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I have serious doubts as to the sort of info we get regularly from the media on al Qaeda, too, and when I said/wrote that I can't back it wholeheartedly, I meant just that - not that I supported it entirely. I've met pilots who flew for the Germans in WW2, I've known people who were involved on at least four sides of that war, as combatants or civilians, and I can't say rightly that I'd like to see anyone who ever served as a Nazi soldier/paper-pusher what have you smashed into the ground and set on fire. And since I still hold a bit of a grudge over some battles on US soil not much older (and some more recent) than the Second World War, I can't comfortably fall back onto the 'it was a long time ago' clause. And neither did comics, since they, as others have pointed out and can probably document better than I, were doing this sort of superhero-smackdown-on-current-enemy deal before Miller even picked up a pen.
I hope Miller will do something approaching intelligent, and that he's not going to be racist about it. I don't know, and nobody really will, until the book comes out or some previews are released or something. There is historical precedent for a higher ratio of racism in comics that any other field/medium I can think of, from John Byrne's many bon mots, to the fact that ninety-seven percent of Native American characters are still drawn wearing buckskins or using the terms 'brave' or 'pale eyes' in normal, contemporous settings, un-ironic-like. Superhero books have a tendency to be, yes, awfully idiotic and simplistic in their political expressions, sometimes to their benefit ('The Authority', 'The Pro', 'Dark Knight Strikes Again') and often just making asses of themselves and making all comics, by connection, seem the stupidest material available on the face of the earth; that damned issue of Spider-Man where we get to watch Doom and Magneto and possibly Charles Manson and resurrected ghost of Hitler weep at the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the (real or Marvel) world. Because nobody'd ever knocked over a building before or, oh, killed a whole lot of people in one go. Apparently. Hey, it made Doom cry, who are we to criticize?
But there are some intelligent, good politicized comics. They do exist. 'The Invisibles' or 'The Filth' spring right to mind. 'Brought to Light' had its moments. Whoever did 'You're Wrong' for the 'World War 3' anthology.
Then there's the straight out no angles satirical stuff that comprised most of 'Transmetropolitan' and 'Boondocks'.
The very excellent 'Pogo' didn't necessarily shy away from politics, even if it rarely used immediately recognizable caricatures of current concerns, in the same was as, say, Flash's bunny ears at the end of Miller's '...Strikes Again'.
I mean, Erik Larsen had his fin-headed lovely deck Prezzie Bush right there on the cover not too long ago. And it was cool. It was a fake, shapeshifted not-Bush, if I remember rightly, but I don't think Dragon knew it at the time. He just thought the American President messed with him a bit too much and did something about it. And damned if it didn't send a little thrill throught the spines of many a reader who could never admit it out loud because we have the Patriot Act to keep that sort of outburst checked. |
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