Cartoonist gets lesson in political correctness

Cartoonist says Trump joke killed book intro

Art Spiegelman is getting a fresh lesson that superhero comic books are political terrain.

The legendary cartoonist, best known for his Pulitzer-winning Holocaust comic memoir Maus, says that he wrote a book introduction this summer at the request of the publisher Folio Society, for the forthcoming coffee- table compendium Marvel: The Golden Age, 1939-1949.

Spiegelman says he was told that his introduction was ultimately rejected, however, because Folio and Marvel Comics wanted the essay to remain “apolitical.”

The graphic novel ist says it was a challenge to stay apolitical when writing about the rise of Timely Comics, Marvel’s precursor, in an era of fascism — as an industry was being launched largely by Jewish creators and publishers responding to world events. Prior to U. S. entry into the Second World War, Timely/ Marvel even introduced Captain America with an iconic cover: The star- spangled Steve Rogers hitting Hitler with a haymaker.

Yet it was a reference to another Captain America villain that led to Spiegelman’s “landmine” passage that got his essay spiked, the cartoonist tells The Washington Post. “In today’s all too real world, Captain America’s most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America,” wrote Spiegelman, referencing President Donald Trump.

Spiegelman says he was asked to remove the passage or else Folio Society and Marvel couldn’t publish the introduction.

“It was just one more wisecrack until it was called into question,” says Spiegelman, whose career portfolio includes provocative visual satire. “That part I just couldn’t abide by.” So he told the publisher he wouldn’t remove it — this after consenting, he says, to a minor change elsewhere in the essay. He notes that he was paid a kill fee for the work.

Folio Society had no comment on Spiegelman’s introduction; Marvel did not return requests for comment.

Spiegelman, who had submitted the essay in June, eventually decided to publish it ( with the headline “Golden age superheroes were shaped by the rise of fascism”) in the Guardian on Saturday. The cartoonist added a postscript that includes not only his account of the rejection but also his discovery last week that longtime Marvel Entertainment executive Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter has been a friend of Trump’s for decades, as well as a donor and member of his Mar-a-lago circle.

“I like it better this way,” Spiegelman says of publishing his piece as an article. “It has more resonant meaning than it perhaps would have had if it were just an introduction.”