Kind of interesting to see comic books return to this; as far as I'm aware this kind of thing hasn't been done, at least with big name superheroes, since WWII.
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Really? Despite being a big fan of Marvel in general as a kid I never got very into The Hulk. I'll be the first to admit the my knowledge of comic books is pretty limited.
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In the first issue, Banner cures a soviet agent named the "Gargoyle," who then gives a speech about how the capitalists saved him but communism couldn't.
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The book Freakonomic says that the Superman vs the KKK radio show is what broke the back of the KKK. Not that the same thing will happen here.
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Iron Man's original origin had him getting his armor after he was injured in Vietnam, where he was a military advisor or somesuch.
The Fantastic Four fought a Soviet cosmonaut on the moon called the Red Ghost... the Avengers fought the Red Guardian... lots of Cold War supervillains were around in the early days of Marvel.
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Oh, plus they skewered the Ayahtolla Kohmeni in the Batman series where the second Robin died.
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This is all very interesting; I really had no idea that comic books served as propaganda so frequently over the years.
[Edit--though I'm not sure that all of these really function as propaganda. I knew, for example, that Iron Man was originally forced to wear the suit to keep his war wounds in check, but I didn't remember it being an advocate of one side or the other in the Vietnam War.]
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Some of the original Superman comics were pretty heavy on the propaganda. I particularly recall the cover where Superman is using his Super-strength to power a printing press that's punching out American flags. The caption is "Superman says : Slap a Jap today! Buy war bonds!"
There's a site out there that collects a lot of these; I think it's called "Superman is a dick", or something of that sort. I believe it's been linked before, but if you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth a look.
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Besides just the origin of Ironman in vietnam, it was a very anti-communist comic in the beginning. At least half of the villains he fought were communist or backed by "the communist conspiracy" and Tony Stark was a sort of capitalist champion, the mega-successful businessman with lots of US defense contracts.
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Would you consider Miller's earlier "Dark Knight" work to be propoganda-laden? He takes pot shots at just about everyone in that one, including comic book propoganda itself (in the whole conflict with Superman). Is it still propoganda when you bag on everyone? He definitely took sides... just not what we would recognize as a particular political party line.
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Maybe Miller can pull it off, but this comic sounds like a REALLY bad idea.
I mean, yep terrorism is bad... but superheroes already fight generic supervillains/terrorists, and comics have always been full of "terrorism is bad" messages. Having Batman fight Al Qaeda... eh. Seems more to cheapen and trivialize the reality of Al Qaeda's terror.
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I can assure you, the comics pictured at supermanisadick.com are real. I used to own more than a few of them.
Basically, DC's writers ran out of ideas. After coming up with new and more powerful ways for Superman to use his powers over and over again, he finally got too powerful to be interesting. What can you do to someone who can go through time, put the moon back in its orbit, etc?
That's when the different colors of kryptonite showed up, that all had weird results. That's the dream sequences came around, and the imaginary stories, and Superman having to be cruel to his friends (always for a good reason). And there seemed to be an unwritten law that there had to be a gorilla -- giant or otherwise -- in every third comic.
If you've seen the Adam West Batman TV show, that's what the comics were like then.
As for propaganda, I can't believe no one has mentioned Captain America yet. That's how his comics got their start, along with the Human Torch and Submariner. The fight against the Nazis.
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I liked the adventures of Kavelier and Clay, which is wonderfully energetic novel that I'm sure most of you have read, tells the story of how and why a boy used his comics to defeat anti-semitism.
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