Marvel apparently rejected an Art Spiegelman essay about fascism because of a Trump reference
Aux Features Comics
In an essay for The Guardian that went up this weekend, Maus creator Art Spiegelman dives into the so-called golden age of comics that occurred (depending on who you ask) at some point between the late-1930s and the mid-1950s, with him specifically focusing on the birth of Marvel Comics and how superheroes like Captain America were explicitly created to oppose the rise of fascism. At the end, he brings it around to note that superheroes are as popular as ever with Captain America still fighting the fascist Red Skull in mega-budget movies just as America is terrorized by an “Orange Skull” of its own—meaning Trump, obviously. Then there’s a twist: Spiegelman didn’t write the essay for The Guardian, it was originally commissioned as an introduction to a collection of golden age Marvel comics being published by the Folio Society.
In an extra addendum, Spiegelman says that a Folio Society editor told him that Marvel (as co-publisher of the collection) was trying to stay “apolitical” and wanted him to remove the “Orange Skull” reference. “I didn’t think of myself as especially political compared with some of my fellow travelers,” Spiegelman explains, “but when asked to kill a relatively anodyne reference to an Orange Skull I realized that perhaps it had been irresponsible to be playful about the dire existential threat we now live with.” Spiegelman says he decided to withdraw his essay from the publication because of that, adding that he had also recently learned that Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter and his wife had both recently given the maximum donation of $360,000 to Trump’s reelection campaign.
Perlmutter has been a not-so-secret Trump supporter for a long time, and Spiegelman uses that opportunity to bring his whole thesis on the intertwined histories of superheroes and fascism together, noting, “I’ve also had to learn, yet again, that everything is political… just like Captain America socking Hitler on the jaw.” You can the full essay at that Guardian link up above.
48 Comments
Ike Perlmutter is awful outside of his support of the Orange Skull. He’s been like a HYDRA agent at Marvel, fucking up everything that he can get his tentacles on. So him supporting Trump and/or him possibly being the one to fuck up getting someone of Spiegelman’s stature to write the intro comes as no surprise.
Whoa really?Oh tentacles.
Literally half the pictures you can find of the guy are of him with Trump!
I’m so sorry this is happening to you.
what
Even better, before the Trump administration, Perlmutter was so reclusive that exactly ONE photo of him existed and it looked like something out of Mad Men, so pretty much EVERY photo that exists of him is due to his support of Trump.
No, he hasn’t really. Disney took over and punted him sideways. He still has the title of ‘Chairman’ because they can’t get rid of him completely, but he has no influence on the MCU, and no real power in Marvel Entertainment. Go look it up, and read some on the comments in the iO9 article on this subject. Perlmutter’s an obnoxious, racist, misogynist piece of shit, but it’s hard to show that he has any real influence on the day to day affairs at Marvel any more.
And all of that means fuck all to the long list of transgressions for which he’s already been responsible. And lol at you telling me to “Go look it up and read some on the comments in the iO9 article on this subject.”
Look man, you’re essentially calling me a bad parent for making comment sections the primary source of education for my son and I don’t appreciate it.
If by “Go look it up, and read some of the comments in the io9 article on this subject.” you mean the one comment you made (https://io9.gizmodo.com/1837350460) that’s also devoid of any reliable sources, than no you haven’t proved anything.
No, that’s not what I meant, that would be stupid. I meant other comments, like this: https://io9.gizmodo.com/1837349240
He’s been like a HYDRA agent at Marvel, fucking up everything that he can get his tentacles on. That’s certainly a mental image.
Not that it makes it any better, but I have a hard time seeing Disney letting this through even if the Trumpy exec didn’t spike it.
I stopped buying Marvel comics or seeing the movies when I found out about Perlmutter’s contributions. That’s scummy as hell, especially when you consider Marvel just spent the last 5 years trying to diversify their representation in a massive wave of woke baiting. It’s just marketing to them. I can still collect my silver age books and they’ll not see a dime.
Perlmutter’s not connected to Marvel Studios anymore, no? From what I gather he was the one standing in the way of diversity.
Not the movies, but he’s still with the TV division, which is how we got Inhumans.
Sales dictate long term content, listen to his speach again…….and attempted diversity at marvel was really just pandering. Swapping the sex or race of a popular long standing character isn’t artistic or creative, it’s lazy. Jane foster as Thor? Lazy considering the powerful women already in the mythos that could have been used. Same goes for any other swap. Good stories have no boundaries, pandering usually fails……been collecting black Panther, and blade since the 70’s, not because they’re black but because the stories are good, so please, stop. You don’t like a guy because he supports another guy you don’t like……hes allowed to support whoever he wishes just like you.
This comment is giving me whiplash. “Woke baiting?” The fuck?
Marvel made an actual effort to bring in more readers beyond the Wednesday crowd of 40 year old white babymen from the suburbs. They went berserk and took to complaining on the internet. Because it’s on the internet “Bringing in a more diverse audience of readers” got portrayed as a negative instead of the positive it is.Marvel stopped for a couple of reasons. Mostly because they were afraid of losing their Wednesday Whales. And because the higher ups are either Libertarian or flat out MAGA trash like Perlmutter. Since the 40 year old white babymen won that little culture war battle some of that idiocy remains. Like the term “woke bait”.
Not to start an argument about that era and I haven’t collected comics in almost a decade but I was keeping up with everything going on then. The issue wasn’t just hardcore older white fans bitching it was an editorial problem. Most fans agree that diversity is sorely needed in comics but Marvel was approaching it terribly at the time. They would replace characters with little to no lead up and go on daytime TV to announce the change of one character to another, if you are really trying to bring in new readers why would you go a show like the View? Yet Marvel did. Plus some of the books sold horribly and seem to be nothing more than a publicity stunt to sale a few number 1 issues and then as soon as the sales cooled the original characters were back. Comics and the heroes in them should reflect the world we live in but Marvel was treating this as a bad cash grab. A way to get some publicity. And I’m not going to disagree there wasn’t some old racist D-bags crying about this but there was plenty of regular readers who liked the idea of new diverse characters coming in but hated the way Marvel did it.
And then there’s the current EiC who infamously got his start at Marvel by pretending to be Japanese (https://io9.gizmodo.com/marvels-editor-in-chief-really-wishes-we-could-all-just-1826509024)
They stopped because the sales were terrible….. Money talks
“Woke bait” is one of those terms that on the surface looks like it belongs in some red-hat dickweed’s anti-SJW screed, but is also occasionally used by left-leaning people to describe what they believe is inadequate representation (e.g. the hooplah about there being a gay character in Avengers: Endgame, and it turned out to be some nameless civilian talking about his dead husband for five seconds). It’s also used to criticise corporations co-opting social justice narratives for their own profit, like the way a lot of Pride marches have basically turned into rainbow sponcon while much of the LGBTQ community’s issues are still woefully underserved. It’s one of those terms where you have to judge it in the context of the person using it.Going by NatalieShark’s post here and a glance at her post history, I’d assume she’s using it in that sense, not the MAGA-chud one.
And that is how you lose – “woke bait”, really?
I’m not exactly sure I was trying to “win,” anything. You’re also assuming I mean that any diversity is woke baiting. I’m saying that their doing it and then rolling back on their decisions to appease their fan base shows it for what it is- marketing. It’s bullshit.
The effort isn’t bullshit, the backlash towards the effort (to include phrasing like ‘woke bait’) is. It’s messed up that Marvel capitulated, particularly for what amounts to fantasy characters whose races, genders, and sexuality shouldn’t really matter so long as the overarching themes are adhered to. More so as their ‘fan base’ was never just the screaming hoards who raid forums crying because a female Thor messes with their minds and they were trying to grab those people. Marvel didn’t gain much when it capitulated, which destroys the idea of it as a marketing stunt.
The movies/MCU is a division of Disney not Marvel. Pearlmutter has nothing to do with it. You can watch the movies and not directly giving Pearlmutter money.
Perlmutter’s been an executive at Marvel since the 90s and CEO since the mid-aughts.
A few thingsMarvel Studios is directly under Disney and not part of Perlmutter’s control. So probably safe still watching thoseAs far as the comics go. Perlmutter is pretty hands off these days and a lot of good editors keep him as far away from day to day as possible. Buying a Marvel comic still benefits him but it also benefits a large number of talented good people who are not a giant asshole at the top of an org chart
This seems like an odd objection. I mean, comics creators mocking Bush was pretty common back in the day. You’d think that criticizing Trump would come as naturally as breathing to them.
I’m starting to think this continuing conglomeration thing might have a negative impact on the independent voices of artists or something.
During the Bush Administration, Marvel wasn’t run by a Bush guy. During the Trump Administration, it’s being run by a Trump guy.
Ike Perlmutter’s been an exec at Marvel since the 90s and CEO since the mid-2000s, and I’m reasonably sure he didn’t vote for Al Gore.
He wasn’t CEO until after Bush was reelected. He wasn’t a Trump guy until 2016. He didn’t have a (secret) position in the Trump Administration until 2017.
Fair cop, but my point is he’s never not been a Republican. And his position at the VA is pure cronyism. He’s always been a “Trump guy”. So everyone flipping shit over Ike’s sudden newsworthiness is missing the forest for the trees.
Nobody’s saying he’s ever not been a Republican. Nobody’s saying he’s suddenly newsworthy now.He’s always been a Republican. He was suddenly newsworthy in late 2016 when he became friends with the president-elect and suddenly even more newsworthy in early 2017 when he was given a secret position within the Trump Administration, something not learned by the public until 2018. he is, once again, making the news because the company he is the chairman of punished one of its licensees and forced them to change a book critical of Trump.But clearly you’re just fucking with me and pretending not to understand all this. Fuck off, chud.
Also, you know, it’s Art Spiegelman.
My memory is hazy so please correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the mockery of Bush happen after he was out of office?
They’re just being cautious. Until they have their Time Heist ready, it’s best not to encourage Trumpos (Thanump?) to snap his tiny fingers.
“I am inevitable. The most inevitable. I have the best inevitability.”
“I am invtable. The most invetble. I have the best inoviable.”
“Embrace it. Run from it. In the end, covfefe.”
You cofevfe stop him.
The easy way to tell that neither Speigelman or any other woke ponce thinks that Trump is a fascist is because they all want the “fascist President” to take their guns away and make sure they can’t arm themselves ever.
It’s gotta be weird for Speigelman and others like him to be so brazenly dishonest in public.
Mouse beats Maus.
Deflator mouse house tells Maus die. Uh fleder …
Mouse House on Maus Grouse: “Raus!”
Perlmutter has been a not-so-secret Trump supporter for a long time,