How Liberalism May Be Hurting Comic Book Sales
by Darin Wagner
Folks, I know comics are created by artists. I know that Marvel and DC offices are in New York City. I realized before I started typing this that asking for authentic conservatism in comic books from the Big Two to counter constant jabs, references and snide, preachy copy they print is like asking the mob to please leave garbage alone. I get that…
…but for the good of the comic book industry, this escalation and domination of liberal sentiment has got to stop and it’s gotta stop quick.
Everybody knows that when an entertainer goes political, he/she runs the very serious risk of cutting their audience by at least half. The comic book audience has been getting smaller and smaller and I think it’s time to honestly consider that a big part of the problem is the content.
We don't really do comics here; television (and the occasional literary comment from yours truly) is more our purview. But I think Wagner's comments apply to anything we geeks happen to like. Look what has happened to science fiction fandom, for example. As I've discussed in the past, we sci-fi fans have been victimized time and time again by a self-appointed Thought Police whose tactics are spiteful, arrogant, and destructive to open-minded discussion. Beyond that, though, much that has recently been published in the genre (outside of conservative redoubts like Baen, that is) is aggressively anti-conservative in character -- and the sci-fi audience is dropping off as a result. Is it too much to ask that the members of our creative class not actively alienate large segments of their potential market?
