Calling Captain America!A new comic book series aimed at young conservatives envisions a dark liberal dystopia
By Christopher Dreher | August 28, 2005
IT USED TO BE that Superman and friends stood for traditional values, the triumph of good over evil, and the American way of life. But these days, not even superheroes are safe from attacks on their patriotism. Icons like Captain America--who fought Nazis between paper covers during World War Two--are now being accused of undermining US foreign policy and the war on terror.
In an April 2003 white paper for the conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies titled ''The Betrayal of Captain America"--which caused a stir in comics circles--writers Michael Medved and Michael Lackner claimed that ''Marvel Comics and other publishers are disseminating comic books that actively promote a destructive cynicism and distrust of the United States government."
But have no fear! A new comic series bearing the unwieldy title ''Liberality for All" is coming out in October from ACC Studios, a recently formed one-man publishing venture in Kentucky. Advertised as ''an Orwellian nightmare of ultra-liberalism," the series features radio pundits Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, and Oliver North as biomechanically tricked-out members of a conservative underground resistance called F.O.I.L. (the Freedom of Information League). Writer and creator Mike Mackey, an affable comic book aficionado, says it's the conservative movement's first comic book series (unless you count the three 1987 issues of the exquisitely low-camp ''Reagan's Raiders") and the only series put together specifically for a right-wing audience. (A story synopsis and sample panels are online at accstudios.com).
Set in the year 2021, the eight-book series imagines an alternative history in which Al Gore won the 2000 election and liberals went on to create a grim dystopia, with Chelsea Clinton as president, Michael Moore the vice president, a hyper-active Department of Political-Correctness, and the United States under the thumb of a corrupt United Nations world government. Meanwhile, Islamic terrorists no longer consider the kinder, gentler US government a threat, and have focused their energies on assassinating their true enemies--the arch conservatives who make up the resistance. Osama bin Laden, now the Afghan ambassador to the United Nations, plans to wipe out New York with a nuclear device, and it's up to our dynamic talk-radio trio to save the nation.
More:
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/08/28/calling_captain_america?mode=PF