The Four Color Media Monitor

The leftist Huffington Post site ran a ludicrous article supposedly honoring the memory of late legend Stan the Man, which turns out to be an excuse to pretend everybody was against a world where different races and more women could participate. Or, as they put it, not just something for "straight white men":

Lee saw the importance of using the Marvel Universe to shed light on issues plaguing marginalized communities. So he created a universe with stories that would be an allegory for the racial strife in America.

He also created superheroes that strayed from the convention of straight white males, characters that could help represent these underrepresented communities in a positive light that celebrated their cultures and differences. Of these characters and storylines, two of the most famous are the X-Men and Black Panther.

It occurred to me the phony writing the piece doesn't seem interested in bringing up how the Comics Code Authority initially made it difficult to feature black characters, for example. Apparently, that was the reason for their being all but excluded from comicdom for a time, regardless of whether they were on the good or bad side, but strangely, that's pretty much obscured by these propagandists, leading to the offensive stigmatizing of comicdom as though it were always inherently racist. I guess the CCA actually has meaning to them, and as a result, they do their darndest to conceal the bigger picture.

Lee and Kirby also found inspiration and an opportunity to broaden public understanding of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. It’s long been rumored that Lee based the characters of Charles Xavier, aka Professor X, and Erik Lehnserr, aka Magneto, on the two icons.

Dr. King is said to have inspired Professor X’s character, while Malcolm inspired Magneto’s. Both men wanted liberation for their people, but each had a different ideology as to how liberation could and should be accomplished. Professor X, like Dr. King, chose a nonviolent route, while Magneto took more of a proactive stance in fighting against the prejudices and oppression plaguing their people.

The creation of the X-Men comic didn’t just help show the perils that many groups were facing in America. It also helped many people feel that for the first time, the world of comics included them. Thus, a new community of Black nerds was finally able to read about characters who felt and looked like them.

Reading this, you'd think the first X-Men were black, even though none of the original 5 were, and it wasn't until Storm's debut in 1975 that a black protagonist was introduced to the team, though Sunfire from Japan had been introduced as early as 1970. Yes, Lee/Kirby did co-create Black Panther, but the only other black characters I can think of who were prominent in the late 60s were Robbie Robertson and his son Randy, the former who became senior editor of the Daily Bugle under J. Jonah Jameson's management in Spider-Man, and in contrast to JJJ, Robbie was Spidey's ally.

Stan and Kirby also created the Black Panther comic, which helped people reimagine their ideas about Blackness, royalty, intellect, wealth and Black women. They were intentional about creating a world, the never-colonized fictional country of Wakanda, that was authentic but also aspirational.

Wakanda is the wealthiest and most technologically advanced country in the world, populated only by Wakandans, the beautiful Black people. The king of the country, who also wears the mantle of superhero, Black Panther, protects Wakanda. The king can be a man or woman and is always not only powerful, but also intelligent and deeply caring. Each king has a dedicated force of elite soldiers called the Dora Milaje, an all-female guard comprising the most skilled warriors on the planet.

Wakanda and its characters are meant to starkly contrast with negative stereotypes about not only African nations but also Black people.

Okay, I get that. But while Lee/Kirby did create T'Challa in the pages of Fantastic Four, they did not launch the BP solo books per se. It was only in 1972, courtesy of Don McGregor, that BP got his first solo adventures in Jungle Action, which was subsequently replaced by his own official starring title in the late 70s. And Christopher Priest with Mark Texeira, IIRC, introduced the Dora Milaje nearly 2 decades ago in the Marvel Knights imprint, so it appears we got somebody here who doesn't place high value on accuracy and precise locations. Still, that's nothing compared to the following, which is even more dumbfounding:

The X-Men and Black Panther comics helped to create a safe and inclusive space for fans who were dealing with the same type of oppression they were reading about. Which is seemingly exactly what Lee wanted: A place where anyone could feel accepted, understood, and seen. To do that, he created characters who showed the world that people who aren’t straight white males can be superheroes, too.

Lee had dreams that he thought everyone should share with him. From the queer Latina America Chavez to the Kenyan weather goddess Storm, Lee’s work laid the foundation for a universe where anyone could be a hero, regardless of race, color, gender, or any other difference. A place where morality and human (or inhuman) decency determined how people were treated.

Ah, what have we here, but somebody who makes it sound like the equivalent of a university campus! Which, as anybody in-the-know about the horrific situations at universities can tell you, is not that at all; just a way for leftists to create a nasty PC haven. And goes on to make it sound like nobody wanted POC as superheroes, ever, despite the creation of Luke Cage in the Bronze Age, and even Blade in the pages of Tomb of Dracula. Or, did it ever occur to him the heroes of the times were straight black males? Why does heterosexuality sound like a problem to them anyway? More telling though is how this article makes it sound like Stan created the Chavez character, not Joe Casey/Nick Dragota. Nor did Lee create Storm; that was Len Wein and Dave Cockrum who did. What a laugh riot this HP article's turning out to be!

And they don't even consider that Chavez's very existence was almost entirely situated around her being of mixed race and a lesbian. If that's all Marvel created her for, then it's no wonder the later series written by Gabby Rivera was such a dud.

The part about other differences is fishy and awkward. If they'd depicted communists positively, which they didn't, would that have been a good thing in the mind of the HP's writer? Alas, it surely would. Furthermore, morality and humanity, if he took a closer look at Marvel output of recent, has been thrown out the window with bath water for the sake of the ultra-leftist politics that are oh-so valuable to fools like himself.

And ignored in all this mess is that, just hours after Lee passed away, SJWs started attacking him with slurs accusing him of being racist/sexist and other repellent slime. After all the efforts he made trying to condemn racism years before, yet it means nothing to them. The same people, without a doubt, who accuse the Comicsgate movement of the same without any solid proof. Yet none of this means anything to the HP writers, who can only think to do what quite a few other shady types did to Lee in the years before his death: exploit and milk him for all he was worth, for the sake of their selfish little schemes. Which, most sadly, isn't likely to stop with his passing, and could easily get worse before the year is out.

Labels: Black Panther, Fantastic Four, good artists, good writers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, Spider-Man, X-Men