You couldn’t publish this today.
You’d have to hide it under seven layers of metaphor.
Credit to Ann Nocenti who has always been an import voice in comics.
Here’s the rest of the panels
ALT
ALTCaptain America in Daredevil #283 (1990) by Ann Nocenti and Mark Bagley.
If you’ve never read Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil run, do it (esp the era with John Romita Jr). It’s reaches so high that it’s breathtaking.
Other thought:
-I think Marvel/Disney would set their creators on fire in public rather than print something like this in 2026.
Disney banned an episode of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur called "The Gatekeeper," because of the current political climate in the US. So the episode is about Lunella's friend Brooklyn being targeted by the coach of a rival volleyball team, Greer, who found out she was trans and tried to stop her from playing. She even goes as far as to trap Brooklyn, Lunella and the others in the locker room, and will only let them out if they follow her "rules."
Brooklyn: "I'm trans, my very existence breaks Greer's rules, which means, as long as I'm a member of this team...we'll never escape..."
And they break out of the room specifically by breaking the rules. There's also an awesome video game-like scene where the team fights a monster-like version of Greer by throwing volleyballs at her, with streaks colored like the trans flag.
ALTBrooklyn: "It doesn't matter how many doors people like you slam in my face. With my fight, plus my crew backing me up, I'm always gonna find my way out."
This episode is EXACTLY what trans kids need right now, but no, Disney was too spineless to air the episode. They can claim for the 69420th time that XYZ is their first gay character, they can sell rainbow Mickey Mouse pins, they can put up pride month collections on Disney+, but it's clear that they only "support" the LGBTQ+ community when it's profitable for them.
They don’t want you, they just want to sell shit to you.
But there are more hatemongers looking to buy, and they go where the money is.
Frederic Wertham was a scam artist who churned moral panic for cultural power.
The Comics Code he built turned out to be just a weapon for Marvel to shut down competition. Really, the biggest achievement of it, is that it boxed and permanently hobbled the growth of the medium in the US.
'It's Genetic' by Kyle Baker
The secret origin of this feature:
I was the assistant editor of MARVEL AGE MAGAZINE, and Jim Salicrup told me one day that we’d be adding a new section to the book, called “The Mutant Report,” mocked up to look kinda like a newspaper and covering all things X-Men.
This was clearly a very good idea, since it’d be a good way to promote X-stuff, and readers would be interested. But I wasn’t very interested in the X-books at the time, so to be funny, I said, “The only way I’m going to do that is if we have a single-panel cartoon in it called ‘It’s Genetic,’ and Kyle Baker does it.” Kyle had recently been in and showed some of his COWBOY WALLY SHOW stuff, which was hysterical.
“Okay,” said Jim. “Go ask him.”
Kyle was still in the Bullpen, so I asked him if he’d do it and he said, “Um, sure.”
And that’s the secret origin of “It’s Genetic” by Kyle Baker.
[I came up with one or two of the gags, too, but I can’t remember which ones any more. Not the really good ones.]
Kyle Baker’s art, esp for me from this era, so perfect.
