Jack Kirby’s cover for Captain America No. 1 is arrestingly memorable, a colorful image of Cap punching Hitler in the face.
This scene is now an iconic moment in superhero comics, but at the time it was more controversial than you might think. In 1941 the U.S. had not yet entered WWII, and some readers actually sent hatemail to Captain America’s creators for depicting the superhero in such an overtly political light.
Last week, an interesting homage to this cover popped up online. Created by illustrator Matt Stefani, it shows teen superhero Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) punching Donald Trump.
Speaking to the Daily Dot, Stefani explained the background for this unusual crossover between political cartoons and comicbook fanart.
The hosts of Fox & Friends asserted over the weekend that Marvel’s Captain America had declared war on conservatives because a recent comic book story line had the superhero battling white supremacists.
Conservative websites expressed outrage last week after a video released by the right-leaning MacIver Institute think tank suggested that Captain America’s latest villainous threat, Sons of the Serpent, represented real life conservatives who oppose Hispanic immigrants.
A Fox & Friends segment on Saturday warned that Captain America’s new mission was to “target conservatives.”
“He’s got a new odd enemy,” Fox News host Clayton Morris reported, noting that Captain America was now a black man. “Instead of going against Hydra and the typical Captain America villains, he’s going up against conservatives. That’s his new enemy.”
Tucker Carlson argued that Islamic extremists or ISIS members would have been more appropriate enemies.
“The [Supreme Serpent] is an American who has misgivings about unlimited illegal immigration and the costs associated with it,” Carlson said. “And that, according to the comic book, is evil.”
“Right, so these serpents are stopping people from coming over the border and Captain America is saying, ‘That’s not going to happen on my watch, I’m Captain America,‘” Morris agreed. “An interesting discussion around the idea of [immigrants bringing] disease and rapists and everything else.”
Carlson declared that Marvel was portraying average Americans as “snake-handling bigots and they need to be held in place or else they’ll turn this country into Nazi Germany. It’s like, the people who run this country, a lot of them actually believe that. I live near them. They really think that.”
“They should do a comic book on the opposite,” co-host Health Childers offered. “The people who are working the border to keep us safe.”
Morris called for comic books to return to story lines like Captain America “punching Hitler in the face.”
“And now the threat comes from ordinary Americans,” Carlson lamented. “Probably some of you watching at home, they think you’re dangerous.”
“Keep politics out of comic books,” Childers said.
Watch the video below from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Oct. 17, 2015.
After decades of using mutants as a metaphor for an oppressed minority that we should love and respect, Joe Quesada mandates the Decimation event, in which a vast majority of the Marvel universe’s mutants are depowered and there are in the low three digits of mutants left. What made it worse is the justification. Quesada claimed Marvel had to decimate the mutant population because Grant Morrison had established that there were millions of mutants across the globe, and that in Quesada’s eyes, that meant the Fantastic Racism element no longer worked. Specifically, he pointed out that mutants were supposed to be victims of bigotry, and yet had their own neighborhoods, culture, music, and even languages. In real life, many minority groups have all those things and yet still suffer discrimination from the majority, meaning there’s no reason mutants couldn’t have numbered in the millions and still have been targeted by normal humans. Quesada’s explanation is tantamount to saying that black people, Asian people, Latino people, or LGBT people no longer experience discrimination because “Hey, at least they have their own neighborhoods and pop culture figures!”
