I hold nothing against those who have their own political allegiances, but to have something so blatantly forced upon you with misguided rationale is just incredible. As I began to read up on Willingham I came across a lot of his political ideology and after reading this post, it is just disheartening.

I really enjoy fables, but now I unfortunately read everything with a grain of salt. I believe he should be brought to light on his rhetoric as it can be utterly misguided and ill-informed.

What more should a superhero fight for than truth and justice?

What more is required?

Truth and justice are pure concepts. They aren’t tarnished by human action. To claim that Superman fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way” is at all superior to fighting for plain old truth and justice is to imply that there is something unquestionably superior and perfect about the “American way.” I love this country, but that’s just too much. Far too many injustices are tolerated or even promoted by our way of life for that to be an accurate depiction of reality.

The implication that the “American way” is on par with truth and justice implies that all other ways are inferior. That’s a hateful, ethnocentric, and hardly the message that our superheroes should be sending.

To cap it off, what is the “American way?” I’ve been all over this country and I’ve seen a lot of different “American ways.” If my understanding of Mr. Willingham’s editorial is correct, he seems to imply that his take on the “American way” is that absolute one.

Are superhero comics darker now than they were in the past? Yes. The kids who grew up on Watchmen, Preacher, Spawn, the Punisher, and all manner of dark non-superhero comics are now writers. They’ve been influenced by what came before them… but not everything is dark, and it has nothing to do with the “American way.”

Truth and justice are always worth fighting for. The goal should be to continually drive the American way towards truth and justice.

Douglas, I will grant you, I should have specified Steve Rogers, not Captain America. You are correct that the government did deputize a number of other Captain America’s over the years, and some of them didn’t workout.

And you are also correct about Captain America/ Steve Rogers initial creation serving as a pro American propaganda hero, however, you’d be hard pressed to find any pop-culture icons during the WWII era who weren’t serving that function. Even Disney was making anti-Nazi and anti-Japanese propaganda.

All of that being said, I strongly disagree with a number of your interpretations of Captain America, the Avengers, and their relationship with the US government.

They were a privately funded institution, and Gyrich was their government liaison. At best he was portrayed as a paper pusher, at worst he was a racist villain who interfered with the team saving the world. The Avengers were an independent team operating in the US and were consequently still subject to US law, Gyrich was the bureaucrat put in charge of that relationship. They only became official employees of the government in the last couple of years. Even then, Captain America didn’t sign on the dotted line because he was morally opposed to the law.
Steve Rogers opposed the government on a number of occasions, dropping the Captain America identity so that he could continue to fight for American ideals even when the government wasn’t supporting it’s own ideals.

All of the debate over character history aside, none of these issues change my main points.

In which alternate universe? For most of his existence, Captain America worked either directly FOR the US government, or at their behest. The Super Soldier program was run by the Army, and Steve Rogers fought for the US government during WW II. After “de-icing”, Captain America was deputized by Shield, a government intelligence agency, and commanded the Avengers, who have ALWAYS operated under the auspices of the United States Government. An issue in the 70’s shows him getting a lecture from Henry Gyrich about not turning in his government paperwork on a regular, punctual basis. Furthermore, the US government owns the Captain America identity, which was the point of replacing him with the US Agent guy. Rogers resigned at one point rather than continue as Captain America.

Your basic premise… that Cap was an agent that was “always” independent of the US Government is flatly wrong. The character was created for pure propaganda purposes during WW II, both by his creators and in the storyline, by the US Government. Cap has always been tied at the hip to the American government.

There is nothing wrong with the ideals carried by the phrase “the American way,” but to act like removing it from the character’s tag-line is a sign of a great culture war is irresponsible. My observation is that people who use the phrase “culture war” are usually trying to start one.

And that whole “American way” bullshit was tagged on to Superman during the Cold War, just like “under God” in the Pledge, and it irritates me when people act like its essential to Superman’s character.