Politics make comics relatable

The argument

The case here treats politics not as a message inserted into comics but as a component of characterisation. Politics is inherently opinion based, and opinions are how people come to know one another: the more one knows about a person's values and beliefs, the closer one tends to be with that person. Relatability, on this account, is produced less by similarity of circumstance than by access to what someone actually thinks. A figure whose commitments are unknown stays a stranger however much of their life is put on display. Comics are meant to mirror the real world, and politics is a large part of the real world. A story that depicts that world while leaving out the arguments people are actually having is therefore incomplete as a mirror, and the incompleteness has a cost in credibility. Characters who hold no position on anything contested are characters standing outside the pressures every reader lives under, which makes them harder to believe in and easier to read as devices rather than people. Giving superheroes and other fictional characters political ideologies addresses both problems at once. It makes them more believable, because holding views is part of what having a self consists in, and it makes them less one dimensional, because a character with commitments can be set against other characters, against institutions, and against their own earlier convictions in ways a character defined only by powers and plot function cannot. The political content is doing literary work on this view, generating conflict, motivation and interiority, rather than merely voicing an author's preference. Understood that way, politics belongs in the writer's toolkit alongside any other technique of characterisation, and Stan Lee employed this tool with great effect with the X-Men. Because politics is what makes characters, and so comics, relatable, proponents conclude that comic books should be political.

Premises

Counter-arguments

While knowing the opinions of a character may make them more understandable, it does not inherently make them more relatable. Their political opinions may alienate some of the readership. Simply knowing someone's political opinions doesn't necessarily mean the reader will agree with those opinions and relate to the character.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Understanding other people's opinions does not make them more relatable.