Comically Subversive

All-New Captain America #3 (2015)
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger, Marte Gracia & Dono Sanchez Almara


Comics can be a radical indictment of our culture and superheroes can be, have been, and are (sometimes) subversive instruments of social justice widely available to the imaginations of those who partake of them.  The Challenging of our national mythos is especially evident in this one, to me.  In a year when racial profiling and systemic racism finally becomes something that we are hearing more about in the media and in general conversation, in a year when we have images of white police officers over unarmed black men on the ground murdered by those who are supposed to "protect and serve" us, this image is especially poignant to me.  Captain America is a black man, standing above this apparently unarmed surrendering person (Nazi in this = racial profiling to me) in his power, avowing who he is, declaring that he wants a better world and is willing to fight for it.  He is acknowledging that he may not be what you expected ("I was never that person") but he is who he is, he IS Captain America, he IS America, he is not going away and you can deal with it or be dealt with.

Part of why art and images like these are so powerful is because it's a beautifully imaginative individualistic experience.  Comics historically have been available to a wide variety of individuals - those with little money, children, teenagers, and others - many of whom are at an age where they are busy molding their unique inner and outer worlds.  Images are power - often thrust upon us in our culture with a limited degree of personal choice - but these are powerful images of alternative realities, generated and regenerated archetypal myths, stories and adventures that by introducing them into our psyche in this way, we then make possible and accessible to ourselves, and by extension, the world.