidance? Asselin's completely ignoring the sci-fi angle. I guess she just can't suspend disbeliefs and simply love Supes as the sci-fi adventure it was meant to be. There's a difference between a deliberate interloper and a refugee from horrific disaster. How come she doesn't think of all the Christian refugees from Muslim countries who're being denied entry into the USA? Didn't it occur to her that they could be Kal-El's closest similarity from a modern perspective?

The greater and more damaging implication in Dixon and Rivoche’s piece is that only American conservatives can actually perceive right and wrong, and this is incredibly limiting both to our society and to our entertainment. The two authors attempt to draw a correlation between the idea of accepting or even just respecting other viewpoints and understanding right and wrong at all.

This is incredibly flawed. People who tolerate other folks with different opinions do not, as a rule, lack a moral compass – they simply are willing to listen to others. It’s not as if that is a solely liberal trait, either. Why draw that comparison? When America entered World War II, were all of our soldiers Republican? Or is the rise of what the authors call moral relativism (again, most likely meaning “tolerance”) only a recent phenomenon, and prior to that, liberals were okay? There are a lot of people in this country today who are “good, just and wonderfully American” and plenty of those people are not conservatives. Or even citizens.

There were also superheroes who “fought” in World War II who were not conservative or who did not uphold particularly conservative political beliefs. Superman might be considered conservative by some. That’s probably the reason they cited him specifically rather than, say, Captain America.

Pardon me, but superheroes aren't "conservative" per se because they don't exist in real life. They only reflect what poliitics the writers assigned will apply. And when did Dixon/Rivoche actually say liberals couldn't figure out differences? Once, there were leftists at work who could, but today, there's quite a few running the scene who can't/won't, and shun those who do. And years before, there were liberals with bad MOs too, if that matters, like Bill Ayers, whom that same site paid lip service to. And even conservatives can make terrible mistakes. Jonathan V. Last of the Weekly Standard is one. I'm still horrified he gave Identity Crisis a free pass.

Cap can actually be interpreted as a liberal hero based on his origin and early stories set during WWII. As political historian Steven Attewell writes; “unlike other patriotic superheroes (like Superman, for example), Captain America is meant to represent the America of the Four Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter, and the Second Bill of Rights – a particular progressive ideal … there’s nothing ‘revisionist’ or ‘politically correct’ about portraying Steve Rogers as an explicitly progressive superhero. Without that, he wouldn’t be Captain America.”

It sounds more like Attewell's trying to hijack, presumably because Jack Kirby was liberal leaning (while Joe Simon was conservative leaning.) and claim that Cap is an exclusively leftist icon, and say conservatives shouldn't be fans or recognize the potential at all. Something he doesn't sound intent on making clear is that Nazism was an acronym for National Socialism, and by combatting the nazis, Cap was fighting against a belief system that advocates both economic and physical slavery as much as savagery. One of the biggest lies of the 20th century was that the nazis were "right-wing" but as their ideology should make clear, they were not, and that's one of the most bizarre points overlooked by a lot of callous leftists.

And if Attewell is saying Cap couldn't be what he is if he'd been depicted as a capitalist, that's ludicrous. Leave it to a modern leftist would-be historian to tell us all what to believe. We can only wonder what he'd say if a story were written where Cap defended private property rights, something I'm not sure I've ever seen leftists like him discuss.

As well as hailing Superman as a (fictional) war hero, Dixon and Rivoche also cite some Superman radio episodes in which Superman led a crusade against the Ku Klux Klan, which they reference in the context of conservatives’ allegedly stronger understanding of justice. To be fair, the KKK did in its earliest incarnation target Republicans, and Southern Democrats had plenty of racists and bigots among them. But it seems odd to bring up race in regards to liberals vs. conservatives, as Republicans consistently tolerate racism within their party and block legislature meant to address racism, plus they are significantly more white than other political parties. It’s a very cool thing that Superman was employed as anti-racist propaganda, but it would seem, based on their own track record on civil rights for minorities, that contemporary conservative politicians have more to learn from the Man of Steel’s example than modern day liberals.

Much as I'd like to credit Asselin for admitting the 19th century Democrats were the party supporting slavery in southern states, I don't think I can, because it sounds like she's implying the Democrats have polished up their act ever since, and are now clean as a whistle. But their tolerance of Muslim racism contradicts that. And while it wouldn't be right to say Republicans are totally innocent, Asselin also buys into leftist propaganda at Mother Jones at face value, acting as though modern rightists are evil in every way, in a classic parroting of ultra-leftist propaganda. Just what proof does she have that modern conservatives across the board are blowing it on race relations? The Tea Party has some black members. Guess that means nothing to her.

And say, how come she notes now that Superman is a fictional character, when earlier, she sounded like she thought he exists?

Where Rivoche and Dixon’s piece transcends mere wrongness into weirdness when they write about comics from the 1950s to the 1970s. In that section, they speak of the loathsome Comics Code Authority with what sounds like teary-eyed nostalgia.

That’s right. In an article bemoaning the lack of free speech in comics because of oppressive liberal values, two men who presumably share a political ideology that believes in minimizing government manage to talk with admiration about a literally oppressive set of censoring regulations that the comics industry imposed on itself following actual government hearings (inspired by Fredric Wertham’s Seduction Of The Innocent) about whether comics — even superhero comics — were corrupting children.

When Dixon and Rivoche say of one of the CCA’s rules that “there were still good guys and bad guys,” it’s like they’re pointing to the Code as a kind of proper morality that they wish comics still had. This is not longing for free speech. This is longing for a limited kind of morality that matches the authors’ own particular set of morals.

Okay, here, she comes close to noting a flaw in the argument. No, of course the Comics Code wasn't a good idea, specifically because it did impose limits on mature content for at least 15 years, and of course the medium isn't solely for children any more than movies and TV are.

But I don't think somebody who tries to hijack Superman for drawing comparisons to illegal immigrants and canards away about "jingoism" is qualified to make these points. Besides, while the CCA was a foolish mistake - one several publishers decided upon themselves, not because they agreed with Wertham, but because they saw it as a great way to get a few competitors out of the way - the industry does still need some kind of moral ethics compass to go by, or else they're not producing good writing. In fact, maybe that's Dixon and Rivoche's real point. That's not saying they didn't put it across awkwardly, but if that's their actual belief, then it's a shame the CCA was abandoned without keeping around some moral ethics that would suit superhero tales better.

I wonder if she's also aware that Wertham leaned more to the left himself, as I'd once noted? She hasn't mentioned that, and if not, then strange she's even bothering to cite Wertham. In fact, how come she doesn't argue that all would've worked out a lot better if comicdom developed a rating system during the time the MPAA came up with theirs?

What comics publisher was Chuck Dixon writing for during the ’90s that was making comics for children? Presumably this wasn’t a storyline they wanted to run in The Simpsons comics, which means it was probably a Marvel or DC book, which haven’t really been for kids since those halcyon CCA days they spoke about earlier.

Gee, I wonder why she missed an opportunity to argue that, if he feels more writers should've made an effort to write tales better suited for children, he should've tried it himself? That could've made a worthy argument, but she hasn't tried it.

If this was, as I suspect, about the Speedy/HIV storyline, it only makes sense that Dixon’s comments necessitated an apology given that the writer of that story, Judd Winick, actually lost someone close to him to HIV/AIDS — as chronicled in the graphic novel Pedro And Me.

Really, Winick, the guy who exploited his good friend for the sake of promoting LGBT mishmash? The problem with Winick is that he only cared about presenting homosexuality positively, and if there were any arguments to raise about that story in Green Arrow(?), it's whether he intended to keep up that propaganda. But I get the feeling that story wasn't the real reason DC later shunned Dixon, and I seriously doubt he ever insulted anyone suffering from AIDS.

Dixon is the writer who had teenage heroine Spoiler get pregnant and give the baby up for adoption – couldn’t that be seen as a political storyline that was inappropriate for children? After all, it involves teen sex, and since she wasn’t on birth control and didn’t get an abortion, it can easily be seen as a bit of conservative politics to encourage girls to go the adoption route. Yet that story was published.

I wonder what she'd say if Spoiler did get an abortion? Does she think that's a better alternative, and that Joss Whedon's Buffy vision was more justified? What made the story in Robin work well enough was that it had some educational value about the risks taken in teen sex, and also why adoption can be a better idea than abortion. No doubt Robin may have required parental guidance, but it was certainly a lot more suited for younger readers than the Buffy story.

All creators have times of more work and times of less work. Certainly comics is more liberal than conservative these days, but outspoken conservatives like Ethan Van Sciver and Bill Willingham don’t seem to be hurting for work.

Van Sciver is an artist. If there's anyone who isn't getting many jobs now, it's conservative writers, including Mike Baron. As for Willingham, he's an interesting case. After all, he was the writer who took to denigrating Dixon's very own creation, Spoiler, during the War Games crossover in Batman, and afterwards proceeded to wreck havoc upon another recurring cast member, Dr. Leslie Thompkins, writing that she was responsible for Stephanie's death. But surely the biggest mistake he made was insulting the readers who found the story offensive. I remember at the time Willingham did this on the Fabletown forum he was running, after I saw he was using the "whiny fanboys" insult, I came away with a bad aftertaste, and it was exceedingly difficult for me to bother about his other works as a result. At the time, I didn't know enough about him, so when I realized he was a conservative himself, it just made things all the more embarrassing, because here was an alleged rightie stooping to the same tactics as his leftie counterparts, claiming that "indifference" is the one reaction they're worried about, and making no differences between positive and negative response. I don't recall Dixon ever following his example, nor Dan Jurgens, who's got a black mark on his record with Zero Hour in 1994.

So here, when Willingham might've had a chance of winning me over as a full time reader of Fables, he threw it away by hinting he wasn't all that different from the left-wing writers he's working with. I wouldn't be surprised if there's other conservatives in-the-know out there who were alienated by his crude act. If anything, he proved himself a very poor spokesperson for comicdom. Is that how somebody who wants everyone to buy his books should behave?

Thanks to this, how was I supposed to fully credit his Breitbart article about superhero decadence when he says he portrayed Batman and Robin steadfastly, but wouldn't say nary a word about how he'd handled Spoiler? Is that honest? Do only the Dynamic Duo count? In fact, after CBR did a post about this issue, he replied to somebody referencing Thompkins:

Yes it was me who wrote that story — at least part of it. The decision to make Dr. Thompkins was either an editorial decision or the group decision (I forget exactly which, since it’s been a while) and it fell to me to actually write the scene. No, I didn’t think it was a particularly good idea, but (full disclosure) I wasn’t that much a fan of the Thompkins character in the first place, so I didn’t say, “Hell no, I won’t be a party to doing that to a beloved character!” This incident, plus the whole death after torture of Spoiler thing, are among the many reasons I have decided to make sure that I actually control the stories I decide to write in the future, since they are going out under my name.

I floated the idea of letting Spoiler live and letting her stay as Robin for awhile, since the sales and national attention took quite an uptick at that point, and since the Robin I really wanted to write (male or female) was one who was still in the process of learning the job — not someone who substantially already knew the job. But DC had other ideas, and these are after all their characters. The death of Spoiler plans were locked in by then and couldn’t be changed.

As far as someone coming along afterwards and rewriting all of that out of continuity, that’s fine with me.

Yes, he later changed from a stance defending War Games/Crimes to one where he says it was an editorial mandate. But there's still questions unanswered, like why, if the editors really stood by what they were doing, they'd need Willingham to serve as a fall guy? He also admitted a serious flaw of selectively not caring about specific characters and acting as though that justifies the worst in storytelling. How does that make a good writer?

Even after the Breitbart contribution, Willingham may not have shaped up. I found a posting by somebody who'd gone to a convention where she says he told Spoiler fans, "I wanted to gun down those girls who kept asking about the memorial case." It may be hearsay for now, but if even half this account is correct, Willingham blew it again. Yes, that was an insulting thing to say, suggesting he was begrudging, and honestly, was everyone asking for memorials but not resurrections?

I'd also wondered why DC still keeps cozy relations with Willingham, and maybe this answers it. Because he wasn't all that different from his liberal counterparts in terms of public relations. As far as I know, he's never publicly apologized for insulting the readers who took offense at how he handled Spoiler and Leslie in War Games/Crimes, and Jean Loring in Day of Vengeance. If he did, he might have a chance of mending fences even with me. But so far, I haven't seen him taking that step yet. Let's return to more of Asselin's stuff now:

Dixon and Rivoche also bemoan the dark and gritty turn superheroes have taken, and the “code of political correctness and moral ambiguity.” Again, this is just factually inaccurate. The tonal shift from black-and-white morality of older comics to the pervasive “grim and gritty” aesthetic of the ’90s was not ushered in solely by liberal creators. It’s true that Alan Moore and Frank Miller (now an outspoken right-winger) wrote popular works in this vein (Ronald Reagan was actually a villain in Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns), but then again, so did Chuck Dixon, whose Punisher comics — where the protagonist circumvents the law to murder anyone he thinks deserves it — are remembered as some of the most intensely dark and violent anti-hero comics of the era.

Oh, here's where liberal bias seeps in again. Many of the criminals Frank Castle was seen gunning down were murderers and murderous themselves, not the least being the mobsters who wiped out Frank's family. Are those vermin to just be let off the hook when the justice system fails? Does Asselin also think Charles Bronson's movie of Death Wish from 1974 was wrong too? And how come she didn't mention there was one time in the early 90s when the Punisher let some shoplifters go without killing them? See, he wasn't depicted as that tunnelvisioned. I won't deny the Punisher's MO raises serious questions, but obfuscating how he went about his business and claiming Frank is the real wrongdoer is ludicrous and obscures what the criminals themselves were committing.

The tonal shift had less to do with politics and more to do with fashion and an aging audience. To assign a political bent towards these changes because of “political correctness and moral ambiguity” is like accusing anyone who believes in tolerance of actively encouraging crime. Tolerating other viewpoints does not equal anarchy or a lack of morals.

Uh uh. The overabundance of leftist politics and crude, pointless violence and sexism seen today, along with ridiculous cover prices, is just why the audience is comprised of aging people, some of whom suffer from aimless addiction and speculator mentality. And tolerating destructive beliefs like communism, fascism, jihadism and marxism - anarchy in themselves - does equal lack of morale. But since she brought it up, does Asselin believe her liberal peers should tolerate Dixon/Rivoche's conservative viewpoints in mainstream products?

Later in their piece, Dixon and Rivoche hold up the graphic novels Persepolis and Maus as examples of popular comic books that do not fall on either side of the political divide. This is just completely incorrect.

The story of author Marjane Satrapi’s childhood growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, Persepolis is a manifestly anti-fascist work. Likewise, Art Spiegelman’s Maus dramaticized his father’s ordeal during the Holocaust.

These comics may not, in Dixon and Rivoche’s minds, “parrot the progressive line,” but the truth is that these are political comics that Dixon and Rivoche happen to accidentally have enjoyed.

Missing the point. They don't parrot the progressive mindset leftists like her go by, is all. They may be political, yet they don't let even worries about conservatism get in the way of telling some good fact-based stories.

There are a lot of other issues in the phrasing chosen by Dixon and Rivoche that help spread incorrect facts to WSJ readers who likely wouldn’t know any better. Simple things like saying comics are for kids, referring to Comixology as a company that “translates comics to e-books,” or describing San Diego Comic-Con International simply as “the annual comics convention.”

Perhaps most crucially, Dixon and Rivoches pretending that American comics are made up entirely of superhero comics, rather than discussing the wide range of work that exists and is successful today, ignores the fact that there is room in the comics market for a book like the one Dixon and Rivoche have produced. If the only comics that existed were the superhero books and graphic novels they discuss, they would never have had the chance to create their new book.

No, still missing the point. What they're saying is that it's regrettable mainstream comics owned by corporations are held hostage to otherwise exclusively leftist viewpoints, with no rightist ones allowed to apply, if at all. And say, didn't she just note they cited Maus? I thought Art Speigelman published that in the USA! But most importantly, she forgets that this is a commercial newspaper, only willing to allow so much space for citations. If there's anyone to blame, I'd say it's the paper's editors for not giving more room. Food for thought. At the end, she says:

But Dixon and Rivoche are right that there should be more conservative comics. They’re both talented creators who have written some amazing and influential comics and created some important characters. Their choice to blame liberals for the problems they see in comics may be flawed, but they still deserve the opportunity to produce comics that accurately represent their world view — and they’ve taken the advice so many internet commenters are eager to throw at comics feminists online, which is, “If you don’t like what’s being made, make your own comics.”

Well at least she's respecting the belief more comics with conservative views could be written. But I get the feeling she'd rather it all be done in their own comics, and no rightists be allowed to touch Superman and Capt. America, because in her mind, they're leftist "property" only. In fact, how come she didn't bring up awful products like The Truth: Red, White and Black, or the Marvel Knights take on Cap? For somebody who says Dixon and Rivoche didn't cite enough examples, she's not doing much better.

Labels: bad editors, Captain America, censorship issues, dc comics, indie publishers, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, politics, Superman, violence