Yes on all counts.
I think he’s missing out on a great opportunity by not using “Holy War, Batman!”
With a cameo of Perry White saying “Great Satan’s Ghost!”
Sigh. Because Americans are too dim to know that Osama Bin Laden is a Bad Man unless Frank Miller tells us so? :rolleyes:
Everyone with half a brain knows that Osama Bin Laden is a Bad Man and that Al Qaeda is Dangerous and Scary. We don’t need propaganda to convince us of this fact.
The right likes to likes pretend that the left “just doesn’t get it” with regards to 9-11. It’s a way of deflecting criticism for Bush’s piss-poor handling of the War on Terror. If you don’t approve of wetting your pants and flailing around randomly as the appropriate response to 9-11 you’re accused of “forgetting what we’re up against”.
Please.
I expect we’ll get yet another adolescent power fantasy pretending to be “edgy” and “relevant”. He’d be better off just telling people to read Joe Sacco and Marjane Satrapi.
I don’t usually say this, but “cite?”
There was recently an anti-Iraq War plot in DC where Black Adam and his group of supers took over a Middle Eastern dictatorship with pretty catastrophic results.
The Ultimates in Marvel is basically a diatribe against the current administration and has President Bush as the president.
Batman and IIRC Daredevil have addressed gun control. (I could be wrong about Daredevil, but I’ve seen it addressed in Marvel more than once.)
There are many others, but those are the ones off the top of my head.
Unfortunately, no pretense is necessary.
And awaaaaaaaaaay we go…
It’s interesting that Paul Pope, a self-described Libertarian, is starting his own Batman mini-series that he said will explore politics and the war on terror, seemingly from a “we’re not taking it seriously enough” view point. I haven’t read the first issue so I’m not sure about this, but am basing it on interviews I’ve read. Extra-interestingly, he said Frank Miller helped him brainstorm on the project. Link
Oh, this one of my famous throwaway opinions about a comics author. This is from that Identity Crisis thread 15 months back.
Shoulda quoted his post. Had he not gone there, no one else would have.
He does not make that claim exactly; the article refers to “entertainers” generally. For good or bad, he’s entirely correct; in the 1940s, the theaters, the radio shows, and yes, the comics were all mobilized in the war effort.
Four years in, we have had several feature films that (with various degrees of subtlety) that question or outright oppose the effort; but I can’t think of a single major artistic effort attempting to support the war effort. The silence, in comparison to WWII, is enormous.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say a “single major artistic effort.” No motion pictures, yes, you’re correct. But there’ve been several TV shows that have, at least, supported the war in Afghanistan. Not sure if they could be called “major” though.
What films question or oppose the War on Terror, as opposed to Iraq or particular aspects of that effort?
Anyway, there’s a degree of removal in this war that just didn’t exist in WWII. Celebrities were exhorting people to support the war effort by buying bonds, conserving rubber, and that sort of thing. Nobody’s needed to do that this time around.
I think this comparison relies on WWII and the War on Terror/Afghanistan War/Iraq War being similar. Support which war effort? How much does the different response have to do with the very divided views on the handling of the Iraq War and that war becoming the focus of the greater war on terror as defined by the President?
Sorry, don’t want to take this further on the political tangent, but I don’t think his comparison is as telling as he thinks it is (at least in terms of what he thinks it shows about entertainers).
On review, ditto what Marley23 said.
Are comics as socially transgressive as Piss-Christ? Of course not; they’re a mass art form. But all mass art forms reflect the tenor of the times, and even run-of-the-mill superhero comics today show a cynicism toward and about authority and the status quo that would’ve been considered at best inappropriate, at worse downright subversive. For whatever reason, we are no longer a culture that can uncritically accept the kind of stories that Miller seems to be hearkening back to.
And the X-Men stories reflected not simply “racism” or anti-Semitism but bigotry writ large, and bigotry is still very much alive and well in our country, despite what we may claim to feel about it. (Ask Fred Phelps.)
Maybe that’s because the artists involve know that Iraq’s Involvement with 9/11 == Zero?
You better start digging some of those others out because these three aren’t going to fly very far.
Having a comic book set in the middle east doesn’t make it about Iraq.
Having a comic book talk about a President doesn’t make it an attack on George Bush.
And the Batman and Daredevil stuff is so vague, I can’t even comment on how far off base it might be.
Sure bigotry exists. But do you hear many people talking in favor of bigotry? Saying “I think prejudice is wrong” is an easy feel-good. It’s like saying you’re against starvation or cancer or illiteracy.
When Wolverine says he supports the legalization of marijuana, when Wonder Woman says she favors the availability of RU-486, when Batman says he supports the Sanctity of Marriage Act, when Iron Man says he favors eliminating the capital gains tax, when Captain America says he opposes stem cell research, when Superman says he favors a two week waiting period on handgun sales - then we’ll have some real politics in comic books.
Non sequitur.
Sorry, but you’re simply wrong. The president in The Ultimates IS George W Bush. He’s NAMED and drawn to look just like him. As for the Black Adam thing, it’s painfully obvious what they’re talking about. Your denial doesn’t make me wrong, it just means you won’t accept it.
You’re familiar with allegory, right? 
I know very little about comics, but I know The Authority has a couple of gay superheroes. I believe they’re parodies of Batman and Superman. Perhaps that doesn’t count for much, but that’s one more.