Entertainment

CURRENT EVENTS CROP UP IN COMIC ART

MARVEL Comics’ latest series, “Secret Invasion,” will generate lots of buzz when its first editions hit Comic Con tomorrow. In it, an alien race called the Skrulls comes to claim Earth as its holy land after their home planet is rendered uninhabitable in a fashion foretold by their religious scriptures.

According to Marvel President Dan Buckley, anyone who wants to draw parallels between his new series and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the US invasion of Iraq does so on his own, though not without some justification. “You can play with the concept of who’s the invading force and who’s the occupying force,” says Buckley.

“Comic writing today is more nuanced.”

It’s certainly less direct than in December 1940, when Lower East Sider Steve Rogers appeared on newsstands nationwide knocking das Fuhrer on his derriere with a right hook. “Captain America” circulation would eclipse that of Time and most other news mags during WWII.

And Cap isn’t the only superhero to have zeroed in on the national zeitgeist.

In 1961, the Fantastic Four debuted as a Cold War/nuclear-era metaphor about a team of astronauts who became mutated when trying to beat the Russians to the moon. A year later, radioactive mishaps the Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man reared their superheads at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963 came Marvel Comics’ X-Men – a team of mutants also metaphorically representing fear in the nuclear age, with story subtexts referencing the civil rights movement.

The connection between caped crusaders and their times came to a head in 2006-2007, when Marvel’s “Civil War” series pitted hero against hero after the US government mandated that all masked marauders make their identities known in what many thought to be an allegory for the Patriot Act.

So what new heroes will emerge at Comic Con to represent today’s politics? Perhaps the New Decider – a female African-American ex-fighter pilot who kicks arse in the Middle East? Or maybe Captain Recession – an economics major who gained superpowers after being hit by a Yankee Stadium-bound steroid delivery truck en route to cashing his $600 tax return? “You want to ‘Charlie Brown it,'” jokes Buckley, explaining that directly pegging a superhero to living beings decreases a comic series’ shelf life. “We’ve been publishing Spider-Man since 1962, and he’s aged about four to five years.”

Does this mean the Skrulls of “Secret Invasion” won’t be endorsing presidential nominees?

“You’re going to find this kind of funny,” says Buckley. “You’ll hear them say, ‘Embrace change because change embraces you.’ Most people might think they mean that they’re going to change our world, but the concept is that ‘Change’ is the name of their god. We’d been playing with this mantra and talking about this story for about a year now, and it’s kind of funny how that stuff lined up.”