If you thought the Occupy movement was a laughing matter … well, you may be onto something. DC Comics — a company whose name is a reminder that its earliest product was meant to bring a smile to its customers’ lips — announced on Friday that it will be releasing two new series. Both focus on the plight of the 99 percent.
Wired reports that the two titles in the Occupy series, which will debut in May, feature superheroes. “The Green Team” carries the motto “Money can buy them happiness — and they want to share it with you.” The motto of “The Movement,” meanwhile, is “They were the super-powered disenfranchised — now they’re the voice of the people.”
Gail Simone, writer of “The Movement,” explains:
It’s a book about power. Who owns it, who uses it, who suffers from its abuse. As we increasingly move to an age where information is currency, you get these situations where a single viral video can cost a previously unassailable corporation billions, or can upset the power balance of entire governments. And because the sources of that information are so dispersed and nameless, it’s nearly impossible to shut it all down.
The thing I find fascinating and a little bit worrisome is, what happens when a hacktivist group whose politics you find completely repulsive has this same kind of power and influence. What if a racist or homophobic group rises up and organizes in the same manner?
DC’s efforts to be socially relevant made headlines in May of 2012, when the company announced that one of its longstanding superheroes would be emerging from the closet. DC made good on that promise two months when Alan Scott (alias “The Green Lantern”) exchanged a smooch with his gay companion, declaring, “God, I’ve missed you.”
For all its populist chest-beating, DC is “the second biggest publisher in the American comic industry," writes Wired’s Graeme McMillan. The company, he goes on to note, "just happens to be a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation that makes around $12 billion a year. Irony, anybody?”
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