A year or two ago there was an issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA that outraged the right wing. It included a scene in which Cap and his partner, Falcon, are staking out a protest rally by Angry Citizens. I think some villain had been manipulating these groups for Nefarious Ends. As it happened, the writer hadn't specified what the Angry Citizens were angry about -- the protest was just a plot device and what they were protesting was irrelevant to the story -- but when the letterer was finishing the page, he was watching a news story about the Tea Party; so he put Tea Party slogans on the signs carried by the mob of crazies in the comic. If I remember correctly, Marvel wound up apologizing for that one.
Well, Cap is in a new controversy this week. Since then, Steve Rogers has stepped down as Captain America and given his shield to Sam Wilson, the former Falcon, as part of the "All New, All Different" Marvel. (The new Avengers team now features Sam, a female version of Thor, and the new Ms Marvel, a Pakistani-American teen from New Jersey).
Last week the debut issue of the new CAPTAIN AMERICA came out, and the conservatives are mad again:
According to the io9 website, People are very mad that the new Captain America is acting like Captain America
Conservative commenters have been in a tizzy about those gosh-darn comic books again this last week, following the release of Nick Spencer and Daniel Acuña’s Sam Wilson: Captain America #1. The issue sees Captain America cut ties with both SHIELD and the U.S. government to stand up for the average American citizen. In the comic, it leads to a backlash of people deriding Sam as “not their Captain America,” or with oft-repeated heckles of “Captain Socialism.” The same occurred in our own world, when conservative media painted the comic as an attack on conservatives by the liberal agenda:
Essentially, the issue shows Sam struggling with how best to live up to the Captain America legacy and deciding that he needs to take a stand for people and to fight for the things he believes in. And the things he believes in really piss off Fox News.
Go to the linked article. It includes a page from the comic which is very good. The last word in the piece goes to writer Kurt Busiek, who observes:
"I saw a tweet saying that liberals should create their own Captain America. They did. In 1940."