Oh, absolutely, no argument there.
And this is definitely coming across in your Joe files as well. Would some or even most active, or up until recently active, military personnel side with the current administration? Most likely. Would the people assigned to the best of the best unit because they always do the right thing? Absolutely not. And we discussed this the other day in that thread but the point of those isn't how close can we fly toward reality, but how much relief can we get by having fantasy combat that reality, literally. So in this case, I feel having the fictional heroes face real world issues IS a good idea.
Also why the "does this letter on my head stand for France?" line is so bad. Steve knows about the French resistance, guys. Steve Rogers would RESPECT THE SHIT out of the French resistance. That line is a modern, revisionist American take on the French. That's a 2000's conservative's line about France. Which, looking at Millar's work over the years... YEP.
I raaaaged the first time I read that line. Character assassination. I reread the Ultimates run a few years back and I felt GREASY after reading it. Just all the worst takes you could possibly get from every single character. I swear the only moderately good thing that came out of it was an entertaining take on stunt casting Nick Fury. Well okay Hitch drew his ass off.
It's kind of surreal writing those up because we know a real world percentage of an elite military unit would ABSOLUTELY side with the bad guys. But these are characters, not people, and we're allowed to think and expect better of them.
Miller's writing never did anything for me. He fit right in, though, with the kind of stories that were being told in the early 2000's, both companies trying to be "edgy". I never got into the Ultimate run. I know they ended up violently killing off all of the heroes because why not? There was a miniseries that told the story of Aunt May's sexual escapades when she was younger (because everyone was asking for that....). You had Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder that I couldn't make it through even with the Jim Lee art. The early 2000's comics definitely had a flavor.
Yep. The moment there was slavery there were abolitionists. People today are not fundamentally distinct from people's of yesteryear, and almost anytime you really dig in, you find shockingly "enlightened" views held wayyyy earlier than many tend to believe.
I never read that one, but I once read the wiki and just... eww... why? (eww, why, is my reaction to most of Millar's work)
Yeah, you can make that argument, and he is. But I think if you make him SO nuts that he can't work out that billions and billions of dollars can solve basically every problem without punching anyone, you take away that whole thing about how Batman is super intelligent and plans everything so well and blah blah. He's either a crazy rich guy, or a hyper-intelligent rich guy. He can't be BOTH and be a billionaire. In my view.
The moment there was chattel slavery in the US.
Indeed, I do mean chattel slavery here. That said, I do believe people always have a range of outlooks, frequently more modern than folks would suspect, and some are simply better documented historically simply because, for a lot of history, only one class had access to the means to preserve their thoughts across generations.
I think these takes are correct, but don't really address the fundamental problems with billionaireism. Acknowledging and/or backgrounding the actual holders of the wealth doesn't really deal it in any real way. That wealth is pretty fundamental to the X-Men existing and operating how they do, and in-universe that is a net good that is preferable over them not existing. In that way it seems to valorize the holding and use of huge sums of money by well-meaning individuals and the projects they fund, much the same way other rich superhero characters do. Obviously I don't think that's what the X-Men is about - really, the money is just an easy way to explain how they have all these cool toys, and not something that gets dealt with thematically.
