I recall a fireside chat with some college friends. This guy, a friend by marriage, was telling me that he could never get into Marvel Comics. Sometimes you couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys, he said. I am paraphrasing, of course, this is a memory through the fog of three or four decades. He told me that he preferred DC Comics because this line was more well-defined. It was this conversation where I first got the notion that Marvel is for liberals and DC for conservatives.
This is true about DC Comics, at least most of them. Most of the classic DC Comics came out of the conservative 1940's and 50's. The first Superman comic, Action #1, was published in 1938. You knew where he stood, "truth, justice and the American way," as stated in the 1940's radio shows. Lets face it, he is Christ-like, sent from the heavens. When he was fighting someone, you knew who the good guy and the bad guy was. In the universe of the comic, the cops and media always supported him and feared his enemies. He was their savior and they stood by him. A well defined line between good and evil is a very conservative idea. Clear and concise. It always bothered me that Superman fought crime and then as Clark Kent wrote about himself. This is a bit too fascist for me. He wears red, white and blue and fights to preserve the status quo. Conservatives love this stuff. It never comes up that he is technically an illegal alien, literally.
Most of the other major DC comics have similar motifs: Aqua Man, The Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow. They fight evil and it is obvious. One major character that doesn't fit this mold is Batman.He really toggles the good/evil line at times but by all other counts, he is a conservative. He blames government for the death of his parents, he uses his own resources to tackle the crime problem and beats up on the poor and the insane. The insane are almost always portrayed awfully in the DC universe a la Arkham Asylum. When you have a DC "bad" guy, he/she is evil or insane, usually both.
The only exception of the DC major heroes is Wonder Woman, the only woman in the bunch. She is a feminist icon, working in a man's profession and trying to change the world. Most female DC heroes are simply female counterparts of male heroes: Super Girl, Bat Woman, Hawkwoman, etc. Although, I do admit Marvel has done the same with She-Hulk and Spider Woman.
Marvel came out of the rebellious liberal 60's. Liberals are wishy washy. They never met a nuance they didn't love. Marvel is full of them. Spiderman is a struggling college student who moonlights as a photographer for the Daily Bugle who portrays him as a menace. The cops want to arrest him. His Aunt May is afraid of him. The Hulk is hunted by the military. Thor is a demigod. In the Marvel universe gods are just very powerful beings from different realms. The X-Men are actively trying to change the world making it safe for mutants (aka the outsider) which is a neat sci-fi way of saying homosexual, black or any other counterculture. Their leader is disabled, Professor X is bound to a wheel chair.
The differently abled are well presented in the Marvel universe. Professor X's son, Legion, has multiple personality disorder. Daredevil is blind, Moon Knight has schizophrenia, Deadpool is in constant pain, Puck is a little person and Hawkeye, the Avenger, is deaf. The disabled don't fair so well in the DC universe. The first disabled super-hero, Caption Mid-Nite, introduced in 1941 was blinded by a grenade and discovered he could see in the dark. Even comic geeks like me, have never heard of this guy. It is difficult finding a major DC character with anything close to a disability. They are idealized beings, like Greek gods. The best example is probably Cyborg, who is an amputee whose parts have been replaced by machines. Not incredibly inspiring.
Marvel villains are also more complex than DC's. Sometimes they are extreme evil, but often they are just people who have had a raw deal. Magneto grew up in Auschwitz and only survived with the help of his mutant abilities. He grew to hate non-mutants because of the experience in the camp.
Marvel's Iron Man may seem like an exception. In the early days, Tony Stark is just another millionaire industrialist (weapons manufacturer) using his technological toys to defeat bad guys. But in later issues, he sees how war is destroying the world and how his lifestyle is killing him (alcoholism). He changes Stark Industries to green energy, cleans up his personal life and ends up being a good liberal.
The one true exception in the Marvel universe is Captain America. Perhaps this is because he predates the 60's. He premiered in 1940 published by Timely Comics. He fought Nazis and communists. He was later reintroduced in Marvel as a superhero fighting bad guys in 1963. He is still a very conservative character. His powers are a result of a righteous government experiment that worked. He is the idealized blond hair American guy who was even born on the 4th of July.
.jpg)
Iron Man, Captain America along with The Avengers were not very good comics. This is one the amazing things about the film adaptions because they work so much better in film.
For a long time, every black super hero had the word "black" in their name: Black Lightning, Black Panther, Black Goliath etc. This is a trope that had to end. As you guessed it, Marvel has more black heroes in more prominent roles. Marvel's Power Man, Hero for Hire or Luke Cage (this comic was renamed many times) was the first American comic, 1972, starring a black character. It was created in the wake of blaxploitation films of that era and it was pretty bad. He had a catchphrase "Sweet Christmas!" He is a street level hero with the stories based in a high crime section of New York City much like Daredevil. Comics are still the realm of the white guy but now there is a lot more diversity than ever. Marvel's latest version of Ms. Marvel is a character named Kamala Khan, introduced in 2013, and she is Muslim.
I must apologize if I am wrong about DC. Other than Batman and The Watchmen, I have not read a lot of their comics. This is mostly because I don't like them, never have. I love nuance. While writing this, I've had to wonder if I am a liberal because I read Marvel as a kid, or did I read Marvel because I have always been a liberal. I still have no idea. I did not grow up in a political family but I did read my first comic, The Incredible Hulk #2, by looking through my brother's comics. Perhaps if he had a copy of Hawkman lying around, I might be Trumper right now. I doubt it.
