One Reason I Don’t Read Many Marvel Comics Now.

Since Bill Jemas left Marvel Comics, things have inched closer and closer to a neoconservative-friendly version of how a superhero universe should work. During Jemas’s tenure, the Avengers became an internationally recognized body empowered by the UN. Once he left, they were transformed into a privately-run team funded by solely by Tony Stark thanks to Avengers Dissassembled. A couple years and one Civil War later, they’re now are a US-government run superteam acting under SHIELD.

You know, the same internationally-recognized SHIELD that is now being helmed by billionaire government contractor Tony Stark, acting as some strange combination of Super Homeland Security and police agency for the world. I wonder how North Korea feels about that, or the increasingly hardline Russian government. Do you think there’s meetings at the UN where SHIELD’s Psi Division is scrutinized, or that whole Life Model Decoy technology and its possible uses comes up in discussion?

Think about how frightening it would be to live in the Marvel Universe now. Think about being a political commentator not knowing if your thoughts were being monitored because of a blog post you made. Think about being someone in power, not knowing if you were actually standing beside who you thought you were at a government banquet. Think about being a person with extraordinary abilities who’s forced to sign up with The Initiative or stay in the closet for fear of prosecution. Finally, think about being an ordinary citizen having to tolerate a de facto police state because of an accident in a small town in Connecticut.

This is probably me being some sad Captain Yesterday sort, but when I pick up a superhero comic, I want something that doesn’t provide a version of our current state of affairs with even more paranoia lumped on top. Weird, I know.