Coservative Snowflakes Lose Their Mind Over A Comic.... Again
It all started with one of the worst campaign ads of the 2020 election.
One of Donald Trump’s handlers superimposed his face over Thanos’s from the scene in Avengers: Endgame when he’s about to snap again, uttering the words, “I am inevitable.” Now, the irony of this isn’t lost on anyone who actually watched the movie because it’s the moment right before Thanos loses, something Trump would also do. Sadly, he didn’t turn to dust afterward.
However, it was enough to anger Thanos creator Jim Starlin.
In an interview with Inverse, Starlin reveals how angry this made him and that it made Trump “open game”. So, Starlin did something that is a venerable tradition in art of all kinds- he created a Donald Trump facsimile, given the anagram-tastic name Plunddo Tram, and had Vanth Dreadstar, a sci-fi character that Starlin has been writing and drawing since the ‘80s, behead the character in the opening pages of new comic Dreadstar Returns, even going so far as to have Dreadstar use Trump’s iconic “you’re fired” catchphrase. It’s pretty great, honestly.
Anyway, as one would expect, conservatives, long known for their level-headed responses to such things, lost their minds.
Cosmic Book News, a right-leaning comic site, claimed that Starlin was “pushing his liberal agenda” and that the author of the piece was “surprised and disappointed” by Starlin’s actions. The hilarity and hypocrisy of such a thought is delicious and really needs to be unpacked.
For centuries, artists have used their art to lampoon those with power who they disagree with. Like many contemporary artists, Starlin disliked Trump and his politics immensely, and when he saw Trump use one of his characters, he decided to exercise his own artistic license. This sort of thing, an artistic burning in effigy, isn’t new and has been done by conservative artists as much as it has liberal ones. Look on the Internet, and there’s no doubt one could find many similar pieces starring Obama, Hillary, or Biden. No one is getting mad about those.
Starlin may have a bigger soapbox than others, but an artist is allowed to use their art in whatever way they see fit. The First Amendment protects both ways, and if one doesn’t like it, they don’t have to buy it. One would think that people who are so enamored of the power of the free market would realize that.
Conservative Twitter is in a tizzy right now over this. Still, if Ethan Van Sciver did something similar with Biden- and odds are he probably will now because dude has to be running out money since not even his boy Geoff Johns can get him work- they’d be sharing it and “owning the libs”. Any complaints about this are disingenuous because these are people who cheered Representative Kevin McCarthy when he joked about it being “hard not to hit Pelosi” with a new gavel given to him by voters if he becomes Speaker of the House. Their complaints have nothing to do with reality and more about their own need to stay relevant and vital in a world leaving them behind.
Anyway, if you’re interested in reading the full story and angering some Trumpet snowflakes, Dreadstar Returns is currently available from Ominous Press. It’s Starlin, so it’s probably very good. Check it out.
