Discussing his recent run on Captain America in the October 2009 issue of Wizard magazine, comics writer Ed Brubaker says Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada told him, “‘“Kids reading comics today, they don’t care too much about Nazis, so having Captain America’s archvillain be a Nazi is less interesting than having him [. . . be] some corporate madman from ex-Communist Russia.”’”

I’m not sure which “kids” Joe Quesada is talking about here.  Does he mean kids ages 8-16, who were born after the Cold War ended, the kids who were very young when terrorists killed more American civilians on September 11^th, 2001, than the Soviets ever managed to kill during the entire Cold War, the kids who grew up in a Nation reacting to that horrible event?  Those kids?  Or does he mean the older “kids” who grew up during the Cold War and still read superhero comics?

I know I shouldn’t take this statement too seriously; it is, after all, hearsay in a puff piece by Wizard, which tends to be just one big uncritical advertisement for whatever is going on in Corporate Comics these days anyway.  Still, this is the sort of ridiculous, unchallenged statement that appears all the time in the media, whether in serious journalism or in entertainment rags like Wizard, and it drives me crazy.

Another ridiculous, unchallenged statement I love to hate also comes from Joe Quesada regarding Marvel Comics, although this line of bullshit certainly didn’t start with him.  It’s the statement that Marvel Comics, unlike DC comics, takes place in the “real world” (you can see Quesada say this after being prompted by Stephen Colbert.  Say it ain’t so, Stephen!).  When Marvel shills say this, they don’t mean that Marvel tells nuanced, detailed stories about ordinary individuals struggling to find meaning in their lives in the face of social pressure, poverty, disease, wars and, ultimately, death (that’s what Adrian Tomine’s comics are about), but rather that many Marvel characters live in New York City, as opposed to the fictionalized New York of Superman’s Metropolis or Batman’s Gotham.  That’s it.  In the Marvel Universe, just like the DC Universe, there are still people who gain super powers from random events who then don skin-tight costumes to fight crime, aliens and demons.  That doesn’t mean that there aren’t fictional places in the Marvel universe, either; there’s Atlantis, Genosha, Latveria, and Wakanda, to name several.  It just means that Marvel wants to distinguish itself from a competitor that offers products nearly identical to their own, so they take one tiny difference that isn’t really a difference at all and then blow it up to make themselves look better.  And no one calls them on their shit.

One last thought: offering a product nearly identical to one’s competitor is probably one of the motivations behind Disney’s recent purchase of Marvel Comics.  Disney, like Warner Brothers, owns or co-owns a television network (ABC for Disney, The CW for Warner Brothers), various movie studios (Touchstone Pictures for Disney, Warner Brothers for Warner Brothers), and a slew of animated properties (Disney for Disney, Looney Tunes for Warner Brothers), but until now, no superheroes (DC Comics for Warner Brothers, and now, Marvel Comics for Disney).  And while I’m sure publishing superhero comics is profitable (Wizard wouldn’t exist otherwise), Disney is probably less interested in publishing quality funny books for the kiddies than they are in making superhero movies and taking advantage of the worldwide marketing opportunities those movies provide.