All Art is Propaganda: Politics and Social Issues in Comics
By Robb Orr. 1/oct/2012
comicbooked.com
Many people argue that politics have
no place in comics. For better or
worse, politics have always been part
of comics, as anyone who reads them
can tell you. Sure, we have all seen
the faces of political leaders staring
back at us from those
wretched Bluewater Productions
comics, or shuddered upon
seeing Steampunk Palinon the shelf at
our LCS, or even seen Obama giving
us the thumbs up from the cover of
the Amazing Spider-man. Though I
have never met anyone who has
actually admitted to buying one of
these comics (or even seen someone
pick one up and thumb through it, much less purchase it), they
still get published nonetheless.
Beyond the exploitation, comics are also being used to explain
complex political situations and new laws. MacMillan published
a graphic novel based off the 9/11 Report. Now the same
publisher is releasing a comic book written by MIT economists
Jonathan Grueber, titled Heath Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s
Necessary, How It Works. An excerpt from the full story about
this project on NPR’s blog states the following:
―Gruber says he was eager to write a book on the federal law
because he believes people don’t like the concept of the overhaul
because they don’t understand what’s in it. He points to polling
that shows the public endorsing individual aspects of the law.‖
This is an interesting use of
the medium to say the least,
but not without
precedent. Comics have
always had a strong
relationship to politics. As
Upton Sinclair said in
his Essay in Economic
Interpretation Chapter 2: Who
Owns the Artists? (1925) ―All
art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda;
sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately,
propaganda.‖ Since comics are art, created by artists, it is only
natural that they too are subject to this theory.
Don’t believe me? Comics have long been used for political
commentary, parody, and satire. The examples of comic art as
propaganda throughout the history of comics are too numerous
to list in their entirety, so to illustrate my point I will just go
through and cite a few random examples. Just in the last few
months we have seen the comic industry react to the Occupy
Protests in blogs, social networking posts, and probably the
most apt example, the Occupy Comics project.
If not always propaganda, reverberations from national issues
and debates almost always make their way into the pages of our
beloved comic books. It is almost impossible to read
Marvel’s Civil Warwithout seeing the personal liberties versus
national safety debate that divided our nation reflected in the
plot.
Perhaps the most famous example of social
issues impacting comics can be found in the
revolutionary run of Neal Adams’ and Dennis
O’Neil’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow title from
the 70’s. By pairing the somewhat
conservative Green Lantern with a liberal
Green Arrow, not only was DC able to
preserve and publish both characters, it
provided a rich platform for the creators to
explore such social issues as racism, drugs,
the environment, and many more. This social
consciousness was considered by fans and the comic book
industry to be very innovative at the time, but not without
people who still hate it to this day, and the title has spawned
some of the most reprinted and iconic images and stories in
comic history, but it certainly wasn’t the first.
War comics have been around
nearly since the birth of the
comic industry, and here is
where we really see politics and
propaganda have an
indisputable presence. The
views in war comics cut both
ways. During Vietnam we see
many more comics that just
seem like war stories, but scratch beneath the surface and
many of these titles show the horrors of war, and are clearly
speaking out against it. On the side of the debate, examples
from the World Wars clearly have a very pro-war, super-patriot
vibe. Take for example, Captain America? I love Cap, but he
was clearly a form of pro-U.S. propaganda. The images of
Captain America punching Hitler in the jaw and making his way
through legions of Nazis clearly helped to reassure citizens with
enlisted loved ones and subsisting on rations that the U.S.
involvement in WWII was the right choice. Go back and check
out some of the very racist and derogatory labels that are given
to German and Japanese people in some of the titles from this
era, in an effort to dehumanize our enemy and nip any anti-war
backlash in the bud.
Perhaps one reason for the pro-war tone in comics from this era
and for decades after is the fact that so many comic creators
and readers served in the military. Even some biggest names in
comics like Jack Kirby and Stan Lee served their
country. Another reason for this tone could be that comics
played a key role as a strategy to boost the morale of deployed
troops during this era. Comic strips appeared in military base
newspapers like Stars and Stripes. Comics like Sad
Sack and Private Breger (which later changed its name to a title
you would likely be familiar with – G.I. Joe), are a couple of
examples of such titles. Many servicemen actually developed
their taste for comics while in the service, and after they came
home became part of the comic book readership.
How WWII ended ushered in the nuclear age and all of the
social issues that came with it, leading the world and comics
into the Cold War era. Do we even need to discuss how the
specter of nuclear annihilation would infiltrate all forms of
media, comics included? Nuclear attack and radiation factor so
heavily into comic plots and character origins, that they are still
being used as story devices to this very day!
Most people trace mainstream comic’s roots to the pulp books of
the 20’s. One often overlooked point is how much the history of
comics, underground and independent comics especially, have
in common with the rich tradition of pamphleteering. Many
pamphlets throughout history have been, inexpensive, very
political, and often relied on a fusion of words as well as images
to convey revolutionary and incendiary ideas and concepts,
often to illiterate populace’s. Underground and independent
comics, especially during the 60’s, often expressed very counter-
cultural ideas and were some of the lone voices in the comic
book industry that did not portray civil rights, protesters, and
the counter-culture movement in a negative and dismissive
manner. Many of these ideas would have never been permitted
in the mainstream press, and in this way I see underground
comics as almost agitprop and having much in common with
pamphleteering. Slowly many mainstream comics would come
around and realize that people in the counter-culture read
comics too.
So from these examples (that are just the tip of the iceberg —
entire books could be written on this topic) we see that politics,
social issues, and comics have always had a close relationship,
and that a graphic novel about healthcare reform, while a novel
concept (pun intended), is really not as outlandish and without
precedent as it may seem. Will comics become the new vogue
way of trying to explain complex political theories, social
issues, and new laws to the masses; or is Heath Care Reform:
What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works just another
chapter in the long and fascinating history of comic books?
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