Reddit user wants to know what X-Men comics to read to "avoid the woke stuff"

Right? Plenty of teachers and profs are now assigning graphic novels - Maus, V for Vendetta, March, Red Son, Joe Sacco’s work, etc… all excellent stuff. A book having pictures doesn’t make it “less valuable” or “dumber” as some people seem to believe…

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He may not like what he finds if he goes back too far. . .

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Oh man, I would have killed to have that an option when I was in HS.

I see Maus and Persepolis and used book stores with the college book store labeling on them, so they must be being used in classes as well.

Raina Telgemeier has won several Eisner awards her books come highly recommends as YA fiction. I got a few for the kiddo. It wouldn’t surprise me if they weren’t on reading lists as well.

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Thank you, I stand corrected.

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[ETA: I sure hope this pic is real.]

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Yeah, people who think Cap is right wing have never read the comics. In the '60s, Steve Rogers championed two “evil mutant” foreign nationals for membership in the Avengers; in the '70s, he partnered up with a Black man, and went walkabout after a Watergate-adjacent scandal shook his faith in the system; in the '80s Cap dated a Jewish woman, defended a gay man who’d been his childhood friend in a long storyline involving the Red Skull, and had a group of compatriots who were reformed criminals. He also had to regain the mantle of Captain America on more than one occasion after the government handed the role (and the shield) over to more right-wing men. As corny as it sounds, reading Captain America comics has actually shaped my worldview in good ways.

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My favorite Captain America identity is The Captain, where he wore a black, red, and white suit (the same one that later became the first USAgent suit) after giving up the flag suit because he wouldn’t be a good little nationalist symbol.

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Newsflash, dumbass;

THERE IS NO SUCH THING.

All X-Men titles are ‘woke stuff,’ because Stan Lee created the X-Men as an allegory for the civil rights movement.

RIGHT???

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You joke but in between 1953 and 1954 there was a short-lived Captain America revival that had him fighting Reds under the Bed with a strapline across the top of the comic that read CAPTAIN AMERICA… THE COMMIE SMASHER!

In 1972 they brought back the alternate Cap, he was part of an experiment to recreate the super soldier serum but it was incomplete and drove the 50s Cap and Nomad mad. They were placed in suspended animation but eventually were thawed out and fought OG Cap. They’ve come back a few times as enemies and eventually the alternate Cap became a crime-fighter himself.

Plus, there’s also the story @Thrabalen mentions where Steve Rogers quits as Captain America. There he’s replaced by John Walker, formerly the supervillain Super Patriot (explicitly envisioned as Captain America’s dark counterpart - who’s patriotism runs to extremism). There’s even a scene where Walker’s given a briefing on a militia he’s tasked with taking down and he thinks to himself that he agrees with their ideals. Rogers eventually retakes the mantle and since then Walker’s been a recurring character as USAgent. This story was partially adapted into the Falcon and Winter Soldier TV show

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By the dorky helmet of Magneto, I look forward to the day when butthurt conservatives forget the word “woke” exists.

It’s been weaponized, and they slather it on everything like so much regressive ranch dressing. If you’re not actively offending someone, or if you show a scintilla of concern for marginalized groups, congratulations! You’re too “woke”!

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Thanks for the heads-up. I was going to click through to see the shithead get dunked on, but now I’ve avoided dipping into his enabling cesspool.

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Count me as someone who’s both been assigned graphic novels in my grad-level coursework, and who assigns graphic novels to students now. Medium-based snobbery makes no sense. There is thoughtful and thoughtless stuff happening in every medium, and different media allow ideas and sentiments to be articulated in usefully distinctive ways.

I remember Chris Ware writing in the footnotes to one of his graphic novels (I think Quimby Mouse?) where he half-jokingly disparagingly described literary authors as “authors who never learned how to draw,” which was a funny subversion of the classist, dated high-art/low-art dichotomy thing.

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“HULK VERY SORRY FOR MY MANY SINS!” is a giveaway this isn’t Stan Lee’s writing since Hulk doesn’t use determiners like “my.” A real penitent Hulk would be thinking “HULK VERY SORRY FOR HULK’S MANY SINS!” His size and volume control issues would make for quite the awkward situation if he ever sat down in a confessional booth though.

In fact I’m starting to wonder if that banner was a real licensed Marvel product at all.

Oh wait. “Banner.” I get it now!

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@Mindysan33 @milliefink @RickMycroft hey there – no elitist snobbery here. i read comics, buy and collect. i love comics and am fully aware of their cultural and educational relevance. my daughter uses graphic novels to teach her lit classes. i get it! i wore my MADMAN t shirt yesterday!
However, i didn’t get ALL of my education or opinions from comics, and i will guess neither did any of you. and if the guy in question didn’t seem so frightened or repelled by contemporary themes in his comics, i maybe would not have assumed that he wasn’t as well read as he possibly could be. OK? that was it.

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There are plenty of “well read” bigots though… Richard Spencer was once a phd candidate in the history program at Duke. They don’t just let anyone into their graduate programs.

We really do need to get over the idea that being highly educated and “smart” by certain standards will automatically make someone less bigoted. It’s just not the case, I’m afraid. Plenty of people who are not “well read” are smart and deeply progressive while plenty of highly educated people have supported and continue to support the far right.

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“FORGIVE HULK, FATHER. HULK HAVE MANY SINS.”

“Blessings upon you, my son. What do you wish to confess.”

“HULK PICK UP STRANGER FROM BAR. HULK SMASH!”

“…Like… um… fornication? Or did you hurt someone?”

“HULK, YOU KNOW… HULK SMASH!”

“Hold on a minute, I need to look up how many Hail Marys this will be…”

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Hulk think this sign stupid.

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This is ignorant shit up there with Paul Ryan stanning for RATM while also embodying the fucking machine.

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Like avoid all of it?

Is it “at least” a correlation? Like “most people who are well read are not bigoted”? Or is it really just not a reliable indicator?

I know a lot of prior theories are exposure to a more diverse verity of people tends to make people less bigoted, and people who end up in collages and universities tend to have that while people that go directly from high school to a work force may or may not because some towns are diverse and others are not.

That isn’t exactly “smart people go to higher education and aren’t bigots”, more of “one way to get into a situation that makes you less likely to be a bigoted is to go to a collage that has people not like yourself”

Beats me if it is true, it feels right to me, but that ain’t the same as knowing if it is actually true.