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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsArt Spiegelman's Marvel essay 'refused publication for Orange Skull Trump dig'
Art Spiegelman, the legendary graphic novelist behind Maus, has claimed that he was asked to remove criticism of Donald Trump from his introduction to a forthcoming Marvel book, because the comics publisher whose chairman has donated to Trumps campaign is trying to stay apolitical.
Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer prize for Maus, his story of the Holocaust, has written for Saturdays Guardian that he was approached by publisher the Folio Society to write an introduction to Marvel: The Golden Age 19391949, a collection ranging from Captain America to the Human Torch.
Tracing how the young Jewish creators of the first superheroes conjured up mythic almost godlike secular saviours to address political issues such as the Great Depression and the second world war, Spiegelman finishes his essay by saying: In todays all too real world, Captain Americas most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America.
After submitting the essay in June, Spiegelman says he was told by the Folio Society that Marvel Comics was trying to stay apolitical, and is not allowing its publications to take a political stance. Neither publisher responded to requests for comment from the Guardian, but Spiegelman claims he was asked to remove the sentence referring to the Red Skull or his introduction would not be published. He pulled the essay, placing it instead with the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/16/art-spiegelmans-marvel-essay-refused-publication-for-orange-skull-trump-dig
Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer prize for Maus, his story of the Holocaust, has written for Saturdays Guardian that he was approached by publisher the Folio Society to write an introduction to Marvel: The Golden Age 19391949, a collection ranging from Captain America to the Human Torch.
Tracing how the young Jewish creators of the first superheroes conjured up mythic almost godlike secular saviours to address political issues such as the Great Depression and the second world war, Spiegelman finishes his essay by saying: In todays all too real world, Captain Americas most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America.
After submitting the essay in June, Spiegelman says he was told by the Folio Society that Marvel Comics was trying to stay apolitical, and is not allowing its publications to take a political stance. Neither publisher responded to requests for comment from the Guardian, but Spiegelman claims he was asked to remove the sentence referring to the Red Skull or his introduction would not be published. He pulled the essay, placing it instead with the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/16/art-spiegelmans-marvel-essay-refused-publication-for-orange-skull-trump-dig
The essay:
Art Spiegelman: golden age superheroes were shaped by the rise of fascism
Back in the benighted 20th century comic books were seen as subliterate trash for kiddies and intellectually challenged adults badly written, hastily drawn and execrably printed. Martin Goodman, the founder and publisher of what is now known as Marvel Comics, once told Stan Lee that there was no point in trying to make the stories literate or worry about character development: Just give them a lot of action and dont use too many words. Its a genuine marvel that this formula led to works that were so resonant and vital.
...
At this point, it might be worth pointing out (not out of ethnic pride, but because it might shed some light on the rawness and the specific themes of the early comics) that the pioneers behind this embryonic medium based in New York were predominantly Jewish and from ethnic minority backgrounds. It wasnt just Siegel and Shuster, but a whole generation of recent immigrants and their children those most vulnerable to the ravages of the great depression who were especially attuned to the rise of virulent antisemitism in Germany. They created the American Übermenschen who fought for a nation that would at least nominally welcome your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
To namecheck just a few of these secular Jews who had adopted Clark Kent-like secret identities: Gaines was born Max Ginzberg; Goodmans parents immigrated from Vilnius, Lithuania; Jack Kirby (né Jacob Kurtzberg), the powerhouse who co-created Captain America with his landsman Joe Simon, was born in the slums of New Yorks Lower East Side; and Stan Lee, who became the face of Marvel Comics, was Goodmans wifes cousin, nepotistically hired as a 17‑year-old office boy named Stanley Lieber. Though not welcome in the higher precincts of advertising and publishing, they were all able to find their niche at the bottom of the barrel.
...
A revealing story serendipitously showed up in my news feed this week. I learned that the billionaire chairman and former CEO of Marvel Entertainment, Isaac Ike Perlmutter, is a longtime friend of Donald Trumps, an unofficial and influential adviser and a member of the presidents elite Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. And Perlmutter and his wife have each recently donated $360,000 (the maximum allowed) to the Orange Skulls Trump Victory Joint Fundraising Committee for 2020. Ive also had to learn, yet again, that everything is political... just like Captain America socking Hitler on the jaw.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/17/art-spiegelman-golden-age-superheroes-were-shaped-by-the-rise-of-fascism
Back in the benighted 20th century comic books were seen as subliterate trash for kiddies and intellectually challenged adults badly written, hastily drawn and execrably printed. Martin Goodman, the founder and publisher of what is now known as Marvel Comics, once told Stan Lee that there was no point in trying to make the stories literate or worry about character development: Just give them a lot of action and dont use too many words. Its a genuine marvel that this formula led to works that were so resonant and vital.
...
At this point, it might be worth pointing out (not out of ethnic pride, but because it might shed some light on the rawness and the specific themes of the early comics) that the pioneers behind this embryonic medium based in New York were predominantly Jewish and from ethnic minority backgrounds. It wasnt just Siegel and Shuster, but a whole generation of recent immigrants and their children those most vulnerable to the ravages of the great depression who were especially attuned to the rise of virulent antisemitism in Germany. They created the American Übermenschen who fought for a nation that would at least nominally welcome your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
To namecheck just a few of these secular Jews who had adopted Clark Kent-like secret identities: Gaines was born Max Ginzberg; Goodmans parents immigrated from Vilnius, Lithuania; Jack Kirby (né Jacob Kurtzberg), the powerhouse who co-created Captain America with his landsman Joe Simon, was born in the slums of New Yorks Lower East Side; and Stan Lee, who became the face of Marvel Comics, was Goodmans wifes cousin, nepotistically hired as a 17‑year-old office boy named Stanley Lieber. Though not welcome in the higher precincts of advertising and publishing, they were all able to find their niche at the bottom of the barrel.
...
A revealing story serendipitously showed up in my news feed this week. I learned that the billionaire chairman and former CEO of Marvel Entertainment, Isaac Ike Perlmutter, is a longtime friend of Donald Trumps, an unofficial and influential adviser and a member of the presidents elite Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. And Perlmutter and his wife have each recently donated $360,000 (the maximum allowed) to the Orange Skulls Trump Victory Joint Fundraising Committee for 2020. Ive also had to learn, yet again, that everything is political... just like Captain America socking Hitler on the jaw.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/17/art-spiegelman-golden-age-superheroes-were-shaped-by-the-rise-of-fascism
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Art Spiegelman's Marvel essay 'refused publication for Orange Skull Trump dig' (Original Post)
muriel_volestrangler
Aug 2019
OP
Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)1. The orange skull's superpower is his uncanny ability to suck.
Everything he touches turns to tRump.
UpInArms
(51,282 posts)2. This paragraph is a superior piece of prose
Auschwitz and Hiroshima make more sense as dark comic book cataclysms than as events in our real world. In todays all too real world, Captain Americas most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America. International fascism again looms large (how quickly we humans forget study these golden age comics hard, boys and girls!) and the dislocations that have followed the global economic meltdown of 2008 helped bring us to a point where the planet itself seems likely to melt down. Armageddon seems somehow plausible and were all turned into helpless children scared of forces grander than we can imagine, looking for respite and answers in superheroes flying across screens in our chapel of dreams.
Thank Art Spiegelman.... you are amazing...
and, thank you, Muriel .... for posting