That didn’t take long. Only 12 months after declaring “political fatigue”, DC Comics is back with a brave story about Superman taking on that most dangerous and influential of U.S. political groups… the Ku Klux Klan!
It was only a year ago that a storyline for the Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman comic book Trinity was canned by DC Comics due to what they internally dubbed “political fatigue”.
The original story had would have had Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman protecting a bigoted hate speaker from an angry mob, that seemed ripped out of the recent headlines with Milo Yiannopoulous visiting UC Berkeley to give a talk, to find it cancelled after protest and riots.
However this free-speech-protecting storyline was proposed and approved long before those events. But a topical turn saw DC Comics dump the three-part story written by Francis Manapul and drawn by Clay Mann, replaced with a one-off story by Cullen Bunn and Clay Mann, with a new story to follow.
Could the political fatigue be over? Because one of the upcoming Young Adult graphic novels under DC Comics’ Ink label is called Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang, $16.99 for 192 pages.
So brave. Thank you for this. I eagerly anticipate more courageous and timely political titles from DC, such as Batman Terrorizes Tammany Hall, Wonder Woman Whacks the Whigs, and Green Arrow Tarreth and Feathereth Ye Traitorouf Torief.
And if it’s historical comics you’re after, allow me to suggest a very alternative spin with the current #1 Kindle bestseller. Specifically, #1 in Kindle Store >Comics & Graphic Novels > Historical & Literary > Historical Fiction