Supergirl (My favorite character in fiction) was created by Otto Binder, a son of German immigrants who spent his entire life busting his hump writing sci-fi and fantasy stories for any publisher that would take him. She was his second attempt at a female sidekick, a tribute to his daughter and an example that shows the plight of an immigrant is shared by both men and women. He also built her into the mythology of the greatest immigrant in American fiction, who himself was made by fellow sons of immigrants, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel.
Cobra was created by Larry Hama, an Asian American US Army vet who poured everything into a book made to sell tiny hunks of plastic to impressionable kids on the off chance it would make a name for him. What could have been, and often are in other media, depicted as just another generic evil organization were instead made a clear allegory for Neo Nazis fueled by unlimited Capitalism and fear of the other under his pen.
You cannot look at these facts and tell me “You’re reading too deep”, or “That’s not really what they intended”, or “Politics doesn’t belong in comics and toys”. Whether they fully intended these messages at the time or not, whether I’m out here fighting shadow demons, doesn’t fucking matter. All art and play are how we contextualize the world around us, from a young age into adulthood, that’s the only reason to do it, otherwise we would just eat, fuck & die. This is what I see when I look at the art of men that came before me and how choose to make my own with toys based on their work, because I believe in these ideals.
America as it has existed for 250 years is a country of immigrants. It was founded by people who weren’t originally from here, fought for and built by countless people who came from around the world. Everything you see in the photo was made by someone who are either from another country or only here because someone from another country chose to come here, hell, it was taken by a guy who’s only here because someone before him chose to come here. You don’t get to enjoy things like this photo, like the cool toys in it, like the comics and movies based on them without Immigrants because immigrants make all that stuff because IMMIGRANTS ARE WHAT MAKES THIS COUNTRY GREAT! I don’t give a god damn if they came here the “right way” or not, the stats show that they cause way less trouble than those of us born here so there’s no reason to care that they’re here if they haven’t actually physically hurt you or anyone you know. Anyone who doesn’t get that and thinks what ICE is doing is in any way good that is a fucking moron who is obfuscating for something else wrong with them and they can ether willingly get out of my life and go jump in a big pit or be blocked when they leave their shitty comment on this.
What I have written here should not be radical, but apparently to our government it is because they continue to allow armed thugs to roam the streets of one of our best cities, kidnapping people at random based on the color of their skin and how they sound and killing anyone who gets in the way or just mildly bothers them with no consequences and the people they hurt being branded as terrorists by our leaders when anyone with common sense can see their the ones who are trying to inflict terror. Tomorrow we need to say enough is enough. Tomorrow we need to refuse to work the engines that allow this to happen. Go out and protest at a government building or park if you can, if you can’t, then just stay home to call your representatives and tell them this is not why they were elected, that they need to abolish ICE, arrest the men who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, and release all the people being unlawfully held in detention centers. Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing, but when it does we have to answer or else listen as our world is consumed by the screams of innocents.
