The Four Color Media Monitor

Superhero Hype wrote about a new comic starring the original Golden Age Sandman, Wesley Dodds, that appears to employ stealth propaganda, making WW2 military officials sound like bloodthirsty savages no different from the National Socialists. And to make matters worse, the columnist resorts to the classic illogic of "revealing" as the step taken by DC here:

Many comic book characters develop scientific wonders but never seek to profit from their amazing inventions. The premiere issue of a new series starring DC’s first Sandman, Wesley Dodds, addresses this point. While some heroes do not market their technology out of altruism, Dodds has a different issue with selling his science.

Wesley Dodds: The Sandman #1 by Robert Venditti, Riley Rossmo, and Ivan Plascencia finds Dodds meeting with the US War Department. He tries to sell the same miraculous gas he uses as Sandman to one Colonel Breckinridge. Unfortunately, the Colonel has little enthusiasm for Dodds’ vision of “humane warfare” or the idea of pacifying invading armies.

Beyond his personal beliefs that war is unavoidable and should be lethal, Colonel Breckinridge claims Dodds’ ideas are logistically impossible. While Dodds’ gas might knock out enemy soldiers, there would still be the problem of transporting and detaining them as prisoners of war. Even if the Colonel shared Dodds’ vision of ending war, “maiming and killing is simpler (and) cheaper.” In the case of Wesley Dodds, the problem is not his willingness to sell his science but finding a ready buyer.

Wow, on the one hand, they make it sound like the colonel in the story loves savagery. On the other hand, they make Dodds sound like a profiteer. And it gets no better with the following:

Sandman’s ethics keep him from financial success

The irony is that Wesley Dodds developed several gases that would fit Colonel Breckinridge’s needs while perfecting the Sandman gas. Dodds recalls his “failures” with his butler and how he created several lethal formulas that could cause paralysis or heart failure.

It hurt the tender-hearted Dodds to test such formulas on rats. The thought of using such things on humans was impossible, even if it did leave him struggling to make his name as a chemist. While Dodds was independently wealthy and had no need for profit, this untold tale explains why he never sold his Sandman gas.

Not even on violent criminals could he gather the courage to use his chemicals, huh? This sounds vaguely reminiscent of Marvel's The Truth: Red, White & Black miniseries from 2003, one of the most offensive screeds against the USA, and the stereotypical character designs for the black cast members made it worse, by draining away all seriousness the story supposedly built upon. Any sane person knows war is hell, and it's not like civilized men and women want to fight against tyrants, but when the latter emphasizes barbarism, that's what makes it inevitable. And what's there to "explain" about Dodds not selling the gases he used as Sandman? In fact, if he was well off financially, why did he even need to work in chemistry for? Something awfully awkward about that description alright. It's also laughable how they come up with excuses about lack of transportation for enemy soldiers, when the USA military had plenty of vehicles to serve that purpose.

This Sandman story also couldn't have come at a worse time, when Israel came under savage terrorist attack by the Hamas, and viewed in context of such horrors, that's one more reason the comic's premise is repellent in the extreme, to say nothing of yet another tired retcon and retread of older stories dating back to the Golden Age. No wonder DC and Marvel would be better off being closed down as publishers.

Update: Cosmic Book News notifies that the above isn't the only example of a DC comic starring a Golden Age protagonist that's now being used to tarnish the older stories. Now, even the JSA's being made to look bad, and Alan Scott's being denigrated yet again with more LGBT propaganda of the most bizarre kind. It's just truly awful.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, history, Justice Society of America, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics