The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer for the Washington Examiner spoke with actor Dean Cain about DC's publicity stunt turning the son of Superman, Jon Kent, bisexual for the sake of 15 minute headlines, and a good point is made at the end:

“I’m all for comic book characters being LBGT — but I’d love to see new characters created, as opposed to old characters re-branded,” Cain told me.

The "woke" attack on our culture typically means that anything adhering to the standards and ideologies they believe in is lauded and celebrated as bold, brave, and daring. Conversely, if one is against those things, they are seen as some form of bigot. Cain argued that if one is truly bold in the 21st century, they need to go beyond the woke platform.

“Bold would be to head to the different countries that produced the refugees who have come to the USA and address those problems,” Cain said.

Cain makes an excellent point. In my opinion, there’s probably a certain propaganda element when it comes to defining LGBT moments in those ways. It wants people to applaud these things and feel proud of comic book characters' LGBT sexualities. The notion of certain things being bold, brave, and courageous has been saturated to fit a leftist political agenda more so than being actual attributes that are bold, brave, and courageous.

By sharp contrast, the ideologues have no interest in wishing for people to applaud and admire if a character is a proud Israeli, Mexican, Armenian, French, Kenyan, Bulgarian citizen...or even American. They don't want them to applaud if the cast in question celebrates certain cultural ideas from European countries, for example, and chances are they definitely don't want such a storyline greenlighted unless the characters happen to be...LGBT adherents. That's surely the most irritating thing about the tiny tent these leftist ideologues set up: you cannot possibly conceive certain characters/cast members without accepting specific mandates.

The whole embarrassing direction also brought to mind this post on the American Thinker:

At the opening of this post, I was kidding about deporting Superman. Sure, he's an illegal alien who is no longer interested in America's well-being, but I am aware that he's also a fictitious character. That fact alone will make deportation a challenge.

Here's what's important, though: when Superman was associated with truth and justice, we Americans understood that enshrining those values as of utmost importance was an intrinsically American view of itself. Today's leftists, though, mostly want a "better world," one in which earth worship is the world's religion, heterosexuals are a disfavored class, racism is enshrined with Whites viewed as the lowest form of human life, borders are a thing of the past, Islam is a religion of peace, etc.

None of those is among the classic American values, and it's no use pretending that an LGBT Superman who's interested in climate change and open borders cares one whit about America. Superman may be a cartoon, but he's not himself anymore, and it's time for him to go somewhere that will have him — perhaps China.

I would just note that it's the writers who're accountable for depicting a LGBT Superman as disliking America, in lockstep with much of the modern leftist ideology. Which seems to be the case with a lot of such ideologues: if the right-wing disapproves of their belief system, they return favor by seeking to deconstruct everything America stands for. And here's another post, which says:

First, Cain pointed out something that I had missed since I pay little attention to comic books, which is that one of the sundry iterations of Robin, from Batman and Robin, finally came out of the closet. As Cain said, and we all must agree, "Honestly, who's really shocked about that one? I had some thoughts about that a long time ago." (In fact, Robin is now bisexual.) Those of us who grew up on the camp 1960s TV Batman always knew that Robin was a little light in the loafers, as they used to say back in the day.

And it's not just Robin. Marvel announced this past June, in honor of Pride Month, that Captain America, the onetime all-American patriot in the lead-up to and during World War II, is also gay now. [...]

Yes, even if Steve Rogers wasn't replaced wholesale for the umpteenth time, as the publishers have developed an obsession for (just look how obsessed Joe Quesada and company were with getting rid of the Spider-marriage!), they still made a gigantic deal about a LGBT character donning the costume, as though anybody truly cares. And it seems like almost every other year, they try to sideline established characters to replace them with another who'll turn out to be a political statement. Currently, it appears DC intends to repeat the mistake made in 1992, when the Man of Steel was put in death limbo before reviving him several months later. Now, it's not hard to figure a similar instance would come off much worse, and more contemptuous than the previous tale, even if they avoid taking that ghastly route where the Toyman murdered Cat Grant's son around the time nearly 3 decades ago, all just so they could clear away what they perceived as excess baggage in co-stars, which is absolutely ludicrous as it's noxious.

There's a reason Dean Cain was the best Superman. He's a genuinely intelligent and decent guy, qualities that he brought to the screen when he played a fictional superhero in an enjoyably silly TV series.

As for me, in a world in which, despite two decades of relentless proselytizing, the LGBT crowd still represents less than 6% of the population, I don't see a huge market for all these gay superheroes. My children's friends, all nice liberal kids who were assiduously not homophobic, nevertheless would have no interest whatsoever in seeing bisexual male cartoon characters making out.

Even liberals aren't particularly interested in or desperate for such stories in general, which makes it all the more clearer the publishers have convinced themselves the money coming from LGBT practitioners would actually keep their businesses afloat, but either way, what's definitely clear is that they're hell-bent more than ever on turning their business into a political propaganda platform. Something which, IIRC, Ethan Van Sciver wondered a short time ago was case, that they're being paid by political movements to do propaganda, for all the wrong reasons.

On the other hand, Florida Today has an apologist's take on the issue, in a discussion involving older human interest stories, which goes sour after he turns to sugarcoating the modern far-left politics now shoveled into mainstream, and says:

Comic books have since tackled myriad social issues, from discrimination and bigotry to sexism, genocide and substance abuse. They have also tackled sexuality over the years by revealing that several characters were gay or bisexual, though usually involving characters considered secondary, like Iceman, Northstar and John Constantine.

This proves this is not a true fan writing this puff piece, if he has no issue whatsoever with retconning Iceman. Of course, some could wonder if that was a good idea with Constantine, recalling it may have only been around 1993 DC established him as bisexual, at the time they originally launched the Vertigo imprint and made the Hellblazer series part of it. We could even wonder if it was a good idea for William Messner-Loebs to change the Pied Piper to gay, as first seen in the pages of the Flash around 1990. IIRC, the story then didn't say Hartley Rathaway changed his lifestyle in the present, and that's why it's more a retcon than a storyline establishing the former Rogues member decided he was open to the idea. So for all we know, that could've been an early example of a retconning mistake, even if it wasn't as politicized as what came down the pike much later. The columnist drones on:

That changed in 2021. Not only did DC reveal that its infamous Harley Quinn was bisexual and married to fellow Batman nemesis Poison Ivy, but also that Superman's son, Jon Kent (the new Superman), was bisexual, too, and had a boyfriend.

Sure, there will always be haters who criticize the move, saying the comic book industry is kowtowing to the LGBTQ community. And some traditionalists will object, though they would likely object to any change in their favorite heroes and characters. Either way, DC reported "unprecedented" orders for "Superman: Son of Kal-El #5."

I say: Why not embrace this leap toward inclusivity?

I have friends who are gay. Why shouldn't they be able to pick up a comic and find someone with whom they can relate? It's no longer really a big thing to see an Asian character like Shang-Chi, or a Black character like the Falcon, or a Latino character like Jake Gomez, the new Werewolf by Night.

Hopefully there will come a day when it's not a big thing to see a character who is also a member of the LGBTQ community.

Ahem. It stopped being a big thing years ago, as Cain made clear. And it's insulting to the intellect to imply LGBT practitioners can't relate to a heterosexual character, or be inspired and encouraged by their MO, and appreciate it as a good example. Or that POC can't relate to a white character in any way. No questions asked by the above propagandist whether mainstream comics have become too political for their own good either, I notice. One more reason I find it upsetting at this point whenever such MSM papers do comics coverage, because they're not approaching it from a dedicated viewpoint that appreciates the older creations not only for what they were, but what they can still be. Or more precisely, they don't recognize white/heterosexual characters are just as valid today as before. By failing to do so, they disrespect the earlier white/Jewish creators, and worst, these ideologues are hijacking their creations for the sake of their own narrow agendas. The columnist predictably ignores a valid argument that's been told in the past, how change needs to be consistent with what's come before, and all that aside, it's unhealthy to base changes on a political agenda (that part about "haters" is yet more distorting propaganda too, only meant to divert attention from more serious issues).

Mainstream superhero comics have sadly collapsed, but what's really devastating is that today, they're under conglomerate ownership, which enabled this current fiasco. And nobody who's a realist cares enough to try and buy out ownership of these famous creations to see if they could improve upon the mess that's in motion now.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, Superman