/leftycapeshit/

In their most inherent form, which superhero(es) stands out as definitively leftist in their characteristics?

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youtube.com/watch?v=n1HG9G54szg
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Superman's greatest enemy is Porky incarnate.

Needs to drop the bullshit "truth, justice, and the American way" tho.

robinhood is the only leftist superhero.

Anarky, obviously.

He already did drop the American way thing back in some point during Post-Crisis, though. He renounced his American citizenship, which was only ever honorary to begin with because he was born on Krypton. He's shifted significantly away from being a 'Murican icon since then, being more character-driven and introspective.

But yeah, Lex Luthor pretty much is Porky incarnate. I feel even better about Supes being my #1 favorite superhero now. :) Thanks, user.


Anarky is a Batman villain. You're thinking of V.

Literally none.

Haven't read it yet but C.O.W.L is literally about superheros organizing into a union.


Anarky started out ok but now he's basically just DUDE CHAOS LMAO.

This one.

I'll definitely have to check C.O.W.L. out then, sounds like a good read. Trust me, user, you're gonna love the fuck out of Red Son. At least, I hope you do.

Pure ideology. Batman is a bourgeois fuck beating up the lower classes for fun. Don't let the narrator tell you who the heroes and villains are.

The original Man of Steel.

Nah m8, Batman's just mentally ill, just as insane as the colorful baddies he locks up in Arkham Asylum. He just happens to have quite the bourgeois inheritance that he squanders on expensive Bat-toys. He's just a childish, LARPing NEET, not a legit Porky.

Robin hood.

Superman is pure status quo and made as such, created as the embodyment of american capitalism.

What kind of a tankie would support the Khmer Rouge? It was an American-backed regime opposed to the Soviet Union. Pure ideology.
Also, I'd say 2 is less extreme than 1 as it merely requires you to excuse one incident whilst 1 just gives a cart blanche to all of Stalin's actions.

see

Also, you should really read some early Golden Age comics. Superman started out as quite the ansoc, doing things that would make idiotic normalfag 'Muricans more triggered over his image than Man of Steel.

Modern heroes are all trash because they struggle to preserve the status quo. It's always the villains who have the plan to change the world and the heroes who have to stop it.

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Sounds like you only know superheroes on surface level and never actually looked into them very much.

The villain's plans to "change the world" are all too often either in rational (or sometimes irrational, if they're insane) self-interest or rooted in pretty fascist ideology, among others. Rarely is a villain's plan legitimately revolutionary.

Plus, there are some heroes who don't always fight villains, and just save people from disasters or crimes. That's pretty much what Superman and Batman did in their earliest incarnations. If their intent was to preserve the status quo, they'd just allow those disasters to happen, since their job would be to keep things the same. You act like superheroes are some sort of secret police for the establishment or something… That couldn't be farther from the truth, particularly in modern superheroes. All they ever want to do in the long run is to help people and deliver justice. What's so wrong with that?

Broad brush you're using there, but on the other hand this also is the trend of fiction in general going back a long fucking way.

Of course, dummy. That's how change is made to seem evil and undesirable. It doesn't matter what is done exactly - look at the ideology behind it and the role which is taken by the villains and heroes. Consider older stories, like most ancient Greek legends or Biblical tales - the hero is the one who has a goal he's trying to accomplish, whilst the villains are the roadblocks trying to prevent this. You will rarely see the story being driven by the will of the villain whilst the hero merely responds. Yet that is virtually every single story today. The roles have been reversed. Why? So the idea of someone going out to change things and set things to his will is made to see evil, whilst those who oppose radical intervention and keep things more or less the same are heroes. It doesn't matter if they don't actually defend the government or ruling classes, what matters is the role they play vis-a-vis driving change.

What are some contemporary stories where the hero is trying to change the status quo? Pic related immediately came to mind because of this thread earlier but that's a weird example. Jack is the son of an emperor and the entire quest he's on is to undo the changes the villain has already made. On the other hand he also fights the status quo of the future and liberates people.

Isn't V a religious conservative?

…no. I have no idea where you got that impression. He and the author of the comic book are both anarchists.

I think you missed the point of my post entirely. Read more /capeshit/, user. You obviously aren't well-versed in it enough to make such an assertion.


Fuck, that's a GREAT example, user. Always identified with Jack's struggle on a personal level. He may not be /capeshit/, but he's definitely a hero. Can't fucking WAIT for the new season!! :D


Have you ever even read V for Vendetta? Why would you assume he's a religious conservative? Because Guy Fawkes himself, the guy who inspired V's mask, was a religious extremist who tried to blow up Parliament as a stand against Anglicanism?

Speaking of Alan Moore, Watchmen is a great example of the protagonists being in conflict with the status quo, except the status quo is the trajectory of modern global capitalism. It's about how there's no place for heroes in this system any more. The point of The Comedian is to show how perverse it is to treat the ruling class's enforcers as heroes. And to top it off the "villain" "wins" by "saving the day."

Man I'm fucking retarded.
Yeah I was thinking of Guy Fawkes.

"I mean, what the hell happened to us? What happened to the American dream?"
"It came true. You're looking at it."

Pure fucking gold… Alan Moore is God. I seriously need to read his take on Swamp Thing.

None of them, superheros are by definition a fascist and reactionary idea. The overman who singlehandedly saves the world from itself is a religious or god-king cult type idea. I get why M-L might not get that but most of the rest of the schools of leftist thought aren't huge on cult of personality, one-man state's where the whole of societies hopes and dreams are channeled through one person. Which is what super heros are and what Hitler was

see

Also, Superman, literally the world's first superhero, was created by two Jewish guys. It's impossible for him to be a fascist idea when fascism is so inherently opposed to Jews.

i hate my self so much for tolerating this kind of stupid shit without being a bastard about it. I promised myself id stop being a bastard to idiots

You forgot the Nazi flag, Holla Forumstard.

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Steven Universe

lad

Well since the topic is Capeshit, the most anti status Quo I can think of is The Authority, which is a superhero team that decides its going to start enforcing all those human rights treaties. Not necessarily lefty, but definitely disruptive.

BabyDoll makes me so hard
Maybe they haven't used her since because they know about people like me

The Authority felt kind of fascist vs fascists
Maybe it was because Ellis is an edglord

Maybe, I only read the Grant Morrison period.

None, the whole superhero concept is definitely right wing.

Stalin

youtube.com/watch?v=MC0Om8v8H7g

Ludwig: Marxism denies that the individual plays an outstanding role in history. Do you not see a contradiction between the materialist conception of history and the fact that, after all, you admit the outstanding role played by historical personages?

Stalin: No, there is no contradiction here. Marxism does not at all deny the role played by outstanding individuals or that history is made by people. In Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy and in other works of his you will find it stated that it is people who make history. But, of course, people do not make history according to the promptings of their imagination pr as some fancy strikes them. Every new generation encounters definite conditions already existing, ready-made when that generation was born. And great people are worth anything at all only to the extent that they are able correctly to understand these conditions, to understand how to change them. If they fail to understand these conditions and want to alter them according to the promptings of their imagination, they will land themselves in the situation of Don Quixote. Thus it is precisely Marx's view that people must not be counterposed to conditions. It is people who make history, but they do so only to the extent that they correctly understand the conditions that they have found ready-made, and only to the extent that they understand how to change those conditions. That, at least, is how we Russian Bolsheviks understand Marx. And we have been studying Marx for a good many years.

Ludwig: Some thirty years ago, when I was at the university, many German professors who considered themselves adherents of the materialist conception of history taught us that Marxism denies the role of heroes, the role of heroic personalities in history.

Stalin: They were vulgarizers of Marxism. Marxism has never denied the role of heroes. On the contrary, it admits that they play a considerable role, hut with the reservations I have just made.
marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/dec/13.htm

A lot of modern cape comics isn't hero vs. villain, it's hero vs. hero.

Since you like Jack, have you read Gendy's Luke Cage comic?

I saw a decent idea for a leftist superhero/comic on reddit a year or two ago, that involved a guy who built a robot suit with the help of a bunch of fellow factory workers, and took on a business owner who was exploiting them. Sort of like a proletarian version of Iron Man.

Don't know of any actual superheroes in print that are leftist though.

real life punisher

Bruh, I know that feel. Babydoll is seriously one of the greatest, and definitely the most underrated, Batman villain there is. She fits all the necessary criteria for one of Batman's greatest baddies. It's a shame they only used her twice in TAS, and that she had a pretty weaksauce visual cameo in Brave and the Bold. She seriously should have been in The Lego Batman Movie among all those other obscure villains.

but yeah if you're into Western loli like that I guess that's cool too, no judgment here bro


Genndy did Luke Cage, you say? Sounds like a great catalyst for me to actually look into Luke Cage in general. Thanks for the suggestion!


Shame that was just an idea. I'd read the fuck out of that if it were an actual thing.

It's good shit. Feels inspired by blaxploitation movies from the 70s.

Ozymandias

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Batman admires Anarky. Because Batman is in the end an anarchist himself.

The batman comics have consistently played with whether he is or isn't an anarchist. It's sort of one of his moral dilemmas.

That being said I wouldn't say Batman is an anarchist, he's a normal American

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the original authority comic was supposed to be about how the superheroes were just as bad and authoritarian as the villians. Everyone else missed the point and wrote it as an edgelord's fantasy.

So 12 years old me was getting half of the joke
Goon on you 12 years old me


I want to make a batman fancomic and give the spotlight to obscure villains, including babydoll

uhm no, nazism isn't the only form off fascism.
youtube.com/watch?v=JgM4auRw2Tc
but i agree that supes ain't a fasicst

youtube.com/watch?v=n1HG9G54szg

Go away Moore, you've just grown bitter and old.


I think you're mistaking something, Morrison wrote only 3 issues, 1 of which was ghost-writing for Millar.


Man, I knew this webcomic about this frustrated guy who received superpowers from Marx himself and became the Proletarian I think, but I can't find the damn thing right now.

A lot of people have mentioned Robin Hood but there's also the Green Arrow who is obviously inspired by Hood. in the comics he kind of goes between ultra-rich liberal to being described as a good ol anarchist. as far as I know he's the only mainstream comic character who is explicitly left-wing.

And Hawkman is supposed to be explicitly conservative but I have never seen that go on

he's a pro-gun control berniecrat. I still really like the character but he aint a leftist, unless you count that one Frank Miller Batman comic where he gets described as a communist.

That wouldn't happen to be The Dark Knight Returns, would it? I remember poor Superman having no choice but to be Reagan's bitch in that one. I don't think he enjoyed it, but it was the only way he could continue being Superman without having the most powerful nation in the world after his head.

Anyone see Logan yet?

There was a little bit of vaguely left commentary.

Hawkman is literally a super cop.
Fuck Hawkman.

I wanna see Logan so fucking badly, so no spoilers, plz.

meme relavent to thread.

I was thinking about how great it would be if there was a leftist team of heroes who actually used their powers to challenge the status quo, like say trying to kill Amanda Waller for having a fucking spec ops group made of slaves. Also, if you want more lefty stuff, Jamie Delano's Animal Man run basically marks the transition of the character from a traditional superhero into an anarcho-ecoist messiah.

That's what some of those utopian superheroes books tend to be. Miracleman being the biggest example, but there's also Squadron Supreme, and Authority second year and Revolution if things hadn't gotten completely off the rails. Jonathan Hickman also has a knack for writing these world-changing supertypes, like with the Celestials and Eternals in the Ultimate Universe.

That will be kind of cringey

Goddamn, that whole storyline with evil Reed Richards and the Eternals was so good.

None of them, an overman is the symbol of reactionary thinking. A superior physical/mental specimen who uses their god like powers to shape history and society with their will power and violence is classic right wing. Stop being liberal shit eaters, Super Heroes are classcucked as fuck and Marvel/DC movies are for middlebrow fags

I used to be a comic book fan, never liked capeshit, you know iron man is basically propaganda for capitalism, and captain america…..well, patriotism.
The only time cape shit was good was in this weird little moment in the 90's with guys like alan moore, grant morrison, neil gaiman.
Modern cape shit is just sjw propaganda, and not even good propaganda, these sjw's have no idea how to craft a story, they use self inserts, mary sues, everyone must be a brown tranny, there is never any real conflict or flawed characters.

Anyways, i didnt really grow up reading cape shit, i was always into indie and alternative comics, or anime and manga.

Capeshit has been too normalized, endless formulaic movies meant to extract wealth have every basic bitch retard thinking they are a nerd™

Lel

Colonialism and fascism aren't the same thing, it's completely compatible with liberalism.

Is that Johnny the Homicidal Maniac? Dude, I fucking LOVE that one. It's honestly Jhonen Vasquez's magnum opus, bar none.

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Good taste detected, go read league of extraordinary gentlemen if you haven't already.

If you love it so much why do you have to fucking ask when it's obvious and the filename is nny?

I didn't exactly recognize that particular panel from anywhere in the JTHM lore; not in the original Director's Cut, not in the Squee! series, not even in the I Feel Sick miniseries. I just wanted to make sure.

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an an-cape, I presume?

Here and now

That's remarkably hilarious irony if it's true, user. Sauce plz?

Because he would be so much less contemptible if he was a black bourgeois.

They hardly deny it.
youtube.com/watch?v=JgM4auRw2Tc

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Why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker?

Is it ultimately to protect the capitalist status quo?

Yes batman is the enforcer of capitalism and fascism.

Nice mental gynastics there to justify personality cult.

How

Yang Wen-li from The Legend of the Galatic Heroes. Ironically he was very much against the concept of heroes.

Batman is 100% on the side of law and order-he always goes after criminals and rarely if ever touches on legal crime like Golden Age Superman, who regularly beat up abusive businessmen and domestic abusers.
The comics always try to overlook this by making Batman out to be a Bill Gates style philanthropist but Bill Gates is a scumbag.

It's a shame the film adaptation was just a hamfisted statement on the Bush administration, without the moral ambiguity of the comic

That really was some grade A widescreen action. A shame he had to leave before finishing.

It was made by liberals. Their ideology boils down to "people on the other political team(s) are baaaad."

He is liberal.Very cynical against liberalism though.
also that's /a/, not Holla Forums.