Political Memes

I wanted to see if I could find this as a poster, but it only comes in 11" x 10" 😕

Reminds me of this video made by the department of war after WW2. Americans today should watch these videos

Yeah even ol' Lex ain't that bad. Fucking orange faced pedo rapist traitor convict. I hope he gets what's coming to him. Then we need to make America great again by charging and outlawing all MAGA officials and "policies" edit: spelling

Comics are our modern day myths. It's not surprised the most digestible messages would be through them.

Tell us more about how sharing values through narrative and myth is sad.

Comic books, more often than not, have always been pro-social values, and largely pretty progressive. The movies water some of that down sometimes, but it's always been there at the core.

Well why won't he release the Ra's al gul files then? 🧐

Funnily enough, the "American Way" bit that the average non-comic book reader thinks has always been a part of Superman's motto, and that conservatives whinge about when it's not in there, is not only not a part of the original motto (which which was just "Truth and Justice"), but has actually rarely been a part of it, and almost never in the actual comics.

The first use of it came about in 1942 during WWII in the Superman radio show. This is after the US finally entered the war and basically all media became hyper patriotic. It should be noted, though, that there was a comic strip titled “How Superman Would Stop the War” in Look magazine from Feb. 1940 in which Superman carried Hitler and Stalin to the League of Nations HQ to be sentenced for war crimes. This comic earned Superman's creators hate mail and death threats for suggesting we should be involved in the war at all. So, American hypocrisy was, of course, alive and well.

Similar to that wartime patriotism, during the height of the Red Scare in the 1950's, the Superman TV show starring George Reeves reused the tagline to play up the American-ness of Superman.

It wasn't used again until 1978 with the Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve. This is probably where the tagline really cemented itself into the general consciousness of the country due to the movie's popularity with a wide audience. But even then, it wasn't used again until 1988 in the Ruby Spear's Superman animated series (not to be confused with Superman: The Animated Series from 1996) and one line of dialogue in the Superboy TV show.

And even after all of that, it had not appeared A SINGLE TIME in the comics books until it appeared on a patriotic cover in 1991, 53 years after its first usage. And even in that issue, Superman is not an America-centric character, but both demonstrates and verbalizes his commitment to helping and representing the entire world, not just the US. He rescues a foreign president and says, "I believe in everything this flag stands for. But as Superman I have to be a citizen of the world. I value all life, regardless of political borders.” 20 years later, he actually formally renounced his American citizenship, saying, “‘Truth, justice and the American way’––it’s not enough anymore.” This received much controversy, as you'd expect.

But there are many other variants on the tagline and those variants, collectively, are far more common than the "American Way" variant. “Truth and justice" (Fleischer animated shorts, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) “truth, tolerance and justice” (Superman serial, starring Kirk Alyn) "truth, justice and freedom” (The New Adventures of Superman) “truth, justice and peace for all mankind” (Super Friends), “truth, justice and a better tomorrow” (Superman: Son of Kal-El), etc. Even some tongue-in-cheek references to the controversy like “Truth, Justice… and other stuff” (Smallville), and “Truth, Justice… and all that stuff”(Superman Returns).

And none of it was ever meant to be anti-American. Several writers have chosen to use the the American Way tagline in recent years in the comics, and there has been zero pushback from DC for it. But it is not the standard and should not be treated like an expectation.