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Perhaps that's because the extreme left isn't really all that left and the extreme right is regularly loudly spewing things not fit for polite company? Conservative thought isn't what we see today. We see something else dressed up as conservative thought while true traditional conservatives get disparaged as RINOs. That's, in my opinion, why they end up being the butt of jokes.

That's what I gather. And what my Republican friends gather as well. (I live on Staten Island. It's pretty much all Republican here)

However, I wouldn't mind hearing your perspective on this, @bralinator .

Though if you've already stated your ideas regarding this point, you can link me to it instead! I

(For the record... I used to be a Young Republican. I did it as a Favor to my pal. That got me into events such as Parties for Rudy Giuliani. Good times.)

Part (but not all) of this is that conservatives are often waging their battles from the negative side of the argument in matters of society & culture. No to this, no to that, etc. It is far easier to gain acceptance when you are offering something and saying yes you can. People's natural instinct is to go against someone telling them they cannot do something. The sides flip when it comes to gun control, which may be one reason (of many) why liberals have had milder success than they have had in other areas.

From a comic book perspective, the creative arts (movies, tv, music, down to comic books) are generally populated with liberals. I am not surprised that books get political or push boundaries. I think the audience for comic books at least is more liberal than not - though I do think the publishers and groups pushing for more diversity in books often overestimate how liberal the reading audience actually is. The publishers, after the USA today articles and such can at times back away from some of their more liberal ideas as well - "cough...DC...cough..."

The audience being more liberal is by its own nature going to support these liberal creators and their beliefs.

Orson Scott Card got booted off Superman before he wrote a page because of his views. A Nick Spencer can tweet his views and insert them into his books and get a second Capt America book published. If it became public that Alex Ross painted a Hillary vampire biting the Statue of Liberty painting, does anyone really believe the big two would give him anymore work? Outside of artists being accused of over sexualizing women in their work, I am unsure if someone with a liberal bent could at this time get kicked off a book for their views because a majority of the audience and marketplace are liberal.

I think that some of it also distills down to optimism. Comics are about bright futures where paragons stand up for what is right with no expectation of reward. Whether it's "truth, justice and the American Way" (or peace for all mankind), "with great power comes great responsibility" or most of the other motivations (Yes, Punisher, I'm looking at you. You too Booster.)

Right now, in particular, there is a very vocal component of Conservativism that focuses on engendering a sense of fear, pessimism and divisiveness. In my local community of about 150,000, there have been two, maybe three murders in the last 3-5 years. One was domestic and another appears to have involved mental illness or synthetics. In between, there have been a few other incidents of violence, including a fight that broke out at a video game and bad pizza parlor. If you read the local conservative forums, there is a very strong sense that the barbarians are at the gate and we not safe to walk down the street. That's really, really sad.

With superhero comics in general, we don't see that, we see people pulling together and looking out for the common good simply because it's right and not because there's a PR moment or a monetary reward at the end of the story. Instead, we're inundated with ideas that the people over there want to kill us, and the company over there is going to pollute our drinking water and our government is going to infringe on our rights.

So, yeah, comics start out being optimistic and then occasionally get heavy-handed about the things that the creators are passionately in favor of or passionately opposed to. Ultimately, I'm OK with that. I question the validity of creativity without passion.

3. At one time, I assume you were just a fan like me with a large to be read pile. How has being in the position as an executive of one of the top two publishers changed your fandom and overall outlook on comics?

I wish all the people who say Dan Didio cares nothing about DC’s legacy or comics in general could have seen him at the TwoMorrows booth in San Diego this year. He was like a kid in a candy story. He always buys stuff from us, including the companion books, and he is very much a fan of comic book history. I never talk with him about serious stuff when he comes to the booth, because that’s not what he’s there for. We just chit-chat about the fun stuff while he gets his fanboy on.

Ok that makes me smile so much.

Having to work on that side of the desk can change so much about your passions. The truth is your passions can/will change regardless of which side of the desk you are working on in comics. It is really easy to be about the business when something you love becomes your job.

Again, I'll emphasize that my objection / observation was that you were and continue to do precisely what you object to. Mocking faceless segments hardly makes it any less hypocritical. It just makes it more anonymous. If you're OK with that, whatever.

I'm obviously okay with it. Free speech and all that. If you want to measure my level of hypocrisy, you're free to do so.

No. I actually responded to the Nixon Cap Secret Empire thing. It was Englehart's intention to imply it was Nixon (who had just resigned in disgrace), but not only did Marvel editorial distance itself from that notion in the subsequent letters pages, but prior to Nixon's resignation he was portrayed quite favorably in the comics, which I listed examples of.

Potato-potato. Your response dismissed it. I've subsequently provided additional examples. Previously, I'd decided to skip out on addressing your other point in the previous thread.

That's not true. I never dismissed the Secret Empire. I corrected the notion it wasn't even-handed. The President was never named. And even so, we knew what it implied, but Nixon had just resigned in disgrace, so he was fair game. And going all the way back to 1974 to say that "Steve Englehart did it too" is a non-starter because, the fact is, Marvel never copped to it (at least back then) and Nixon broke the law and resigned, so he was a proper target. It was unprecedented and an appropriate target. Not exactly the same as today's Nick Spencer's straw man arguments and casting Red Skull as the embodiment of conservatives who disagree with porous borders.

I guess my question there would be "why follow him on Twitter then?" If you know and are unsurprised by his politics are you really doing anything more than the same protest antics that you claim to dislike in those faceless masses or is it somehow more noble to do the same thing from a conservative angle? As far as his politics go, I really don't care. I didn't care when Martin Sheen was in the news with his mouth taped shut and I didn't care when Clint Eastwood was talking to a chair. I care about celebrities making quality entertainment. If I want quality political analysis or opinion, I feel like I have to develop that for myself as there really isn't anyone out there that is qualified and trustworthy enough to deliver anything that isn't biased toward their own life experiences and preferences.

I don't follow Spencer anymore. And what does Martin Sheen or Clint Eastwood have to do with comics? That was the topic of my post, the latest in Marvel Comics. Actually using the pages from the book or the blog I found it on. I'm just sharing how how clumsy and blatantly partisan the work is. If I were praising it I suppose you'd have no problem with it. The problem with the idea of free speech is that it is meant to protect speech that isn't popular, but won't protect those who employ unpopular speech from criticism. The posts that are negative are critiques of the samples I've seen.

I'm seriously trying to get my head around this. Again, it feels like a false equivalency to decry it and embrace it at the same time, but that seems to be the overwhelming consensus that I currently get out of the Republican Party and is one of the reason I gave up affiliation with the Republicans. Just because someone else has done wrong, lied or distorted the truth, or engaged in a certain behavior, doesn't justify the same.

You're generalizing. Me pointing out the ridiculousness of a petition that's started to re-cast the Joker isn't the same as me pointing out partisan politics in a comic. This just boils down to you don't like my politics, or that I'm vocal about it. Nothing more.

Since I am singling out Marvel, that would be a crucial element to my argument.

I suppose that's true if you want to keep it to strictly Marvel, but I suspect that you'd have the same complaints about other publishers. I tend to look at things from a broader spectrum and, apparently wrongly extended the argument to comics in general. Certainly Image is pounding out books that are awash with liberal sensibilities (I offered a couple of examples above). As has been much of the history of Vertigo.

Again, my problem was currently with Nick Spencer and his Captain America take. You see, unlike Image comics, Marvel's Cap has a 75 year history. When Nick craps on that legacy (in my opinion) I "whine" about it. I never asked for a "safe space," I never started a petition to get Nick fired, and I never began or even shared the hashtag #SayNoToHydraCap. Didn't make a viral video. Didn't go onto REDDIT. Didn't start a letter-writing campaign. Didn't petition Marvel Comics for a redress of grievances... I came to a comic book forum where we praise and gripe about the topic of comics and posted my negative opinion.

That's it.

Then I was repeatedly obliged to defend my position by you, Brack, David, etc. I've demonstrated that I don't have any problem doing that. You just don't agree with me. But the incessant, long-winded posts are enough to bore anyone. Why not just PM me? Or not respond?

You recently mentioned your love for the Byrne Namor book. I enjoyed it quite a bit as well. I trust that you have similar issues with the fact that the big bad through much of it was an evil, resource devouring, polluting corporation?

No issues from me for a great comic book enlisting bloated, mega-corporations or Eco-terrorists as villains. It's not all that political and it's a well-worn trope. And Namor uses his own mega-corporation to deal with corrupt Wall Street types, fight pollution, and battle crazy eco-terrorists. John Byrne is a master at taking pre-existing characters and giving comic book readers a definitive interpretation. He did it with She-Hulk, and he did it with Namor. Byrne is so talented he is able to bring in some environmental ideology without being too obnoxious about it. I suspect if Nick Spencer were writing it, the Eco-terrorists would be the good guys teaming up with Occupy Wall Street to murder Trump and Namor would be conflicted on whether or not to save Donald or let him die so Hillary Clinton could be President before the earth burns up from global warming. Nick wears his politics on the pages and it's often unseemly. I wish I had never even seen his Twitter feed.

No one is admitting how terribly one-sided this stuff is - you won't even say so. Even the Nixon bit only serves to confirms the "Marvel anti-conservative" accusation since Nixon was a republican. But in the years before that, Nixon was portrayed favorably and other republicans and conservative though (until this century), were also portrayed rather favorably. Probably even more-so at DC. It's the art of subtlety that's missing today. Nick Spencer can write political commentary that's about as subtle as a brick-to-the-face as much he wants, but to act as if his Marvel CA books are not highly antagonistic towards conservatives is either ignorance or dishonesty.

"Stand up for what you believe in even if it means standing alone"

Luckily we have Private Eye to make sure that all gets covered in text, cartoon and strip-based satire. Oh and Judge Dredd, of course. And thankfully better parody laws of late which meant we finally got the full Cursed Earth in print.

A good example. John Wagner has said he created Judge Dredd as a response to the rising British right wing in 1977. He was a mostly faceless hero and a villain. But despite Dredd’s leftist political origins, many of the early stories revolved around common conservative worries at the time; street crime, density, and joblessness.

Early 2000AD comics aren't critical of those conservative worries so much as their authoritarian response that Dredd represented. Wagner’s presentation was sufficiently subtle in early issues so it came off as both libertarian as well as liberal: a distrust of authority in general and state power in specific.

Today's American conservatives and libertarians support less centralized government, smaller government, and less statist intrusion in their lives.

Surely you understand that it can become annoying when one political bent is constant represented negatively in Marvel's line. If a writer wanted to eliminate politics from his/her stories or to treat politics in a non-partisan fashion by having an unaffiliated politician be corrupt and in cahoots with a villain, he/she could do so fairly easily without singling out any political party. These clumsy examples of M.O.D.O.K.-Trump, Red Skull's anti-immigration policy, and Sons of the Serpent border runs, etc aren't subtle at all and embody leftist/liberal straw man arguments.

The question is, if comics should even have a political objective at all instead of just being about “good, compelling stories.” Choosing to use political groups that can be identified as either progressive or conservative, but portraying only ONE of those types negatively (as Nick Spencer and the like often do), is unlikely to be coincidental. And if it were truly more "even-handed" there wouldn't be any point in calling it out. Using examples from the early 70's to defend today's myopic bent is weak. If they were all as deftly subtle as Mr. Wagner's Dredd, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

That's my take.

At this point the Marvel bias is just so blatant and in-your-face that you either have to be a dyed-in-the-wool leftist ideologue or a total political virgin not to notice it. The bigoted smeering of conservative/traditional/whites is just off the charts. I love how people try to justify it by bending over backwards. Meanwhile everyone has seen countless examples of how even the vaguest perceived slight against any other group earns embarrassingly profuse apologies.

The ironic thing is that, of course, almost all the top Marvel writers and editors are straight white males. But they're a weird variety of this type in that they seem to depise their own demographic to an almost pathological extent, taking every opportunity to make the culture they grew up in seem almost uniformly evil and bad. This self-hate phenomenon has been known to accompany the fall of civilizations, and certainly Marvel Comics' recent behavior should be seen in the context of the overall decline of Big Two comics in general. When Rome overextended its empire it began to make anyone it could find an official Roman citizen, if only to bolster the tax revenue. As Marvel Comics falls, it frantically tries to find elusive "new readers" in other demographics, insulting its core readership in the process.

I think the traditionalist Marvel reader at this point really, really has to make a hell of a lot of mental compromises to be able to endure this kind of abuse. Of course, it's been this way for awhile, and we can all eagerly point to the marketing stunts and replacement heroes of the '90s. But now every stunt is accompanied with hamfisted political overtures and emotional blackmail as an attempt to coerce consent from the readership. "You balked when Bucky became Cap? Well you damn well better be on board for Falcap, or else yer a racist!" "You had a problem when we didn't know what to do with Thor for years in the mid-2000s and canceled his title? Well now you're gonna damn well support a female 'Thor' book, or else yer a sexist!"

To be honest I've actually enjoyed a heck of a lot of what Marvel's done over the last half-decade, stunts included, but it is the political barbs that turn me off. I've bought and mostly liked (sometimes LOVED) Jason Aaron's Thor, G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel, Nick Spencer's Cap, Bendis's Iron Man, to name a few. But when Kitty Pryde becomes "Star-Lord" and we have to have a whole subplot about why it's okay for her to use that name? When an otherwise solid origin story for RiRi Williams is interrupted by the news that (for a time at least) she will be "Iron MAN"? When Jason Aaron devotes an entire issue to characterizing any critics as simply sexist neanderthals? I'm sorry, but there is no earthly (or Asgardian) reason why Jane Foster would want to take on her ex-boyfriend's birthname as her first name, as if that had anything to do with his powers or status as the deity of thunder. It is all simply trolling and white knighting on the part of these writers who need to try and expiate their white male guilt.

And G. Willow Wilson will have Kamala Khan punch Donald Trump in the face, but when will Ms. Marvel ever fight (or even reference) the actual extremist faction of her own religious community who kill Muslims (and others) across the world? Never. A Republican politician who "says mean things sometimes" is apparently infinitely more troubling than thousands of ISIS murderers committing acts of genocide all over the planet. Possibly Ms. Wilson is legitimately fearful for her life in her own community if she did a story about ISIS. Well, she can call herself careful and she can call herself liberal and she can call herself a good writer, but she can't call herself particularly brave. Yeah, probably she would run into trouble in her own community if she took a stand against Muslim extremism. I've known other American Muslims who say that they want to speak out but are afraid to because their own relatives would disown them.

That is the real world that we live in, but we can read Marvel Comics and pretend that really the greatest threat in urban environments are white male purse-snatchers. Because that, honestly, is a typical crime-fighting scene that I've seen more times than any other in recent years. The hero is shown stopping some typical crime in the neighborhood, and it tends to be goofy looking white guys snatching a lady's purse. Because it's still 1955, right? The explanation for this is obvious. The creators involved are too scared to show many criminals that aren't white. In other words they are too afraid to confront reality, and in fact do not care to portray the real threats to African-American communities in particular. Hint: not white guys stealing purses. It's just too uncomfortable for them.

I am not a Republican, not a conservative, not a Trump supporter, and honestly not even THAT troubled by any of this. But it is an obviously biased feature of what's going on. I can read it the same way I can read old FF comics from the '60s where Reed downtalks Sue. It's unfortunate that prejudices exact, but they do, and oftentimes you can glimpse the art in spite of them. If you haven't been noticing all this bigotry against approximately half the country, maybe you should ask yourself why. If even the tiniest micro-aggression was made against any other type of person, you'd notice it.

If you look at many of these writers' Twitter feeds, you'll see that they're uniformly obsessed with hating Republicans. Tom Breevort, Mark Waid, Dan Slott -- these are extremely hateful, arrogant, bigoted, egotistical people. They feel the need to take every opportunity to boost their own self-esteem up by knocking other people down and competing to see who's the most trendy. It's the sort of people they are. We rarely hear about how insulting they are, because most of the press and most of the podcasters share the same biases. Why don't people notice it more? I face-palmed when, during a discussion of Preacher, "political correctness" was discussed as just "something that was big in the '90s." Well, if ya don't notice it anymore, maybe you've gone along with the program.