I was looking into some of the older batman comics and I wanted to know more about the personal politics of the writers. Frank miller, moore, etc, and needless to say I didn’t really find much in that regard.
I posted an article above; just as an example to what kind of info I could find about that subject. I’m not satisfied.
Like are superheroes just a right wing ideal? That issues in the world need (a few) very powerful people in order to solve instead of just systematically solving them?
Or is that the superheroes we do have are made by people with rightwing leanings?
Well, Moore particularly is pretty cool I think.
On the politics of super heroes as a whole, there’s definitely something to be criticized, I’d take it from Alan Moore himself in this interview. There’s some more interesting criticism in the video I found it in, which is about comic book movies rather than comics themselves, but still criticizes the idea of the super hero.
My own take is that, while the role that super heroes usually take reinforces cultural hegemony and the status quo, it’s still possible for them to embody proletarian ideology, they just need to shed the great man theory of history and lean into a social message of improving society through collective action. I don’t know about any examples of that if I’m being honest.
Golden Age Superman is the Proletarian Superhero. Thst dude fucking ruled. His original antagonists were landlords, domestic abusers, the kkk and corrupt politicians. He also took a LOT less shit from people and would straight up tell them they’re assholes and why and that if they don’t clean up their act right now he WILL be coming back. 1930s-mid 50s Superman was a really good dude.
I was looking into golden age superman lol I can’t believe they just turned him into what he is today. It’s a shame, he kinda was a more unhinged green arrow.
I don’t know anything about Green Arrow but that seems cool. The old Superman radio play has some really really based serials, a very thinly veiled KKK (different name, but it’s easy to tell) is a recurring threat. He tells a dude with racist hiring practices thst he’s no better than Hitler cause Golden Age Superman does NOT mince fucking words.
Also I’ve had the outline for an absolutely epic Supean movie trilogy in my head for a while which spans the entire 20th century it’s a lot even in broad strokes but essentially same origin story as usual and he moves to metropolis and starts being Superman around the start of the Depression and is Golden Age Superman, really going for the little guy, ww2 comes and he’s famous as hell by then and sticks to his normal landlord beating job while doing anti nazi propaganda films as essentially an Elvis style draft publicity thing, he’s feeling pretty patriotic at the time and is all truth justice and the American way Superman until he’s bamboozled into essentially being the Hiroshima bomb in effect and leading to pretty much the same end conditions of the war BUT Superman is disillusioned and fucks off.to.the USSR He makes a solid life there and really helps the fuck out and having him there is essentially a permanent nuclear deterrent. Going back go ww2 lex luthor is born in the mid 30s or so and experiences the war as an American child, his dad is a Henry Ford kinda old timey industrialist guy and blah blah blah, by the time the 50s-60s are going on he’s an objectivist and rises politically due to the anti Superman ubermensh rhetoric he’s known for blended with anti communism cause Superman is now a Soviet, the irony should not be lost here. This situation leads to a massive nuclear stockpiling by NATO and a lot less so by the Warsaw pact cause they kinda just lean on Superman to be their iron dome. President Author blasts off the nukes in the late 70s, Superman can’t stop em all and the USSR is devastated. In response Superman pulls a Superman 4 the quest for peace and gathers all the nukes and hurls them into the sun. This leaves him weak as hell and he’s out of commission for at least a year. In thst time conventional ww3 has totally broken out and Superman fully charged up saves a shitload of innocents (which btw, he is rescuing cays from trees and that kinda stuff throughout) and ultimately wins by using super loud speaking to win the hearts and minds of the world over with a really good speech that really encapsulates the whole trilogy well thst there’s no fucking way i could imagine but the overall thing is that Luthor was right, humanity didn’t need Superman, but he needed them as an alien infant who crashed on a farm 90 years ago and he’s just trying to repay the kindness as best he can we as an audience secretly know we DID need Superman to teach us about our fundamental kindness, we get a heartwarming ceae Fite montage. Superman flies to the fucking white house and says ‘Lex Luthor! I’m placing you under arrest’ and then flies him to the Hague.
Tone wise, despite the content I want it to feel like the 1970s Superman movies with Christopher Reeve. The summary may seem bleak but bear in mind I’m talking 3 movies around 2 hours each and a Superman who spends most of his time handling smaller scale good deeds even when dealing with geopolitical crises. I want absolutely massive and bombastic with major highs and lows and all that drama crap but in general an aggressively uplifting tone should permeate
There’s a Flash comic where he works with Fidel Castro lol. But the ending makes Castro seem all sinister
Pre ww2 superheroes are pretty cool across the board. Batman still sucks, but less than he did after!
Damn, now I really want to see Superman put a landlord through a wall.
Just read Action Comics #1 and go from there, it’s the absolute earliest incarnation of Superman so it’s easy to find. Here he is demanding better conditions for prisoners!
How cool is that?
One thing I’ve been thinking about is the new Batman movie. That one highlighted Batman’s philanthropy as a means to helping the impoverished of Gotham. Although to be fair philanthropy is hardly an effective means to improving people’s socioeconomic conditions and discrimination groups face.
I just don’t think I’ve seen a superhero ever address the systemic causes of crime.
He doesn’t.
At the end of the movie, he monologues about how the city is full of crime and misery. But he needs to continue being an accountable vigilante because it gives people hope, and hope will fix things.
But the movie didn’t show the Wayne family’s philanthropy as good. It was portrayed as a corrupt political move that resulted in the abuse and neglect of orphans which the Riddler was a victim of. It also resulted in the murder of a journalist orchestrated by Bruce’s father and the mob. The Riddler spends the whole movie exposing the crime and corruption of the elite, then Batman doesn’t even acknowledge them besides “I need to follow the clue of this crime scene to catch the Riddler”
Zamn.
I haven’t had the time to watch movies but is that really what that was about?
Yes, but the lack of acknowledgement from Batman and Riddler just committing random acts of violence at the end just made the movie dumb as hell to me. They built up this grand narrative then just… liberalism.
With Joker, at least they didn’t try to make Joker into some underdog with an agenda trying to fight the rich. He just had a personal grievance due to the same factors as Riddler (abuse, poverty, mental illness) that spiraled out of control and accidentally made him a symbol of resistance.