Don’t Just Talk About What You Like in Comics

Don’t Just Talk About What You Like in Comics
by Travis Hedge Coke

“Why don’t you just talk about what you like, instead of what you don’t?” “Why don’t you try being positive?” “Focus on what you love.”

In comics, we come across these sentiments routinely. The fandom and business alike are sometimes suffused with the idea that voicing disappointment is worse than anything that disappointed you.

Comics are not alone in this. A major entertainment website just recently ran an article on how, if we overlook Dave Chapelle being a transphobic bigot, Netflix still used a song from Cowboy Bebop a lot in their promotional trailers for a Cowboy Bebop show. I think the idea there is that both criticisms are absurd? A number of readers seemed to think so, at any rate, and agreed with the glee of happy fascists at a fascist rally.

I read a oneshot comic written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson. I knew little about Johnson other than he was the hot new guy on Superman comics and the recent Superman and the Authority had been mildly rewritten to promote his upcoming stories. Preview pages intrigued me. They were awkward.

The comic was so fucking racist.

A seemingly unnecessary extra lead-in to Superman’s upcoming invasion of Warworld, an alien planet of war ruled by racist anti-Asian stereotype, Mongul - who is a large bright-yellow warlord named Mongul for those of you who may want to argue that Mongul is not inherently racist - the comic promises Batman enlisting Superman’s Authority team to invade a reality where the Ra’s al Ghul family have an active empire currently engaged in war with their version of America. It is the superhero equivalent of every argument for invading Iraq we saw throughout the George W Bush administration, except flimsier and hackier.