Heh, I liked this:

Hi Jonah,
It fascinates me how an idea comes by a circuitous route. I’m just reading Mr. Silver Age in CBG, and a reader writes, “I liked Tony Stark before he was evil.” Personally, I liked Tony Stark circa 1963-1968, and I’m not sure what the reader meant. I really lost touch in the early ‘80s after they made him a drunk. But what the reader wrote got me thinking: why did they make him evil? My mind imputes counter-culture attitudes to comics writers. Eclipse comics, under Cat Yronwode, got Airboy’s civilian identity out of the arms business, because Cat’s political attitude is hard-left, and, to her, the munitions business is morally wicked. (Except hard-left people probably don’t used the word “wicked,” which born-again Christian folks like myself will use: such a right-wing judgmental word it is.)
Okay, so, lefty comics writers (pardon my redundancy) can’t conceive Tony Stark being a munitions manufacturer and still being a good guy, I speculate to myself. And I’m thinking, had I been editor of Iron Man, I’d require a writer who conceives of Tony Stark as a good guy, a patriot, someone who understands America’s need to be well-armed, to have a strong defense, the need for a War Department, or, as we now call it, Department of Defense.
Then it hits me! What I’ve been reading about in your book blog, and your columns about the book, Liberal Fascism. President Wilson was “progressive” (liberal fascist) -leaning in his being enamored of the war mobilization economy; and FDR, likewise (now calling it “liberal”), with his military-style WPA, etc. And onward to the feminizing of liberal fascism, away from the masculine, military-style of Wilson and FDR, to the nanny-state style of Hillary.
And I’m thinking, the conversion of language from “War Department” to “Department of Defense” fits this conversion from muscle-flexing male Daddy to protective female Mommy. “War” is Daddy. “Defense” is Mommy.
Just a thought.
Anyway, your stuff is educational.
Yes, it is possible to be a comics fan and a conservative (Jonah Goldberg being a prime example), though, for me, Max Allan Collins is about the only contemporary comics writer whose work I enjoy reading anymore. Otherwise, I just buy old Dell Comics written by Gaylord Du Bois (Roy Rogers Comics, Zane Grey’s…, King of the Royal Mounted, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, etc.), and other old stuff, reprints, all mostly from before my original comics-reading time (early ’60s), or stuff I didn’t read when it came out (Space Family Robinson, etc.).