World War WTF

When did it become good marketing practice to make an event out to be a war? I suppose in other times–when America wasn’t in the midst of an actual, honest-to-shit war with real, not-like-Captain-America-and-Oliver-Queen deaths–maybe it was possible to get adolescent males to cheer about wars. But nowadays, there aren’t very many lives in our world that haven’t been touched by the voilence in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. So let’s sell comics with the phrase “world war” in them. Brilliant.

I can see three possible rationales for this move:

1) rah rah jingoism. It seems more possible for Devil’s Due’s upcoming “world war” in GI Joe than for DC and Marvel, but it we’re still a long ways from comics being the sort of bald-faced Martial Ceremony you see at sporting events.

2) sly political comment. Maybe supposed to be “war is bad,” but seemingly more like “war is bad but watching it kicks ass.”

3) a display of complete and utter cluelessness about the state of the world around us.

I’m gonna go with 3. But no matter the reason, the “world war” thing is bad for a hundred reasons.

Of course I’ll still read em.

~ by The Comics Dad on June 19, 2007.