Didn’t Alan Moore end up going off to write his own comics, with blackjack and hookers, because he never managed to reconcile the constrictions of the big publishers with his own political views?
Sorta, kinda. To be absolutely clear, he published a full on anarchist manifesto under a DC label, as well as Watchmen itself, which ended up being the ultimate deconstructionist take on superheroes (and does start from a heroes-as-keepers-of-the-system take, but goes way past that eventually).
And, again, it’s not like he was pretending to be a conservative while he was doing superheroes.
Again, writers are writers. They write. It’s not like there’s a sign on the Marvel and DC bullpens saying “status quo defense only”. Again, except for that chunk of time where the US government literally did that. But that’s a different story, and there was a ton of cultural and countercultural pushback before, during and after.
Didn’t Alan Moore end up going off to write his own comics, with blackjack and hookers, because he never managed to reconcile the constrictions of the big publishers with his own political views?
Sorta, kinda. To be absolutely clear, he published a full on anarchist manifesto under a DC label, as well as Watchmen itself, which ended up being the ultimate deconstructionist take on superheroes (and does start from a heroes-as-keepers-of-the-system take, but goes way past that eventually).
And, again, it’s not like he was pretending to be a conservative while he was doing superheroes.
Again, writers are writers. They write. It’s not like there’s a sign on the Marvel and DC bullpens saying “status quo defense only”. Again, except for that chunk of time where the US government literally did that. But that’s a different story, and there was a ton of cultural and countercultural pushback before, during and after.
So, short version is “yes, with a but”
Yeah. The “but” being he published plenty of countercultural, left-leaning content under a mainstream publisher brand and in the superhero genre.
So, you know, a pretty big “but” in this context.