Tegan O’Neil ruminates on the Avengers movie and its wider implications for modern America and in passing he mentions the following:
You want to know what I find really depressing these days? The Marvel superheroes used to be figures of the counterculture. I don’t want to press on this point to hard, because it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Stan Lee pushed the characters as being part of the sixties counterculture when he saw that he could leverage a small but enthusiastic readership of college-aged kids into cultural cache.
Which is something I’ve been thinking about as well. Marvel always used to be, if not a leftist, at least a liberal leaning company. Most of its heroes were always either being distrusted by the proper authorities, or were in active conflict with them in some way or another. In fact, the whole Marvel Universe was founded in an act of rebellion, with the Fantastic Four sneaking off on their ill fated rocket flight against the orders of the military. Then there was the Hulk, in which a scientist working for the military industrial complex gets irradiated by his own weapon and turns into a monster. Not to mention Spider-Man, or the X-Men, both hated and feared by a world they repeatedly saved, etc. etc.
It’s all a far cry from the espionage/black ops/governmental superhero death squads of the modern Marvel Universe, where Captain America is no longer a Roosevelt Democrat turned into the symbol of the American dream, but just another Republican thug. Which is one reason why I no longer read many Marvel comics, as even the good ones are drenched in this fascistoid atmosphere.
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