Superman vs. The Klan (again)

Its a bad week for the fanboys who want politics kept out of comicbooks, isn't it? DC has announced two younger reader imprints: DC Zoom for middle school kids and DC Ink for young adults. The DC Ink release line-up includes a Superman OGN by Gene Luen Yang (currently writing the excellent New Super-Man ongoing) called, I shit ye not, Superman Smashes The Klan.

And, even better, it can't be argued that this is out of character for Superman because the character has done it before in a 1946 radio serial funded by Kelloggs.

I made not a single word of that up, by the way, Kelloggs wanted to tackle the rising tide of racism in the United States and commissioned the Superman radio show they were bankrolling to write a storyline about the Klan that even used inside information about the Klan from people who had infiltrated the organisation. The whole story is documented in Rick Bowers' book Superman versus The Ku Klux Klan.

Its actually nice that DC are getting back to using Superman for political commentary. This isn't a sudden return, there have been a few interesting touches in recent main series storyline like Superman protecting immigrant workers from a white American gunman in The Oz Effect.

Of course, there will be people who won't be fans of this move. “I wonder why?” he asked, completely ingenuously...