"Comics always had politics"

Answer me this: to what purpose?
What is the point of politicizing comics?

Because no matter which direction you go, it always comes across as pandering or masturbatory fantasy for either side. What relevant point are you trying to make? Take Marvel Comics for example: stuff they normally publish isn't changing conservatives minds, and liberals merely get reaffirmation of their beliefs. But other than that, there isn't anything else that really challenges people's position?

Also why does Westerns always make politics about stuff that concern them? Do you think the average Indonesian, Brazilian or Chilean gives a shit about what happens north of the Ecuador?

Other urls found in this thread:

fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RS21049.pdf
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

It makes the other side mad.

OP while true people only say that when they want a Sup Forums shitposting about US politics and different races

>Do you think the average Indonesian, Brazilian or Chilean gives a shit about what happens north of the Ecuador
>north of the Ecuador

Don't South American countries hate each other?

I really liked the original Secret Empire story and most Jon Sable Freelance stories and they're all politically charged.

>Because no matter which direction you go, it always comes across as pandering or masturbatory fantasy for either side.

Only under bad writers, which is the actual problem. Not enough talent in the industry and political writing when done poorly is more cringey than generic capeshit down poorly.

>liberals merely get reaffirmation of their beliefs
reaffirmation of beliefs is something the average person likes a lot
most people don't want you to challenge their worldview, but they love when someone affirms it

if your readers are mostly liberal, it only makes sense to stroke their egos a bit, 90% of them will like it, and only an insignificant minority will hate being pandered to (they won't be vocal about this though, to avoid being associated with the enemy's side)

They feel like what they're doing has to Mean Something or else they're wasting time making cartoons for children.

Bolivia hates Chile.
Paraguay '''really''' hates Brazil.
Venezuela and Colombia hate each other.

But South America is still more functional than the Middle East.

Barely. I recall a few countries credit ratings in South America were downgraded for funding Islamists to a ridiculous extent.

>no one ever said "I want some good old alt-right shitposting in my comics"
>everytime someone critisizes lefties shitting up comics with their agenda someone says "you'd like it to be the other end of the spectrum"
Why don't you straight up admit that you like comicbooks to be borderline propaganda instead trying to attack imagined double standard?

>trying to attack imagined double standard?

It's not an imagined double standard. Anyone who's read a Marvel comic in the last few years would know that.

What?

i'm gonna need so sauce on that claim

fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RS21049.pdf

It's long, but the first few actual pages of the report should give you the general gist of the situation.

Because politics is part of life, and art reflects life, therefore art will sometimes have politics in it.

Only if its to make a relevant point about real life to bring it full circle, but not to pander to either side.

>Because no matter which direction you go, it always comes across as pandering or masturbatory fantasy for either side. What relevant point are you trying to make? Take Marvel Comics for example: stuff they normally publish isn't changing conservatives minds, and liberals merely get reaffirmation of their beliefs. But other than that, there isn't anything else that really challenges people's position?

Because fiction is always an awful way to push propaganda.

There simply isn't a way for it to NOT come off as ham-fisted, because your entire world is nothing but a strawman that you write to support your beliefs.

SJWs don't mind this, because they treat every medium as a way to push propaganda, regardless of how horribly the quality suffers because of it.

It's also the reason why everyone else says "we don't want any sort of propaganda being pushed in our comics", because everyone else wants to read good comics, not listen to some dumbass writer ruin a comic by turning it into their own personal political soapbox.

Or you know... Niggas just want to fight dragons in space and shit.

>Original Action comics was pandering
>Hard Travellin' Heroes was pandering
>Stormwatch was pandering
>HURRR WHY ISN'T THIS STORY WRITTEN FOR EVERYONE MAN WAAAAHHH
Casuals should be fucking gassed

Go back to Sup Forums.

And in retrospect, we see Superman telling Americans to "Slap a Jap", and realize how hilariously stupid it is.

Shit like FalCap isn't even dated yet, and everyone can already see how hilariously stupid it is. 30 years from now, it'll probably just look even worse.

>Hating casuals is Sup Forums
Fuck off casual. If I was Sup Forums why would I ever like any of those comics? Oh that's right you wouldn't know because you've never read them!

Using Nazi rhetoric like gassing people makes you Sup Forums.

>It's my first day on the Sup Forums hacker website!

Not even him, but you're the one that needs to fuck off.

>what is hyperbole
Get nuked gook.

Then the whole site would count as fucking Sup Forums
Is this the first time you've been shit on and told you need to die user?

For a board that prides itself on being superior from Sup Forums you do sound like Nazis a lot.

>using racial slurs
Thank you for proving my point.

>For a board that prides itself on being superior from Sup Forums you do sound like Nazis a lot.

Actually, this board is pretty awful, because we have to share it with people like you.

Thanks for proving you don't now shit about shit. "Get nuked gook" is an Sup Forums and Sup Forums phrase used to shit on people posting from Japan (since you're obviously a newfag I guess I'll further explain that those boards show what country you're posting from)
>inb4 you're some shit tier niceposting troll

>For a board that prides itself on being superior from Sup Forums you do sound like Nazis a lot.
How did you get that from what either of us said? And I don't recall anyone ever saying we're better than Sup Forums.

>prides itself on being superior
you do sound like Nazis tbqh

>Thank you for proving my point.
literally every board uses slurs, it's just that only Sup Forums uses them without a hint of irony, which is one of the main signifiers of their faggotry
at least have the decency lurk for a month before posting

I am from Argentina.
People care about what happens in the most populated countries in the world that are also the biggest markets. Obviously they care more about their own countries. But an important minority of news are always from other countries. Exceptionally, it can be a lot more. Now with the Hurricanes in the Caribbean and the earthquakes in Mexico, close to half of the news are from foreign countries.
And everybody on the planet has some familiarity with the USA to some degree from its tv shows and Hollywood.
If there is a school shooting in the USA, it makes it to the news all over the world. The same happens with terrorist attacks like the one that happened in Barcelona.

People dont care at all about the current culture wars in the USA between leftists and the alt right. People who know about it dislike it, and hope the current American fashions (like identity politics), dont spread here.

South Americans killed/kill each other in wars far less than Europe. Even if you forget the 2 world wars, you had what the URSS did, Yugoslavia and Kosovo in the 90s, and now Russia-Ukraine (plus conflicts few people care about with Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia if it can be considered Europe).
South America had its wars in the XIX century, it has had stable borders all the XXth century, and this century too

I think comics should be political, but that doesnt mean they should be about Trump
X-Men used to treat stuff like Aids or Apartheid South Africa, or religious sects. They werent poorly made references to Reagan.
A good political idea for a modern x-men book would be a pregnancy test that also tells you if your future kid is an inhuman or mutant, that leads to most mutants/inhumans being aborted.
Let the x-men discuss that, and let Sinister harvest the DNA of the aborted potentially superpowered fetuses.
Not everything political has to be about a twitter fight between leftists and right wingers.

Are you saying conservatives only make up 10% of the comic market?

I'd believe it.

Not because only 10% of actual comic fans are conservative, but because they're successfully driven off the rest with their hamfisted, far-left propaganda.

>A good political idea for a modern x-men book would be a pregnancy test that also tells you if your future kid is an inhuman or mutant, that leads to most mutants/inhumans being aborted.
Let the x-men discuss that,
I would pay money to read that fucking /co a goldmine of ideas.

I meant only 10% of leftists would be annoyed by being pandered to, though this may very well be true as well

I'm leaning libertarian and slightly left on the compass and I hate it also, 90% figure is taken out of nowhere. If I had to guess I'd say more people dislike far-left pandering than like it, and more people don't care than dislike it. Overall it's -EV move in terms of satisfying your audience for sure.

>comics always had politics
Yeah, but the right ones. And don't give me that crap
>you're mad because now they're against you
Nah. Politics in comics have never been 100% agreeing with me. There were many issues I care for that are never addressed in comics (capitalism, for one, arrow doesn't even scratch the surface) and that's a good thing. Because comic politics, at least in mainstream capes were never divisive. They had politics the overwhelming minority agreed on, like stopping foreign invasions, standing up for your country, stopping wifebeaters, etc.

Now, you have stuff a great number of your readers don't like. So they leave. And the industry suffers.
Comics is a small industry, audiencewise. We need to have stuff most of us enjoy, because there aren't that many of us and if half of us leave, the industry is fucked.
Yes, comics can have politics.
But for fuck's sake, only politics that play it safe. We can't afford otherwise.

...

>capitalism
Read Grimjack.

>Why does a form of media involve the creator's personal ideas


You guys had too many vaccines as children

>But for fuck's sake, only politics that play it safe.

That's not the problem.

The problem is that comic writers have gotten so hamfisted in their political soapboxing, that the "hero" becomes "the voice of reason" in a complex issue, and the "villain" becomes "I AM SILLY".

They're so bad that it makes Sup Forums smuggie comics look subtle.

I don't mind that Green Arrow is a stupid commie. When him and Hal would argue, I never got the impression "This is clearly the writer's self-insert, and the other one is clearly just the author beating up a strawman argument."

Who are you quoting?

Politics in comics is fine from time to time when you make a particular political idea a theme in a story. Think of how the X-Men has been a series about discrimination against (insert minority here) since the Stan Lee days.

There's a huge difference between examining an idea and preaching a belief. Marvel nowadays is acting like they're a goddamn priesthood out to save all the sinners from themselves and assure the true believers of their salvation. And it's biting them in the ass, because that only appeals to fellow cult members, and there aren't nearly enough of them.

But that was the case before. With captain america and red scull, or with supes and wifebeaters. There were cases were good/bad were clearly defined before. And it was fine, because it was safe cases.

What about portraying Nixon as a super villain that tried to stage a coup? Was that safe too?

If it was post watergate, I'd say yes.

Answer me this: why do you care?
Does it trigger you that much?

the specters that haunt 's diseased mind
they whisper
"taste is for cucks"
"that author you like is a diversity hire"
"I only criticize things in order to undermine them"

this compels the user to shitpost, to greentext indiscriminately with imaginary quotes, to spite people that don't matter at all

But that's also boring.

Again, see the Green Arrow/Hal type relationship.

I know this might seem like a completely foreign concept in the age of foreign comics, but you actually CAN write a character who believes things other than the writer believes, without coming across as a complete strawman.

It's just that people stopped doing it a long time ago, and yes, it's entirely the fault of SJWs turning the medium into another avenue for far left propaganda ahead of writing interesting characters, and interesting stories.

>I'm going to pretend triggering and disgust is the same thing, so I can point people who don't like tumblrshit as tumblr-like

And first chance to use something from my new, slrepi folder, here we go!

I'm glad that you decided to quit pretending you actually read comics. Read the shit you bitch about if you want to seem less retarded.

Yeah, really clearing the high bar there.

>Marvel Comics
And there it is. Why do 15 year old Sup Forumstards always say this? It makes you so easy to spot.

I don't think we disagree.

There are cases with no clear "right" side (hal/ollie)
And cases with clear "right" side (supes/wifebeaters, steve/scull)
In the case of the latter, the issue at hand must be something most people agree on, or you risk alienating the audience. In the case of the former, go wild, if you can genuinely have them be somewhat balanced.

I believe these things. Do we disagree on something?

>if you haven't read one comic, you haven't read any comics

>South Americans killed/kill each other in wars far less than Europe.
Just because they aren't at war, doesn't mean killings have stopped.

>If you haven't read one of the most politically charged comics then your opinion still matter
How about Suicide Squad then retard? Have you at least read that?

Why are you disgusted by "politics" that you don't agree with?

Because like anything else, that's an aesthetic appearances comics and in this case, comics with certain politics, provoke emotional reactions in the reader.
Some of those reactions can and will be negative. How is that confusing?

>But that was the case before. With captain america and red scull, or with supes and wifebeaters.
I disagree. There's a difference between making a story black and white, and giving up all pretense at telling a story in order to affirm a set of beliefs. There are times in modern comic stories where the narrative collapses and caves in on itself so that the writer can try to impart emotional affect on the author. The characters completely dissolve into allegories for small moments at a time in order to put on a morality play, and then reform into personalities again in order to help drag the story along. And that's not to say that the characters act OOC, because they don't have to. But they'll fade away into becoming Everyman, Fellowship, Concientiousness, Woke-ness, and so on, to give cloying dialogue that follows the same monotonous banter every goddamned time, because they're all aping the same dull mush of respectability-focused writing. It's like they're auditioning for an HBO prestige show or a West Wing revival, and their writing reeks of it when they're churning out some vaguely emotional spiel. The only reason it's so hard to call writers out on it is because Americans don't have a good grasp on the concept of bullshit - they think they have to catch people in a lie in order to make a point, so American critics tilt at windmills.

*aesthetic experience,

the funniest thing about politicizing comics is they're not like movies or tv shows that reach millions of people, literally only like 20K people buy an issue of a comic book, so they could be magical mind control devices that turn anyone who reads it into the writers drones and it wouldn't matter lmao

>What is the point of politicizing comics?
Because it's 2015.

>Do we disagree on something?

Only the part where "Marvel should only handle political topics that everyone agrees on."

I think Marvel's problem the worst aspects of both cases you mentioned.

They're taking cases with no clear right side, PRETENDING that there is a clear right side, and basically telling their readers if they disagree with "THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY", that they're literally nazis.

Take illegal immigration, for example. You could show:
1. Women and children fleeing drug cartels across the border.
2. Drug cartels running guns and drugs across the border.
3. Illegal immigrants working multiple jobs to put their anchor baby through college.
4. Illegal immigrants committing identity theft in order to get benefits.

But no, instead we get shit like "Captain Falcon helps a bunch of poor underprivileged hispanics to "undocumentedly" enter the country, and if you disagree, you're literally a terrorist who condones performing human experiments on underprivileged minorities".

ITT

>literally only like 20K people buy an issue of a comic book, so they could be magical mind control devices that turn anyone who reads it into the writers drones and it wouldn't matter lmao
That's a good point. Comics have no artistic merit on their own, and anything worth a damn can be dragged out of the shit and put into something worthwhile like movies or plays. Even if the '70s Superman spent every issue spouting shitty banter about stagflation, Richard Donner could have still made Superman '78.

>Comics have no artistic merit on their own
That's entirely untrue.

We don't disagree. I'm saying either go with clear cases, or be balanced in unclear ones.

>north of the Ecuador
>the Ecuador
I'd say your questionable grasp of the english language or geography is a more pressing issue than politics in comics.

Socially, but not politically. As in, peoples will hate on one and stereotype each other with genuine bile; but the governments are mostly indifferent to one another (especially since the latest corruption scandals revealed that most Latino American government were puppets to a syndicate of Brazilian corporations).

Latino Americans are like one big family where everyone fucking hates eavh other but have no one else in the world that will put up with their shit.

In that case, yes.

If they have merit, then why doesn't execution matter? If they have merit, then the writing should matter, and stories shouldn't get a pass just because the broad summaries seem sensible. But that's never how it goes - the ends always justify the means. So the medium is trash, because the stories are interchangeable and ultimately meaningless. If they had meaning, I'd think otherwise, but they don't.

I actually had an idea about ten years ago for an X-story where a young girl is being pressured to abort her "X-gene positive" baby whom she wants to keep. It ends up becoming a court case, and a large debate over whether the unborn mutant should be allowed to live, with one of the arguments against her being "it could become a tyrant like Magneto, or be an omega level threat that alters reality."

I still think about it sometimes, but I kind of gave up on ever pitching it to Marvel when I realized how shitty and monolithic their editing staff (mainly Quesada) is sometimes towards their writers.

>f they had meaning, I'd think otherwise, but they don't.
So you've never read a comic book story that had meaning?

you could do a lot with that idea
You could have Reverend Stryker publishing ads in which he says his church will pay for your mutant abortion, proving what his sect was always really about
You could have sinister collecting dna from aborted fetuses
And you could have a reason for a great slowing down of mutant population growth that doesnt need Casandra Nova, Wanda or Terrigen mist genocide.
Another idea I had was a morally grey x-men (Business people Emma and Shaw with the help of a mutant biology expert) finally found a way to repower M-Day depowered mutants (like Jubilee or Dani Moonstar), but the process is so expensive, they are financing it with the sales of this pregnancy test (which is a huge commercial success). to make the whole thing more grey

X-Men as pure goody goody superheroes who beat the villain of the week are pointless and boring.

"Comics always had people".

Answer me this: to what purpose?
What is the point of peopling comics?

Because no matter which people you use, it always comes across as pandering or masturbatory fantasy. What relevant point are you trying to make? Take Marvel Comics for example: people they normally publish aren't changing conservatives people, and liberal people merely get reaffirmation of their people. But other than that, there isn't anything else that really challenges people's people?

Also why does Westerns always make comics about people that concern them? Do you think the average Indonesian, Brazilian or Chilean gives a shit about people north of the Ecuador?

>a toilet is better than a hole in the ground

>Do you think the average Indonesian, Brazilian or Chilean gives a shit about what happens north of the Ecuador?
Chilean here, me importa un pico conchetumadre

I'd say 10% is even a stretch, American comics (Capes) have by and large been pretty left wing since Action Comics #1.

People forget the Superman radio show was the first mainstream thing to discredit the KKK and generally when the right talks about comics it's to complain and/or censor. Whereas when the left talks about comics its usually to praise.

>generally when the right talks about comics it's to complain and/or censor. Whereas when the left talks about comics its usually to praise.

If we're talking about nuMarvel, that's probably true.

And the left is objectively wrong to praise them.

I'm not talking about hard identity politics.

But compare the praise for the Deathstroke gun violence PSA issue from this year to the "rights" condemnation of Superman saving people from a gun totting asshole who's shooting "illegal immigrants".

>But compare the praise for the Deathstroke gun violence PSA issue from this year

See

All art is always politicised. By presenting predominantly straight/white/male heroes, they're perpetuating the status quo.

>A good political idea for a modern x-men book would be a pregnancy test that also tells you if your future kid is an inhuman or mutant, that leads to most mutants/inhumans being aborted.
>Let the x-men discuss that, and let Sinister harvest the DNA of the aborted potentially superpowered fetuses.
Jesus Christ, mate. That honestly sounds super interesting once I got past the initial surprise.

>obvious Sup Forums bait
>all these (you)s
whew lad

Art is about transferring ideas. Many artists have used art to comment on the world around them. Sometimes, this is to make an argument; sometimes, this is merely a side effect of the writer's viewpoint.

Just like Disney selling war bonds.

>Comics always had politics
It didn't, this started in the 70's, unless you count Superman and Captain America punching Hitler every week

> Do you think the average Indonesian, Brazilian or Chilean gives a shit about what happens north of the Ecuador?

1. Excellent Pun
2. Isolationism is a pretty American sentiment. South America and Canada tend to be more closely tied to European goings on because they still have links to their parent colonizers, and Europeans obviously have to live next to Europeans (the worst part of being European)

It's only in isolated countries you get this sense of fuck the rest of the world, at least post Industrial Revolution.

>People start aborting their x-gene babies
>researchers find they can use the cellular makeup of these babies to produce drugs and treatments that can cure the worlds worst diseases
>Meanwhile Mr. Sinister wants to utilize the X-Gene stem cells for nefarious purposes
>the X-Men are stuck in this horrible tug of war where they want to support peoples right to choose, the benefits to mankind, the DANGERS to mankind, and the possible extinction of their species

The kind of shit you'll never have in comics because the writers are all fucking cowards

>By presenting predominantly straight/white/male heroes, they're perpetuating the status quo.

It always cracks me up that white males have to be penalized because so called "minorities" (whom as they themselves often crow, are now the majority) still consider the WASP the 'default individual' due to their own insecurities. I remember when those lost Chapelle Show skits aired and they had the stereotype fairies, and then they asked the audience for feedback all the nogs were talking about how it wasn't fair treatment cause the white one wasn't as bad cause white people are the default, or something

>unless you count Superman and Captain America punching Hitler every week
This should count, considering it was the comic creators showing their views on getting involved versus isolationism.

>Another idea I had was a morally grey x-men (Business people Emma and Shaw with the help of a mutant biology expert) finally found a way to repower M-Day depowered mutants (like Jubilee or Dani Moonstar), but the process is so expensive, they are financing it with the sales of this pregnancy test (which is a huge commercial success). to make the whole thing more grey

Also they're using the aborted fetus' themselves. Possibly partially from Sinisters research.

And then there's the market of normal people who want super powers

Aight, then it started in the 30's. Mind you a lot of the creators of these figures were Jewish, so they had a reason to be speaking out about Hitler

What is wrong, why are you so defensive towards a clearly South American OP? Can't call him a racist Nazi?

Well, yeah?

It never fails to draw laughter from me by saying that "comics are an exclusively white male hobby" even though they have been popular in Latin America where none of the people are really considered white by the West.

This. Hell they even clarify it on fucking job applications

Caucasian (Latin/South American)
Caucasian (Not Latin or South American)

Bruh

Politics in comics is here to stay and comics is better for it. Even Jack 'The King of Comics' Kirby would love all the political commentary in recent comics.

>You fellas think of comics in terms of comic books, but you're wrong. I think you fellas should think of comics in terms of drugs, in terms of war, in terms of journalism, in terms of selling, in terms of business. And if you have a viewpoint in drugs, or if you have a viewpoint on war, or if you have a viewpoint on the economy, I think you can tell it more effectively in comics than you can in words. I think nobody is doing it. Comics is journalism. But now it's restricted to soap opera.
-Jack Kirby

"everything is political" and "everything being art" is post-modern thinking. This is the same mind set that rejects the notion of science being used to find objective truths.