It appears that your favorite superheroine, Wonder Woman, is running for Mayor of Washington, DC. And she’s running against quite a slate of opponents: Superman, Green Lantern, Batgirl, and Batwoman are in the mix.

OK, it’s obviously not actually true, so what gives? The New Organizing Institute runs a boot camp for political organizers, and part of their project is to run a virtual campaign for office. The bootcampers have had to design a site and a campaign for their superheroes, and there will be an actual election.

I’m with Wonder Woman–how can you resist this?

Dear fellow DC Residents and allied Truth Seekers:

I made a cornerstone decision over fifty years ago. I had just defeated the alien forces of the Imperium and joined with the Justice League as its sole female member when I was given the opportunity to leave planet earth and become a princess in another realm.

After having seen the worst form of war imaginable, I could not leave planet earth without knowing that I had done everything I could to fight for peace. So, unsurprisingly, I am still here.

I have dedicated my life to pursuing the self-evident truths of democracy through transparency, to equality and empowerment of the underserved and to peace and security. I have helped women maintain their uniqueness while also gaining more equal rights as men. I have worked towards keeping our country safe and secure through promoting a more peaceful world, and most importantly, I have sought to fight the cynicism and apathy that has taken hold of DC citizens and asked them to join me in being WONDERful.

While aliens pose no threat to earth at this moment, many other things do: inequality, crime and injustice, war and genocide, rat infestation. But, most of all, we are threatened by an ominous cynicism that could crush people’s belief in super heroes. If people stop believing in super heroes, they stop believing in their own ability to change the world. And then, won’t need aliens to come to earth. But, we can fight this cynicism with hope, change a little booze, a little rock n’ roll and a whole lot of action.

This is why I am formally announcing my candidacy for the Mayor of DC.

Together, we can make DC Wonderful. We can re-build lives in DC with a Lasso of Truth that will help free peple of their fears and bring them back into society, gain equality for women and other underserved communities and ensure create a more secure city through promoting peace.

Join me. Plus, I show leg.

Yours in truth,

Wonder Woman

Check it out–it seems like a fun way to teach people how to run a campaign. Voting will be 7am EDT to 6pm EDT on Friday, July 10th. You can even follow Wonder Woman on Twitter!

Now, once she’s mayor, can we send her down to Congress with that lasso?

The return of Peter Milligan to Vertigo just keeps on getting better. His take on John Constantine is going to new and interesting places–not easy for a character as old as Constantine–and now with this first issue of a new ongoing series, Milligan’s teamed up with Davide Gianfelice for a nasty little tale rooted in Greek myths and stories.

Anyone familiar with the story of Oedipus will recognize the plot of this first issue, but there’s no need to bone up on your classics to enjoy this story. You do need a strong stomach and a taste for the perverse–but if you’re a Vertigo reader, you already knew that, right?

Eddie is just a kid looking for his mom, but that goes about as spectacularly wrong as it can possibly go, and he runs off to Greek Street, the part of town run by criminals and other lowlifes, and watched over by gorgeous strippers who know all the dirtiest secrets.

This first issue sets up a bunch of loose ends will probably only get more tangled before any of them get resolved, and just begins to set up its world and its rules. There’s magic here, but how much and of what kind and how it will be blended with the gritty, cruel criminal underworld we just don’t know.

What we do know is that it’s vintage Vertigo, with Gianfelice’s luscious art making even the most gruesome scenes beautiful and otherworldly and at the same time making the horror truly gripping, visceral. If this book lives up to this first issue, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

So I suppose, like all of you, I’ll be checking out this Wednesday Comics thing from DC to see what I think about it–as a comic, and as an idea for the medium. There is also No Hero, and The Unwritten, which is still fabulous. Also, Jeff Lemire’s original graphic novel The Nobody comes out this week, and though I shouldn’t spend that kind of cash, I really am tempted.

With all that goodness, I don’t know if there’s any more room in my increasingly tight budget for more comics, but, well, I always want more comics. So what else hits this week that looks good?

What better way to tell the story of a politician as overwrought as Michele Bachmann than as a comic book? After all, if a comic book writer had created Bachmann, she’d be hard to believe. Just a couple of months after Barack Obama’s inauguration (and his swath of guest appearances in comics), Bachmann declared that it was time for the people of the US to have an “orderly revolution” to throw Obama out of office.

Comic book publishers would be pretty bummed to see their cash cow thrown out, so it’s probably a good thing for the industry that Bachmann’s revolution seems to be on the back burner for the moment. But for those of you who want to be prepared in case she manages to pull it off, you could do worse than checking out False Witness! The Michele Bachmann story.

For those of you outside of Minnesota who don’t spend your evenings with Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann, Bachmann is the representative from Minnesota’s 6th congressional district. Her latest claim to fame is a rather public refusal to fill out the 2010 census forms for nebulous reasons connected to “personal” information. Rather like Sarah Palin, Bachmann is a pretty, populist Christian conservative with a reputation for saying outlandish things and a spectacular ability to mobilize the “base.”

Issue number one of False Witness! is less the narrative of Michele Bachmann and more a story of the religious right’s rise, tied together with the rise of Bachmann. As such, it’s rather text-heavy, and contains contributions by several different artists. The art doesn’t so much tell the story as add to it, turning all the characters to outsize caricatures while telling stories drawn straight from the news (with a “citations” page in the back just in case you doubt). The creators are certainly aware of this–even throwing in a two-page spread in which the comic critiques itself so that you don’t have to–and notes that it is an “important political story.”

The book is worth the $4 cover price just for the page in which Bachmann chants “You Will Pay!” at a fellow Republican who doubted her, in panels growing ever closer to eyes glowing with lunacy and a forehead beaded with sweat (evoking Nixon’s famous debate sweats, perhaps?). Yet like many satires, it is aimed mainly at the converted, and probably won’t be picked up by anyone but those who already know who Bachmann is and find her frightening–or amusing. Though the creators do a good job of illustrating the schisms and splits in the Republican party, when it comes to specific claims of demagoguery or extremism, the book is at its most effective when it lets Bachmann’s own, documented words speak for themselves. Readers who don’t already agree that Bachmann is a fundamentalist extremist will probably never get anywhere near the comic, so I doubt it will have much effect on Bachmann’s popularity at home.

We are promised more issues after this first one, so I’m hopeful that we’ll get more narrative when the creators don’t need to cram years of history of the Republican party into their comic. Perhaps we’ll get some Michele Bachmann origin stories, some more tales of her time in the state senate, or, since unlike Palin she shows no signs of going away, more stories of her newest headline-grabbing antics. Or perhaps Bachmann will prove me wrong and turn out to be the biggest boon to comic retailers since Spider-Man met Obama.

Stranger things have happened.

Before I go off to find fireworks and some sort of food on a stick (which I maintain is truly American) I’m going to give a quick shout to my favorite patriotic comic book.

It’s not Captain America. It’s certainly not any of the opportunistic Barack Obama comics to hit in the last few months.

It’s Transmetropolitan.

Yes, it’s filthy-mouthed sci-fi written by the British master of filthy-mouthed sci-fi, Warren Ellis. Even so, Transmet is indisputably American the same way Watchmen is. It’s a rough-and-tumble take on American politics, through the lens of a loathsome yet idealistic journalist and his slightly less loathsome Filthy Assistants.

And it’s the only comic I can think of that actually embodies some of the good things about America (and our politics).

Sure, Spider Jerusalem’s real loyalty is to the Truth, rendered in caps to make sure you understand that there is a truth and Spider’s telling it, but he also believes in democracy, free speech, and several other things that certainly aren’t uniquely American values. So why set the comic in the USA instead of in England?

The villains, if anything, seem more American–vile presidential candidates who want to slash at the Constitution or shit on poor people. And what could be more American than taking them on headlong with little backup and nothing more than a hunch that they’re the bad guy–and ultimately succeeding? That’s really the American dream, right?

Maybe it’s just me, but I see dissent as a value to be upheld. We were founded on it, weren’t we? And so for the Fourth of July, I’ll celebrate the right of journalists everywhere to make public officials lives’ hell for fun and righteousness.

And I swear I’m not going to inject heroin into my eyeballs.

This is a “remix” of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Edward Cullen from Twilight. And yep, it’s pretty funny. It plays the overwrought, overdramatic bits of Twilight up against the snarky, sarcastic Buffy we all love.

Yet I am a bit irritated by the constant comparison of Buffy to Twilight as if Buffy was perfect and Bella Swan just a horrendous corruption of all feminist ideals. Was I the only one who remembers the part where Buffy slept with not one, but two vampires who also stalked her, hovered outside her bedroom while she slept, and in one instance, tried to rape her?

Buffy gets a pass because mostly she kicks vampire ass and in the end she doesn’t need any of the men. However, I very much doubt if you can scratch a Buffy fan and find someone who doesn’t get a bit emotional about Buffy and Angel. Forbidden love is as much a part of the Buffy mythos as Twilight–in fact, I describe Twilight to people as “The Buffy and Angel part of Buffy, without most of the sarcasm and action.”

But you know, the reason a lot of girls don’t want to call themselves feminists is because they think it means they have to hate men, or fit some certain vision of a “strong woman” that maybe they don’t want to fit. What if they’re quiet and bookish, like Bella Swan, not coordinated enough to fight vampires?

I’m not saying that Twilight is a perfect vision of the romance I think girls should aspire to–it’s not. But it’s fiction. The romance in Love in the Time of Cholera or Lolita or Beloved isn’t one that I want teenage girls aspiring to, either, yet I think those are all wonderful works of literature that should be widely read. And Buffy? Well, the human parts of Buffy are the ones that really kept us with her for seven seasons, not the perfect ass-kicking sarcasm machine. That would’ve gotten old, fast.

My short review: I like it.

Of course I’m not going to let you off that easily. I’ve got far more to say about it than that. It’s a pulpy, splashy romp with classic Bat-villains let loose on their own and teaming up to cause trouble. It owes more to Tarantino’s grind-house classic Kill Bill, with women in stylized costumes performing acrobatic fighting feats never seen in nature, than to common superhero mythos, though of course there’s that, too.

I picked it up because I can’t resist the bad girls. They’re easy to do wrong, sure, but I think there’s so much more possibility for a really interesting female character, at least in superhero-dom, in a transgressive villain. I love Catwoman because she’s always walked that line–she’s part noir femme fatale and part straight-up supervillain, with just enough heroine in her to keep your sympathy.

Here she isn’t quite up to her old tricks, and a run-in with a frat-boy wannabe bad guy takes more out of her than she’d like to admit. Poison Ivy saves her and brings her to the house she’s sharing with Harley Quinn and another familiar face, who hasn’t had much say in the matter. The all-bad-girl team-up is fraught with tension and mistrust from the beginning, of course, and the biggest problem is the one question that Harley and Ivy assume the Catwoman must know the answer to: Who is Batman?

I’m sure there have been complaints about the art–that the girls are oversexualized, that Harley’s wearing a schoolgirl uniform–and maybe it just says something about my comic-reading tastes, but I didn’t find them offensive. Guillem March’s art is hyperstylized and kinetic, with characters male and female twisting and bending into shapes not usually seen in nature, and the characters strike me as less sexualized than simply, well, comic-booky.

The three leads are very different women, and by virtue of their constant second billing have always been a bit of a stereotype, but giving them their own series allows for them to be fleshed out a bit more. I’m hoping for more especially from Harley, who has less to do in this first issue as far as character development goes, though she does get to kick some butt. Paul Dini is definitely capable of doing dark, as is hinted in the treatment of poor Eddie Nigma by Ivy and by the brief mention of the Mad Hatter, and I rather hope he goes for it in this series–I’d love to see a series where these three characters can really let loose all the screwed-up bits of their psyches and yet retain our interest and sympathy.

It’s almost time to go buy comics, but in the meantime I bring you linkage from across the Internets on a variety of different things.

From Splash Page, Grant Morrison talks comics with Percy Carey, otherwise known as MF Grimm, the writer of Sentences.

Comics Worth Reading has a nice review of Patsy Walker: Hellcat that makes me want to read it.

Also from Splash Page, Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming are confirmed as part of the cast of “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark,” the upcoming Broadway musical directed by Julie Taymor. I don’t know about you, but between the casting, the subject matter, and the direction, this is shaping up to be a must-see for me.

Laura Hudson at Comics Alliance puts together the top 5 Michael Jackson moments in comics.

Laura Lee Gulledge answers some questions for The Big Feminist BUT.

I guess that’s sort of me telling you what to read. I will have a review of Gotham City Sirens #1 later this week when I can think straight, but the new Vertigo series that I’m almost as stoked on as I was on Unwritten hits this Wednesday. So. Read it with me.

There is also The Boys, and Bang! Tango (which appears to be the last one) and…well, that looks like it for my list. Still, Greek Street should be worth it, with a mix of gritty street violence with classic myths, unless the stellar combination of Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice somehow doesn’t mix, oil-and-water style. I’m betting on them, though, and at $1, why not?

(This post in no way paid for by Vertigo comics, Peter Milligan, or Davide Gianfelice. Sometimes I am just a fangirl like anyone else who reads comics.)

I’ve been more affected by Michael Jackson’s death than I thought I would be, so I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a few days. Mostly about pop stars and iconography and the image vs. the person–what do we mourn when we mourn a dead celebrity? In Heath Ledger’s case, it was so obviously the work he had left to do, but in Jackson’s case, it seemed fairly likely that he’d never make any music again, that his music was completely overshadowed by his court cases and plastic surgeries. Yet people have still been publicly mourning.

Daryl Cagle, cartoonist extraordinaire, wrote about Michael Jackson and editorial cartoonists, and his sadness was clearly only that he didn’t have an easy target for cartoons anymore.

Michael Jackson was God’s gift to editorial cartoonists. Now that the gift has been “returned to sender” the cartoonists are mourning the loss of one of their most evergreen gags.

Yet this cartoon, that I saw this morning, really seems to sum up all the feelings about Jackson.

Do you remember, indeed. Before the accusations and the surgeries and the baby-dangling, when it was just about the music.

I’ve written about Persepolis and Marjane Satrapi in the context of the current protests in Iran, but someone took it a step further and rebooted (remixed?) Persepolis to reflect the current situation.

I have no idea if Satrapi is involved in this project, but I do find it interesting that a completely new story can be made by moving some panels around and changing the captions. Aside from my interest in it as a political document–and the way comics can carry a message more potently than a simple news story–it is also an exercise in figuring out the weight of the message carried in the images vs. in the text of a comic.

While Iran is still wrapped in turmoil and the world watches more and more via the Internet, sometimes green Twitter avatars don’t seem like enough. It’s hard to figure out what you can do that might actually help.

Via Becky Cloonan, Marjane Satrapi has reached out to the comics community and asked that people sign a petition to the secretary general of the United Nations, asking for support for the Iranian people and an end to the violence.

Dear Friends

To all who beleive in freedom and dememocracy
Please sign this petition to United Nation to stop the violence, arrestations and torture in Iran.
The situation is really really bad.

Please forward it to whoever you know
Best and lots of love
Marjane Satrapi

The petition is here if you’re interested.

Sadly, it is not my review. Rather, I direct your attention, if you care about comics lampooning semi-unknown Minnesota congresswomen, to TPM‘s review.

A highlight:

Right from the cover, which has a wacky cartoonish feeling as if it were somehow pencilled by Sergio Aragones and inked by R. Crumb, you know we’re dealing with a special politician:

Personally, I’m always sort of extra fascinated by powerful, successful women–and whatever your opinion of her, Michele Bachmann is a successful politician–who spend their time arguing that women should get back in the kitchen. It’s sort of a “physician, heal thyself!” moment–I argue that women should be represented equally in the job force (and in comics) and Bachmann argues for traditional family values, yet she’s in Congress (and starring in a comic).

Also, I’d rather see more critical takes on politicians in comics rather than 100 more Barack Obama appearances just to sell books. But I’m probably in the minority on that one…

Anyway, I’d love to do an actual review of the Bachmann comic, so I’ll see what I can do about getting my hands on one.

I did indeed buy two new books last week that wouldn’t normally have been on my list. Discussions of Streets of Gotham/Manhunter and X-Men Origins: Gambit here and here.

This week, I’m looking at Gotham City Sirens already, as well as my usual Madame Xanadu, Northlanders, Unknown Soldier and Wolverine: Weapon X. Look, kids, I’m turning into a superhero comics reader!

Anything else lurking out there that I’m missing?

Following the success of the “Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels” academic conference, Boston University doctoral student, comics scholar and comic creator A. David Lewis has been granted a Library Acquisitions Award to create a new “Religion and Graphica” collection at the university.

The collection, which will contain works like MAUS, Persepolis, and Sandman (and one assumes, Preacher and Testament, two of my personal favorites), will be part of the School of Theology Library (OK, maybe Preacher won’t be appropriate).

According to the press release, this will be the first library collection devoted exclusively to the study of comics, and it comes in a religion department. This might seem odd, though I’ve had conversations before about the similarity of comics to religion, particularly superhero comics. They’re fables, archetypal stories that give us advice on how to live our lives, as well as part of a weekly routine–the Wednesday trip to the comic shop. Comics are reassuring, and fans often are very resistant to change in their books or their routine.

Of course, there are many brilliant graphic works that deal very directly with religion. Which ones would you suggest the library, which has already started purchasing, not miss?

OK, I know it’s a cliche for comic fangirls to have crushes on Gambit, but in the interest of full disclosure–well, you get the picture. Especially in the wake of the luscious Taylor Kitsch in the Wolverine movie, my lust has been rekindled.

Marvel decided to toy with my emotions further on this one and have Mike Carey write Gambit’s origin story. Mike Carey! I think I may have squealed out loud when I read that. It takes a lot to make me buy superhero books, but an origin story for a character I dig, written by a writer I love? Sign me up.

The only downside? Is this really the only issue we get, guys? I mean, really? You finally give us a Gambit origin story, and it’s only a one-shot? That’s such a tease.

It reflects in the comic, too. It’s not so much an origin story as a selection of flashbacks, unfinished stories-within-a-story that don’t really add up to anything. Each little section of this comic could’ve been a full book–or several books–in itself. Instead, we get a bunch of setups without any payoff, never a complete story.

It’s even sadder because the art is truly beautiful, lush settings, closeups so real you could reach through and touch them, and yes, a shirtless fight scene (thanks, guys). What I wouldn’t do for several more books with this creative team working on this character…

Two comics for the price of one: that’s the idea. You get a regular full-length comic, and then you get a nine-page original extra story at the back. In this case, you tag a nine-page story of a character with a cult following that has been bitterly disappointed with her cancellation onto a brand-new original monthly that ties in to the other major DCU event of the moment. It’s win-win, right?

Well, it doesn’t have to be, but in this case it definitely is. I was one of the people more interested in the Manhunter backup than the Streets of Gotham story, but I’m glad I had to buy one to get the other. Streets of Gotham may tie into the rest of the Bat-books, but I didn’t feel at all lost reading it. Paul Dini knows his noir, could do it in his sleep, but here he’s having fun giving a bunch of lesser-known (translation: I hadn’t heard of ‘em) Gotham characters a workout.

Dustin Nguyen’s art manages to be cheery and dark in the same book, often in the same panel, but the book’s real charm is in living up to its name. It’s a superhero story, but one that takes place on the street and feels more like a crime drama, bringing a grittier, more realistic feel to the stories. It’s Batman from an outsider’s view, and it’s worth a read.

The street feel leads nicely into the backup feature. Kate Spencer’s been transported to Gotham to act as the new DA, but she hasn’t left her crime-fighting proclivities in LA–though she has left her son, a feature that will no doubt come back in later issues. Nine pages is basically only enough to set up a story, so this one was mostly exposition, but it manages to fill in the gaps with Kate beating a story out of someone rather than with simple conversation.

Manhunter was already a pretty dark book, and things are probably unlikely to lighten up for Kate Spencer in Gotham. The real question will be managing to make the backup features worth the money for readers who aren’t thrilled with the main title, but the creative team on this one (Marc Andreyko and Georges Jeanty) suggests that DC isn’t skimping on the backup book any more than they are on the front.

Together, the two make a nice pair of noir stories to roughen up your pile of superhero books–or to superhero-up your pile of rough books, in my case. In this case, the experiment gets two thumbs up. My only suggestion would be a bigger indication on the front cover that there’s another feature in the back. I wouldn’t have noticed the band across the bottom on the stand, particularly on the stands that some stores have that obscure the bottom half of the cover.

Dear Internet,

I bought not one, but TWO superhero books this week. That’s right, two. One from DC and one from Marvel, all balanced-like. Streets of Gotham (which I really bought for the Manhunter backup) and the Gambit Origins book. I read ‘em, and I’m going to write about ‘em, but not right now. I’m too tired. Instead, I will give you linkage to pretty and interesting things. I promise to write about them soon, though.

In the meantime!

At Comics Worth Reading, the welcome news that Thom Zahler is giving away free comics to the first 75 women who visit his booth at Heroes Con this weekend.

Also there, Ed Sizemore reviews things he picked up at MoCCA, and they’re mostly books I didn’t already talk about. (I do think he’s crazy to not have liked The Unwritten, but I realize not everyone gets as geeked for metafiction as I do.)

Via The Hathor Legacy, a rant about “Strong Female Characters” that I can totally get behind. I also find this wording problematic because it implies that female characters are normally not strong, so strong must be pointed out when it does occur. But read her post. It’s better than what I said.

Shakesville has a good rundown of the sexism in the geek world lately. Seriously, people? It’s really not that hard to figure out that girls like all the same kinds of things that guys do.

This is just kind of a short, sublime post by, well, Neil Gaiman, who does short and sublime rather well.

Since I didn’t have a lot of money at MoCCA, I picked up a lot of cards and free things that people were giving out. To make up for not being able to buy things from all these people, I’m sharing them with you. They certainly deserve your attention.

Carissa Halston was kind of fabulous, and kind of fascinating, and she writes plays, books, and graphic novels.

Sara Antoinette Martin draws the kind of stuff I want tattooed on me: skulls and graphic girls and puppies. Her prints are only $35! Buy me one. (Or if you must, buy yourself one.)

Evan Palmer is from Lafayette, Louisiana. I love Louisiana. He is also doing some work with Peter Gross, which is how my favoritest comic artist ever, Ryan Kelly, got his start, so you know you’re going to hear great things from this guy.

Sho Murase’s art is completely, insanely gorgeous. I really wanted one of her mini art books, but I’m just too broke.

I got a couple of preview minicomics of a book called Squirrel Machine, due out from Fantagraphics in the fall. Seriously, how do you refuse something called Squirrel Machine? It looks macabre and fascinating, sort of like a Nick Cave song set to pictures.

Bagger43 was the name on the back of this postcard with a couple of girls and a dog on the front, looking like postapocalyptic street angels ready for a brawl. Not much of a bio on the site, but the art is stellar.

Uncle Envelope is a cool art project that will send you an piece of paper art once a month for twelve months. A bunch of different artists are involved, and they gave out a little activity book at MoCCA to tease people. I like art, I love media supported by subscription…it’s a win-win.

Finally, Becky Cloonan and Hwan Cho should need no introduction to readers of this blog, but even if you don’t know who they are, you should go forth and read about their upcoming webcomic, KGB.

I noted that now would be an excellent time to re-read Persepolis, with the crisis in Iran, and today artist-writer-filmmaker Marjane Satrapi is in the news:

Two Iranian filmmakers on Tuesday presented a document to Green Party MPs in the European parliament claiming to show that defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi had received over 19 million votes in the weekend election.

Marjane Satrapi, Iranian author and director and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an Iranian filmmaker and Mousavi spokesman, presented a document that they claimed had come from the Iranian electoral commission.

The document said liberal cleric and former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi came second in the election with a total of 13.3 million votes, while president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came third with only 5.49 million votes.

Whether or not the document Satrapi presented was legitimate, this speaks to her commitment to her country and her willingness to speak out on her beliefs–characteristics that Persepolis readers will immediately recognize from the not-always-flattering self-portrait she drew in that book.

There’s something less self-indulgent about autobiography in comics–it’s often done in a defiantly unglamorous style, the writer-artist refusing to make her or himself prettier than they are, instead exaggerating their flaws, physical and emotional, with a cartoonist’s unflinching eye. Satrapi is willing to turn an equally unflinching eye on the countries she calls home, scrutinizing their flaws but retaining the love and loyalty.

People often complain about artists and other creative types getting too political, but it’s nearly impossible to be an artist and not deal in some way with the issues of the world, which often require a political stand. I don’t think it necessarily takes away from the work to know that the artist has views quite different from your own–I enjoy comics by several creators whom I know support ideals rather odious to me. More importantly, I think that the point of art is to comment on society, and if that means that artists occasionally feel compelled to speak out publicly about politics, that is not only their right, but perhaps even their responsibility.