xhonzi said:

I know a lot of storytellers tend to find themselves in more "liberal" societies, but I think there are a lot of conservative values inherent to storytelling. Especially certain genres.

Recently, several superhero things have stuck out to me as very odd. The Mrs. and I were watching this season of Smallville (Superman's a conservative, right?) and they introduced a "right wing radio host who is on a campaign against [Superman]". And my first thought, as a conservative with more than his fair share of comics and other superhero paraphernalia around the house, is- Yeah, because conservatives haaaaaaaate superheroes.

Maybe it's one of those issues where both sides of the political divide want to claim what's good and desirable from pop culture... but I thought it was sort of a given that the superhero genre had certain tropes that made it more conservative friendly than a lot of other genres ("adult" comedies, for example).

Anyways, have at it.

For starters, even though I love it, "Smallville" has some of the worst writing I've ever seen on television.

But if you're talking a character who is a yelling, angry, hate-spewing talk radio guy, there aren't a lot of liberal types in that genre. Also, the dude was poccessed by Darkseid.

And back in the day, Superman was a reformer. He used to beat up wife-beaters, slumlords, and corrupt politicians. Then in WWII he started beating up the Japanese all the time and by the 1950s he was practically Dwight Eisenhower in tights. I'm not up to date on Superman comics, but I don't know his view on taxes, but he IS an illegal immigrant.

And Green Arrow has always been portrayed as a total leftist. He's the hippy superhero.