Lately, I have been a little behind in reading my weekly comics. Every week, I managed to find myself time to go down to my favorite store and buy my threads, but it was difficult to find time to actually read them around my rehearsal and homework schedule. And that’s how, this past week, when I finally had some free time, I found myself reading a good stack of about 60 comics in two days. And in that stack, I discovered the first two issues of Marvel’s new thread, The Unstoppable Wasp, written by Jeremy Whitley and illustrated by Elsa Charretier.

And it was one of the most exciting discoveries I have made in a long time. The story centers on Nadia, a lost daughter of Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man) who grew up in the Red Room (the facility in which the Black Widow was trained as an assassin), who has escaped and returned to America, hoping to work as a super scientist. She has to deal with immigration services over her status as a Russian citizen seeking residency and American citizenship, and she is regularly faced with culture clashes between her childhood experience and American culture. And, after meeting Ms. Marvel and Mockingbird in her first issue (and saving a street from a giant robot), they begin to discuss the List that has begun making appearances throughout Marvel comics since 2013. This list categorizes the smartest people in the Marvel universe, and, up until the introduction of Lunella Lafayette in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, the highest ranking woman on this List is #27 (Lunella has recently replaced Reed Richards as #1 - a very exciting development, particularly since she is a 10 year old black student attending an underfunded public school and is unable to transfer to a Gifted and Talented elementary school program). This outrages Nadia, and she decides to utilize her resources as a genius herself (as well as her late father’s money) to found GIRL, or Genius In Action Research Labs, to track down the “missing geniuses” of the Marvel universe - particularly the female ones - and give them the proper recognition they deserve. And - spoiler alert - the first two Nadia recruits are (surprise) Lunella Lafayette and a disabled Puerto Rican girl named Taina Miranda from Washington Heights.

Obviously, I was thrilled. Finally, another girl genius superhero. The numbers are growing. Finally, there was someone who was intellectually compatible with Lunella Lafayette in the Marvel universe (other than a giant dinosaur). But, despite my excitement, there was one question nagging in the back of my mind as I read these books:

Why are there not more comics being put out that address the contemporary political climate?

What happened to the political roots of comic books?

Because comics are, at their roots, a political art form. Superman was created by two Jewish Americans, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and in his very first appearance in Action Comics #1 in 1938, he traveled to Washington, D.C. to uncover corruption in the US Senate. As World War II began to grow in Europe, Superman began to take down dictators who were thinly veiled parodies of Hitler and Mussolini. Wonder Woman was created by psychologist William Moulton Marston as “psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should […] rule the world.” Her stories emphasized the importance of love over violence, as well as the importance of sisterhood between women, and she actively fought for the United States against the Axis powers throughout World War II. In his very first appearance, Captain America was depicted on the cover of Captain America Comics #1 in March of 1941 punching Adolph Hitler in the face, nine months before the United States entered World War II. Since her first appearance in 1967, Barbara Gordon (or Batgirl) has been known for her high degree of intelligence, and in 1973, she ran for Congress and won and was periodically seen working in Washington as a Congresswoman until losing her seat in 1980. The 1983 Green Lantern/Green Arrow storyline forced Green Lantern to confront contemporary problems in America that had previously escaped him, and the two confronted issues of racism, poverty, pollution, overpopulation, and corruption that related directly to the volatile political climate of the time. Efforts to discuss race and the women’s liberation movement were even made in Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane in the late 1960s and the early 1970s.

So why is Superman currently stuck in a dimension with a bunch of other Supermen instead of fighting for immigrants’ rights, when he is one himself? Why is Wonder Woman locked up in a mental institution instead of leading women’s marches? Why is Captain America a HYDRA agent instead of fighting them, particularly when HYDRA has always been a metaphor for the Nazi party? Why is Barbara’s current storyline centered around a potential relationship with the Penguin’s son instead of fighting the gentrification of her neighborhood? And why is Lois Lane a stay-at-home mother instead of fighting to spread the truth about government corruption and providing a voice for those in less fortunate positions than herself?

Why aren’t our heroes fighting for us?

Sure, there are plenty of comics out there that ARE political, including The Unstoppable Wasp and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. AfterShock Comics is currently producing a book, titled Alters, starring the first transgender superhero, which, in addition to the regular discussion of Chalice’s struggle as a young trans woman beginning hormone therapy and not yet out to her family and friends, features a side character living with cerebral palsy. Both transgender characters and characters living with serious disabilities are very rarely depicted in comics, and the mere existence of a book containing both of their stories is political in itself. BOOM! Studios’s book Lady Castle centers around the women of a newly all-female kingdom stepping out of their traditional gender roles and into leadership roles that they had previously been denied. G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel centers around Kamala Khan, a Muslim American superhero who constantly fights for her own rights and those of the people around her in her New Jersey neighborhood, and as of late, each issue has become more and more politically charged in response to the racist, homophobic, and sexist fearmongering that has been spread by the new presidential administration. And there are many other books that contain political elements on a smaller scale, and many writers and artists in the industry actively work to create more diverse casts of characters.

However, this does not change the fact that, for the most part, comics, especially superhero comics, are primarily marketed to, written for, and created by heterosexual white men. And, although diversity has massively increased both within books and on their creative teams over the past decade, there is still a massive amount of underrepresentation of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community in the industry. (For more detailed statistics, see my previous article The Struggle of Being a (Feminist) Geek Girl, Part One of Many). And, until the creative teams of comic books are able to grow to truly include these groups on an equivalent scale, they will continue to be underrepresented within books, along with the issues of discrimination that they face on a daily basis.

The comic book industry began with a large number of Jewish Americans in the 1930s and 40s, who were constantly facing antisemitism in the United States, as well as observing the vilification and persecution of other Jews throughout Europe. While the United States fought in World War II, antisemitism grew on the home front. Heroes like Superman and Captain America were created by these writers and artists to solve the problems of the country that they could not put an end to on their own.

Today, we are living under a presidential administration that is determined to ban all travel to and from a list of countries containing primarily Muslim citizens. An administration that genuinely believes that building a wall along the border of the United States and Mexico is a good idea. An administration filled with white supremacists, misogynists, and homophobes who have little to no experience actually working in government. An administration that is determined to take away insurance from millions of Americans, essentially sentencing chronically ill citizens dependent on the Affordable Care Act for their medical treatment to unaffordable medical bills and, quite possibly, death. We are living under an administration that threatens, quite literally, any minority group you can think of.

These are the groups that need voices now more than ever. These are the groups whose stories need to be told. These are the groups that need, and deserve, their own superheroes.

And it’s time for the comic book industry to stop dilly-dallying and get to work producing the stories that actually need to be told.