I thought that the way I placed emphasis on that Comics-Journal-fascism exchange made it clear enough, but since what I was getting at still managed to elude at least one former editor of the Comics Journal, let me state for the record that the “problem” I was pointing to was Gary Groth’s opinion of the concept of heroism, not Jean-Claude Mezieres’s. Meziere was the interview subject–why on Earth would I, and how on Earth could I, hold one of his opinions against the magazine the interview appeared in?

Obviously, it was Journal editor & publisher Gary Groth’s “yes” that I was pointing to. To him, the idea that “the concept of a hero is fascism” (not “smacks of,” but is; A=A, if you will) is so clear-cut that it doesn’t merit any more exploration or explanation than a one-word confirmation, or at least that’s how it comes across.

I mean, duh, of course I wasn’t talking about Mezieres. How would his opinion signal a problem with the Journal? Everyone did notice that the “emphasis mine” was placed on Gary’s “yes,” right? Okay, everyone except Milo, then?

I’ll say again that this exchange took place 18 years ago, and I’ve had it pointed out to me by people who should know that heroic fiction was viewed with even more suspicion than usual back then, seeing as how it was Morning In America and all that. But the point was that, despite what Milo says, it wasn’t me who “project[ed] the whole tired ‘heroes=fascists’ stance onto … a word”–it was Gary. (And Gil Kane, oddly enough.)

(UPDATE: I think Milo might be saying that I’m making too much out of what might have just been a monosyllabic silence-filler, but in my experience as an interviewer I’ve never said “yes” in that context. Yeah, mm-hmm, uh-huh, okay, sure–those I’ve said, but I can’t imagine saying “yes” unless I was agreeing with someone or confirming something. Certainly Gil Kane chiming in with an identical statement lends credence to the notion that Gary wasn’t just making noise, but was in fact saying something intentional.)

(BTW, Milo then proceeds to launch into a couple of tangentially related diatribes about the infamous blogospheric ideological echo-chamber, Ugly American Nerds, and a defense of the French, all of which he seems to think are spot-on responses to my “straw man” argument. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t’cha think?)

Anyway, NeilAlien has a linkfilled round-up of this whole hero/fascist debate, with some thoughts of his own (I was interested to see that, like me, he too pointed out the fact that since the early ’60s superheroes themselves have, in the main, been anti-authoritarian individualists); meanwhile, David Oakes writes in to Tim O’Neil with an exploration of the relationship between simple (mere?) power and full-blown fascism.

PS: For a solid, comprehensive, difficult-to-abuse definition of fascism, I recommend the following:

Fascism is a set of ideologies and practices that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community. Fascist nationalism is reactionary in that it entails implacable hostility to socialism and feminism, for they are seen as prioritizing class or gender rather than nation. This is why fascism is a movement of the extreme right. It is also a movement of the radical right because the defeat of socialism and feminism and the creation of the mobilized nation are held to depend upon the advent to power of a new elite acting in the name of the people, headed by a charismatic leader, and embodied in a mass, militarized party. Fascists are pushed towards conservatism by common hatred of socialism and feminism, but are prepared to override conservative interests–family, property, religion, the universities, the civil service–where the interests of the nation are considered to require it. Fascist radicalism also derives from a desire to assuage discontent by accepting specific demands of the labour and women’s movements, so long as these demands accord with the national priority. Fascists seek to ensure the harmonization of workers’ and women’s interests with those of the nation by mobilizing them within special sections of the party and/or within a corporate system. Access to these organizations and to the benefits they confer upon members depends on the individual’s national, political, and/or racial characteristics. All aspects of fascist policy are suffused with ultranationalism.

From Kevin Passmore’s excellent Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. I myself probably wouldn’t have privileged fascism’s relationship to feminism quite so much, nor perhaps even its relationship to socialism–it seems to me that the nationalistic exclusionary/exterminationist facet of fascism is thereby undersold; not to mention the fascists’ use of violence to further their goals, even within a nominally democratic framework such as those possessed by both Germany and Italy during the inter-War years–but I think that’s the best working definition I’ve yet come across. You can see how it encompassess not just Hitler’s Nazis and Mussolini’s Fascists, but to one extent or another Imperial Japan (which used a fall-guy Emperor in lieu of the charismatic leader), Falangist Spain (which used fascist tactics, but eventually was more accurately an extreme-right conservative dictatorship, in a more traditional sense, than a fascist one), the various Islamist movements (which define the nation in religious terms–the Ummah), and the American extreme right (which has not truly adopted fascist tactics, but has to one degree or another a fascist conception of the ideal America), and the European extreme right (ditto). You can also see that it does not encompass Spider-Man.

Feline literacy will become the hot-button issue of the comics blogosphere. Why, the Missus and Scott at Polite Dissent are already on the beat!

In one of his big anti-superhero posts, Tim O’Neil asked why we (the blogosphere, I’m assuming) spend so much time and energy discussing superhero books. I’m sure this question is meant to be rhetorical, seeing as how Tim thinks they’re not worth discussing (and yet–and yet!–his last two Comics Journal review pieces were both of superhero books), but it made me think: Why do we spend so much time discussing superhero books? Obviously most of us have fairly heterodox taste in comics. If I myself were to list my top twenty/twenty-five favorite comics of all time, maybe only three or four would be superhero books. So what gives?

Well, obviously,

99 percent of the discussions are half-baked attempts at justifying a love of junk, [and] it’s all pretty harmless in the larger scheme of things [comics blogs are essentially the Internet equivalent of the first generation of comics zines, mixed with the monomania that the Net inspires].

I mean, duh.

But let’s pretend, for a second, that that’s just a dopey ad-hominem dismissal of an opinion that the speaker disagrees with. (I know, that’s tough to believe, but bear with me.) The answer that comes to mind for the question “Why does the blogosphere spend so much time talking about superhero comics?” is “Well, where else are we gonna go to do it?”

Time and time again bloggers have pointed out that there’s not really a forum for intelligent, textual & aesthetic criticism and analysis of supercomics. The Comics Journal is far and away the best magazine about comics around, but their serious engagement with supercomics is limited at best; most of it is characterized by the type of statement reprinted above. Superhero-centric publications like Wizard aren’t interested in criticism and analysis at all, and superhero-centric publications like Comic Book Artist are predominantly venues for those-were-the-days reminisces more than anything else. Meanwhile, other online discussion fora (message boards, Usenet, listservs, etc.) too easily degenerate into flame wars and in jokes. Blogging, as a publication tool, seems to lend itself well to lengthy discussion between self-policing participants. Meanwhile, in a sort of chicken-and-egg situation, at this point comics bloggers tend to be people who want to talk intelligently about superhero comics and turned to blogging to do so.

As comicsblogging continues to evolve, I wouldn’t be surprised to see blogs develop along other lines; we’ve already seen some blogs that appear to follow the Wizard or CBA pattern, and with Tim and Milo both in business we’re starting to see some that resemble the Journal. The more the merrier, I think.

Hot on the heels of her still-ongoing “correctly identify my tattoo and win a prize” contest, the Missus and our daughter Lucy the cat have come up with what may well be the offer of the century for comics writers and artists. Go take a look!

First of all, our computer is back again, and no, we didn’t lose all our data. So hooray!

Second of all, the Missus and I got new tattoos yesterday. Mine is the emblem of the kings of Gondor–the White Tree, the Seven Stars, and the Crown of Elendil. It’s nice.

But what is the Missus’s new tattoo? That is the question. Go on over to her site, check it out, and let her know what you think it is. The first person to get it right wins an actual prize! How about that!

Alright. Yes, the potential for reinforcing fascist ideas is inherent in superhero comics. Ubermenschen in impressive costumes using their might to make right, yes yes, we understand.

But here’s the thing: When was the last time you read a superhero comic that (as Tim “Here’s a twenty-graf essay on how upset I am that we spend so much time writing about superhero comics” O’Neil puts it, God love him) “uncritical acceptance of powerful authority figures”? (Excepting Marvels, of course. And The Authority, no matter what Warren “Comics’ Closet Conservative” Ellis says.)

To use a much bandied-about statistic, 99.999% of superheroes themselves are unable to accept their own status as powerful authority figures. And this isn’t new, either. This has been this way since the Marvel Age dawned in the early 1960s. And this is to say nothing of the fact that for the past two years nearly every supercomic writer who’s felt the need to Say Something has made his or her spandex-clad steroid cases stand-ins for Resident Bush’s Ill-Advised Mesopotamian Intervention, explicitly rejecting the notion that one should offer up uncritical acceptance of powerful authority figures. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have my superhero comics any other way. They’re interesting because of their powers, but they’re compelling because of their weaknesses, and the extent to which they do or do not overcome them.

So who would uncritically accept superheroes? Genuine idiots, I suppose, but then the real question becomes: Why the hell are we wasting so much time and energy getting upset that a genuine idiot might read Action Comics and think to himself, “If there really were a Superman, I would uncritically accept his powerful authority”?

I’d really love to opt out of these F-word debates from here on out, because quite frankly the idea that superheroes promote fascism is just as much a product of years-long immersion in comics culture as is the near-worship of superheroes. But if you’d like to learn more about fascism, I recommend Fascism: A Very Short Introduction by Kevin Passmore. (Hint: Fascism is not German for “art that I don’t like that has some muscular people in it.”)

(Thanks to J.W. Hastings–he’s got a great post on the topic, and links to all the pertinent, thoughtful posts on other blogs, especially Tim’s. And a big “welcome back” to Tim, by the way–I really did miss his bloggin’ presence!)

The bright lights at Apple Central must have had their iPod earbuds blasting that annoying Jet song a little too loud when they fixed my computer less than a month ago, because it turns out they didn’t fix the goddamn thing at all. Today it melted down in the exact same way it did in mid-May, with the added fun factoid that the tech at the Apple Store thinks it’s somewhat likely that the whole hard drive was wiped out. Such fun!

So, I’d say “expect blogging to be light for a while,” but it’s been light for such a long time that this probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to any of you anymore. Still, hope springs eternal, even when every week seems to bring the Collins household a fresh kick in the teeth.

[GARY] GROTH: What do you find politically offensive about the concept of a hero?

[JEAN-CLAUDE] M