Superhero Culture Wars

Politics, Marketing, and Social Justice in Marvel Comics

Monica Flegel, Judith Leggatt

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350148659
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire de bandes dessinées et de romans graphiques

The reactionary Comicsgate campaign against alleged "forced" diversity in superhero comics revealed the extent to which comics have become a key battleground in America's Culture Wars. In the first in-depth scholarly study of Marvel Comics' most recent engagement with progressive politics, Superhero Culture Wars explores how the drive towards greater diversity among its characters and creators has interacted with the company's commercial marketing and its traditional fan base. Along the way the book covers such topics as:
· Major characters such as Miles Morales's Spider-man, Kamala Khan's Ms. Marvel, Jane Foster's Thor, Sam Wilson's Captain America and the Secret Empire series' turncoat Captain America
· Creators such as G. Willow Wilson, Jason Aaron, Nick Spencer and Michael Bendis
· Marketing, the Marvel Universe, and online fan culture Superhero Culture Wars demonstrates how the marketing of Marvel comics as politically progressive has both indelibly shaped its in-world universe and characters, and led to conflicts between its corporate interests, its creators, and it audience.

1

From Stan’s Soapbox to Twitter: Politics and Story-Telling in the Marvel Universe

If anything defines “Comicsgate” as a movement, it is the slogan “get woke, go broke,” the belief that Marvel’s attempt to diversify its superhero stories is a corporate-driven mandate that is bound to fail. Proponents of this philosophy give varying reasons for why this push for diversity will ultimately destroy Marvel comics. Some argue that such an approach alienates the existing fanbase, assumed—and often stated—to be White men. Others believe that the desire to diversify will lead Marvel to equity-based hiring that prioritizes appointing people from under-represented groups, rather than—implied, but also sometimes stated to be—more qualified White men. Many fans protest that they are absolutely in favor of diversity, just not “forced diversity,” and point to successful characters ranging from Luke Cage to Kamala Khan to point out that Marvel has done diversity well in the past, but that the wholesale transformation under Axel Alonso and represented by the All-New, All-Different Marvel campaign fails primarily because it is a shallow and pandering corporate-driven exercise. In all of these arguments, however, there is a consistent point of connection: that politics in story-telling, both on the page and behind the scenes, is intimately tied to the economics of selling comics. As audiences, we are therefore encouraged by both sides to “vote” with our dollars, consuming and/or boycotting Marvel Comics in ways that match our values. David F. Walker’s list of “10 Ways to Really Support Diversity in Comics,” for example, not only emphasizes the importance of fans’ financial support (with five of the ten points focused on purchasing), but also states that “not pre-ordering comics from a direct market retailer is the same as NOT supporting a book. That’s the system.” At the same time, independent comics creators often use political rhetoric to encourage fans to support their Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns as a way of producing comics that “the system” will not.¹

In this chapter, we challenge the explicitly political marketing of mass culture texts such as Marvel Comics, without downplaying the need for greater diversity both within and behind the scenes of superhero comics stories. Carolyn Cocca argues that within popular culture,

Marginalized groups have been forced to “cross-identify” with those different from them while dominant groups have not. That is, because white males have been over-represented, women and people of color have had to identify with white, male protagonists. But white males have not had to identify with the small number of women and people of color protagonists. This is not only unfair, but can curtail imagination. (3)

Like Cocca, we believe that stories that draw upon a wide range of human experiences and identities are necessary not only for the good political work they do in terms of challenging the “representations of stereotypes that exert power” (5), but also for creating richer, more complex, and more relevant works of art that expand the imaginations of their audience.

We are nevertheless wary of “social justice” and “diversity” as marketing tools for corporations, particularly one with as spotted a history as Marvel’s in terms of its treatment of its creators. In part, this wariness is simply a rejection of woke-branding as a whole, whether it originates from Dove, Gillette, or Pepsi: these campaigns arguably exacerbate culture wars all in the service of selling their products and, sometimes, as in the case of “woke-washing,” “cynically [cash] in on people’s idealism and [use] progressive-orientated marketing campaigns to deflect questions about their own ethical records” (Jones). As we will discuss, there is good reason to see Marvel as engaging in both. But we are also concerned that diversity as a marketing ploy can result in shallow characterization and pandering story-telling that fail in the important work of increased representation in art. Bad representation is arguably as damaging as no representation at all, in that stereotypes not only shape the dominant culture’s attitudes toward the represented people, but can also shape the attitudes of people desperate to see themselves in the texts they consume. Even when those representations are positive, their scarcity means that they bear an undue weight of signification. Adilifu Nama underlines this point when he uses a quote from Dwayne McDuffie as his epigraph to the Introduction of Super Black: American Popular Culture and Black Superheroes: “My problem … and I’m speaking as a writer now … with writing a black character in either the Marvel or DC universe is that he is not a man. He is a symbol” (cited in Nama 1). The path to authentic and adequate representation in mainstream comics is, therefore, a long one fraught with pitfalls for even the most careful and aware writer.

Despite these difficulties, we give no credence to arguments that diversity and greater representation threaten superhero story-telling in and of themselves. Instead, we argue that Marvel’s push for diversity under Axel Alonso cannot be read as separate from Marvel’s corporate agenda and economic interests. We place ANADM firmly within the company’s long history of presenting itself as a liberal voice, in varying iterations, so as to help us better understand how its overt political story-telling serves a variety of sometimes conflicting agendas.² By tracing the relationship between “liberalism” and the Marvel Comics universe from the beginning of the company to the new millennium, we assert that Marvel’s many political storylines result from a continual negotiation of social pressure from multiple directions: corporate, editorial, creative, and audience. Furthermore, we suggest that Marvel’s corporate creation of an ongoing, historically shaped continuity that they repeatedly claim mirrors “the world outside our windows” encourages both creators and audiences to use the characters and storylines as surrogates and stand-ins for real-world political examination. The multiple nature of both comics authorship and comics audiences means that Marvel’s diverse characters and political storylines are not singular, but have created, encouraged, and fomented political debate, often in ways that Marvel, as a corporate author, might not have intended or endorsed.

Corporate Art and Corporate Authorship

Before we discuss the role Marvel superhero comics play in political discourse, we must first acknowledge the limitations and impediments to sincere political debate within superhero comics, especially as they are produced by the Big Two (Marvel and DC). In “Buster Brown at the Barricades: Foment in the Funnies & Comics as Counter-Culture,” Alan Moore argues that because early cartoons and comics were “unrestricted by prevailing notions of acceptability,” they had the potential to give “voice to popular dissent” or to become, “in the right hands, a supremely powerful instrument for social change.” In other words, because of its separation from high art, the comics medium provides a space to represent the desires of the powerless and the disadvantaged in society, to puncture the respectability of the wealthy, and to revel in power fantasies that redress injustice against the oppressed. Moore highlights the continuity between blasphemous cartoons from the French Revolution, to the underground comix scene of the 1960s, whose “main targets for subversion … were the prissy and sedate traditions of the medium itself,”³ to the current moment, in which “the sole restrictions on what comics can or cannot be are those of the creator’s own imagination.” Like other popular media and genres that reach a wide audience and contain anti-authoritarian content—rap music, punk subcultures, pornography, drug culture, etc.—comics have faced external, legal pressures that sought to weaken their power to disrupt the cultural status quo; the Comics Code of 1954 (like similar laws worldwide) offers an example of indirect governmental censorship and control of a subversive medium, aimed as it was at ensuring that comics adhered to strict guidelines in terms of representing mainstream political ideologies and morality.⁴

But Moore also alludes to the “taming influence of the remunerative market” in that same essay, tracing how cartoons became “socially sanctified,” which is a common trajectory for many forms of popular culture when they are absorbed into corporate-owned mass production. He complains that “it was seen as more appropriate for these new U.S. totem entities to be in the possession and safekeeping of frequently questionable businessmen rather than that of the genuinely talented and decent human beings who’d originated them.” Moore’s historical narrative of the subversive power of cartoons and comics is a fairly straightforward one: creators produce meaningful symbols of populist dissent that draw upon the medium’s “gutter-generated origins,” which then gradually become sanitized by their absorption into the mainstream. In the case of Superman, for example,

While the ensuing decades and expanding fortunes of America have seen Siegel and Shuster’s purloined champion recast as an establishment ideal, a figure that embodies tactical superiority and thus perhaps a sense of national impunity, the archetypal superhero at his outset was a very different proposition. In his earliest adventures, with an admirably broadminded definition of what constituted criminality, a splendidly egalitarian Man of Tomorrow would rough up strike-breakers and use his super-strength to hurl unscrupulous slum landlords over the horizon. Gradually across the next few years, perhaps in keeping with the Cleveland pair’s decreasing power to control their own creation, Superman would undergo a moral and political makeover to become a bastion of authority, carefully trimmed of any prickly or non-conformist attitudes.

According to Moore, the full co-option of Superman within the corporate structure of DC leads to a bastardization of his meaning as a cultural symbol for the oppressed: owned and controlled by corporate powers, Superman comes to represent those interests instead.

What Moore identifies as the cause of the transformation of Superman’s character, therefore, is less explicit government censorship than it is the appropriation and incorporation of popular culture into “mass culture.” Mass culture is produced by capitalist industries for consumption by the masses, and thus inherently carries with it “the interests of the economically and ideologically dominant” (Fiske, Reading 2). Critics such as Alan Moore are correct to question whether large corporations—which pursue financial goals, often at the expense of artistic expression and innovation—can produce texts that contain subversive elements. Mass culture theorists, for example, have long highlighted the empty escapism of corporate creative products: “Entertainment offers the image of ‘something better’ to escape into, or something we want deeply that our day-to-day lives don’t provide” (Dyer 20). This escapism, however, is strictly limited, as the most pessimistic of the mass culture theorists point out, because mass culture “infect[s] everything with sameness” (Horkheimer and Adorno 53), limiting the scope of the audience’s imagination (56) and offering no alternative to the current political and economic status quo (54).

The superhero genre is arguably the most mainstream genre within the comics medium and, at its worst, is characterized by banal repetition and a celebration of dominant power structures. The Big Two, for example, have continually copied each other’s creations; the popularity of Superman led to a “legion of ‘long underwear’ imitators” (Duncan et al. 18), whose characterizations and storylines tend to follow set patterns: origin stories, colorful costumes, super-powers, dual identities, and pro-social missions exemplified by “strength of will” and a “sense of duty” (197–210). While every popular genre has characteristic elements, the extent to which a text unimaginatively follows such conventions, rather than subverting or challenging them, can be attributed to mass culture industries’ desire to produce “texts that are minimally acceptable … to a huge audience” (Radway 285). Comics that closely adhere to tried and true formulas, rather than subversive or refreshingly original content, will satisfy the majority of fans of that genre, and thus remain the safest bet for a corporation dedicated to profits, rather than art. Finally, the pro-social missions of the superhero, while not explicitly serving Western geo-political power and capitalism, do not inherently subvert them either. Instead, the superhero in the hands of these two corporate giants becomes, at least on its surface, an authoritarian figure who enacts “might makes right” on a global, even galactic, scale, fighting to preserve moderate politics, and engaged in generalized stories of good vs. evil that do not challenge the financial or political order.⁵

While Marvel Comics has a long history of promoting liberal politics and engaging directly and indirectly in contemporary political issues, we argue that these facets of their story-telling, rather than subverting the political and financial status quos, instead operate firmly within them. Like the studio system Jerome Christensen analyzes in America’s Corporate Art (2012), Marvel Comics produces “corporate art,” a term used to describe “a tool of corporate strategy” that is adopted “to attain competitive advantage” and implemented by executives who “successfully claim the authority to interpret the intent of the corporation and project a policy that will advance its particular interests, whether financial, social cultural, or political” (Christensen 2). Specifically, we argue that while individual creators play a crucial role in shaping comics’ characters and storylines, we must understand the Marvel Universe as one authored by “Marvel Comics,” a corporate author who is personified as a singular entity, and whose texts are linked to a specific “brand.”⁶ The brand that Marvel Comics has successfully created for itself is primarily aligned with liberal politics, leaning sometimes more centrist, and sometimes more progressive. And while these politics may indeed be those held by people with some power in the organization, such as Stan Lee or Axel Alonso or (in the case of the MCU) Kevin Feige, and some influence, such as individual writers and artists, they exist primarily to advance the company’s financial interests, in terms of both setting itself apart from its “distinguished competition” and courting new or under-served audiences. Its comics and its editorial columns personify the organization as a liberal entity whose interests, it would appear, are as pro-social as those of its superheroes; in so doing, Marvel Comics participates in “soul making,” a strategy meant to “invest corporations with pathos” (Christensen 9). Marvel’s marketing strategies also support this goal, “insofar as the project of marketing involves the establishment of social legitimacy of a company that seeks to make customers for its products rather than simply make products it can somehow sell to a customer” (9). Marvel’s soul-making project, one dedicated to creating lifelong fans invested in the company and its products, rests on the following strategies: the representation of its universe as linked to our own, and therefore as a space in which its in-world political commentary can both mirror and influence politics in our world; the development of storylines and characters that enunciate or embody liberal values such as diversity and open-mindedness; and the employment of its editors—best exemplified by Stan Lee engaging directly with the audience through his “Soapbox” and through the letter columns—as the voice of Marvel that speaks for, and enunciates, its politics as a whole.

Complicating the liberal voice of Marvel as author is the fact that its corporate authorship has often led directly to the exploitation of individual storytellers, particularly the creators of the characters and storylines that won the corporation such approval from the younger generation in the first place. Jack Kirby described his time at the company as one of “repression” and rightly complained, “I was never given credit for the writing I did … I was faced with the frustration of having to come up with new ideas and then having them taken from me” (qtd. in Howe 118). Likewise, Sean Howe relates how Marvel engaged in a variety of exploitative moves, such as reviving characters “just long enough to ensure their copyright claims” against creators (76), using one part of a creative team against another to undermine such claims (77), refusing raises and contracts “because [workers] could be so easily replaced” (93), and continually failing to reward those who were loyal to Marvel: as Bill Mantlo relates, “It was a sign of success to shit on the company, go somewhere else, and then come back, and Chris [Claremont] … and [I] … were left cleaning up the manure, without thanks, without reward” (qtd. in Howe 157). Older writers and artists who were perceived as “old-fashioned” were “put out to pasture” (277), and even Chris Claremont received “no good-bye in the letters column, no announcement in the press” (328) when he was pushed out at Marvel, despite his impressively long and highly influential run penning the X-Men universe. All of this meant that creators were often afraid to unionize (209), but were not rewarded with secure work when they opted not to do so. As a result, there are few creators who worked at Marvel and were central to the company’s success that left the company on good terms.

This tendency changed a little in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when Joe Quesada began a strategy of bringing in new talent from successful independent comics and recognizable names from outside the comics industry and promoting artists and writers as a type of “commercial auteurism” (Overpeck 165). The promotion of individual talents coalesced in the 2010 Marvel Architects promotion, which the company “used to create the sense that stories set in the Marvel Universe have been parts of one overarching narrative that has been designed by a team of important writers” (Overpeck 165). In this way, the “Architects”—Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and Jonathan Hickman—together with the editor-in-chief—first Quesada, then Alonzo—occupied the place formerly associated with Stan Lee, as “stewards of the Marvel Universe” (Overpeck 177). Significantly, Aaron and Bendis are responsible for two of Marvel’s most heavily promoted diversity changes that we will be discussing: Miles Morales as Spider-Man and Jane Foster as Thor, respectively. However, this promotion of specific storytellers is still a corporate strategy, and one not all creators feel supported by.⁷ For example, Iceman ...