I always laugh at this Captain America argument to have the gotcha "Comics has ALWAYS been political", when the simple answer is "yeah, no shit, we know" but these posers only know Captain America for that Hitler punching cover, when a better case for comics being political is pretty much the whole Marvel output from the 70's onward.
Look, if liberal takes were a deal breaker for comic readers, then no one would have read Marvel and a lot of DC stuff for decades, and that because the vast majority of comic writers and artists were very much the self-satisfied libs caricature we have of them now. And a lot, and I mean A LOT liberal causes made into comics, and I'm not talking about some throw away issue of fucking power pack, nah, I'm talking about Clarimont's X-men and other heavy hitters.
But there was a decisive difference between back then and now, and that is editorial. When guys like Jim Shooter, legendary Marvel editor in chief and all around bastard, were running the show, there was just one law, sell comics.
Shooter wasn't particularly political engaged, at least not publicly, and from his run on Marvel, seems like he didn't mind the writers letting everybody know their liberal policies (they were a bunch of hippies after all), but he reigned in a lot of more "progressive" ideas in favor of "we make stories about people in silly costumes fighting other people in silly costumes, and we need to sell these to 12 year olds".
Not that we didn't get more "mature" stories from the Jim Shooter times (I mean, as far as capeshit goes), but back then capeshit comics never lost the tone of, well, being capeshit comics, never devolving into nonsensical, unaware self-parody bullshit.
Yeah, comics were stories about silly people in stupid costumes, but at least there was a professional varnish over it, it was a job done by pros.
But now the mask is off, and we can see what comics is like when the children, or adults that act like children, take over the wheels.
And it's funny how manga is taking over the market, because if we go what mangakas have describe what is like working for Shueisha and kodansha (the marvel and DC of Japan if you will), their editorial process is one of the heaviest and more intrusive they have worked with, either you follow thier line, or you get the fuck out.
Also, they don't give a singular fuck if you are famous or not. The guy who created Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto, Shonen Jump's best seller that ain't Dragon Ball, tried a new series about Space Samurais with some cool organic armor designs, and the story was a pretty standart shonen afair. Kishimoto was planning for at least 10 volumes.
it didn't catch on, people found it to be a poor man's Naruto, Shueisha canceled the series 5 volumes in. Kishimoto went back to be one of the writers in the Naruto's kid spin off, after saying he has done with Naruto (he spend over 15 years with that title and pretty much gave up his life for that)
Fuck, talk about being brutal... but maybe if Marvel had some of that spine, more people would be reading their comics, who knows.