The Four Color Media Monitor

Recently, a columnist for Villages News of Florida wondered if it's time to bring back comics heroes, following the recent USA election:

I haven’t written one of these musings for some time. I guess all the various political information missiles got me down wondering how people could write such misleading “facts” and expect the voters to buy the comments as clearly true? Unfortunately, we will now listen to similar after the election comments. I just hope that those unfortunate college students and faculty recover from their disappointment so that the students can graduate and the faculty grow up! The whole mess makes me wonder sometimes why I learned to read. Of course, when I was young you had to essentially learn to read as back then that’s how you got most of your information. Alas, there was no TV or social media available. It took longer for news to get around then, which was good in many ways as it stopped copycats from shooting more people – which is a very good example.

I decided this morning that I needed to go back to my early days of reading to calm my ancient mind. I taught myself to read by perusing the daily comic strips. I would then inform my parents of what was occurring in the strips at dinnertime. Finally, my mother asked my dad how I knew all about what was happening in the strips. He naturally replied that even though I was only five, I was reading them. That’s how I knew I had become a reader. With that information in my still developing brain, I branched out to comic books which were becoming very popular. Back then comic books were sixty-four pages for a dime. Naturally, others saw an advantage in a book that was thirty-two pages for a nickel. In fact, one of them was called “Nickel Comics,” Its main hero was Strongman. He was pretty indestructible, but he couldn’t fly. Therefore, to get places he would hop on cannon shells and ride them to where he wanted to go. Luckily the cannons were always pointed in the right direction.

Strongman shouldn’t have been too upset as Superman could not fly either back then. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound, but no flying. The flying came later, so maybe if Strongman’s creators had persisted, he might have learned to fly too. However, there were too many comic book heroes to follow to worry about Strongman. There were heroes galore and copycats of heroes. Everyone knows of Batman and Robin. There were many copy cats of them which failed for one reason or another. One of the oddest was Mr. Scarlet and Pinky. They caught villains too, most of whom were probably doubling over in laughter at the costumes worn by the good guys. I was never sure how the creators’ expected boys who read most of the comic books to relate to superheroes in scarlet and pink. I guess as I mused above, some writers believe that people will accept anything.

Unfortunately, these last folks are perhaps correct. The last few years obviously shows that. I would expect that the same tendency will continue for many years into the future. That is not really a good situation, so it might be good if more expressions could be made in comic book form. Who knows, Strongman might make a comeback. Strongman, the superhero that is – not a socialist dictator!

On that note, I hope he's not alluding to Donald Trump, though if the columnist is a leftist, it sure would be weird if he really does believe socialism's a bad ideology, considering how much the left sold out to communism over the past decade or so.

But if the guy really thinks superheroes should make a comeback, it'll only happen if positive values are respected, and it sure won't happen so long as DC/Marvel are under corporate ownership as things stand now. Maybe the columnist would do well to look at the situation under a magnifying glass, and actually write about what's gone wrong with superhero fare in the mainstream. Then, we'd actually be getting somewhere.

And as for pink outfits, well I am aware that in addition to Mr. Scarlet's adopted son Pinky, Lee Falk's Phantom was created wearing a purple leotard during the Golden Age, and yes, that too is outdated, but I can't seem to recall many examples of male heroes other than them wearing pink and purple. What I do recall is Saturn Girl from Legion of Super-Heroes wearing the color pink in the Bronze Age, and for heroines, such a color shade is a lot more suited, if that matters.

Labels: comic strips, history, msm propaganda, politics