SUPERHERO REPLACEMENT THEORY PT. 2

Earlier I examined the two ethical systems, of conservatism ("Keeping") and of liberalism ("Sharing"). in terms of the dynamics of human societies from ancient times onward. The same systems apply equally to the ways in which those societies determine their identities in terms of cultural matrices.

No one ever really knows why a given society, whether of antiquity or modernity, decides to dominantly pursue one cultural course over another: whether the tribe should worship one god or several, or whether it's good or bad to seethe a kid in its mother's milk. Even in modern times, pundits can make anterior comments about how some cultural development MAY have come about, but that's not the same as KNOWING how a dominant majority chooses that course. But it can be fairly stated that once the course is chosen, the Ethos of Keeping comes into play, as the majority members of the culture continue to "Keep Faith" with the choices of their ancestors. Minority cultural developments can still exert some historical influence. For instance, certain citizens of one culture may embrace the religion of another culture, ranging from Romans flirting with the worship of Cybele or George Harrison converting to Krishnaism. This can be seen as an articulation of the Ethos of Sharing, in that the majority culture shows tolerance for the tastes of the minority by not requiring absolute fidelity to the majority rule. 

Conservatism does rule the roost in most if not all societies when it comes to allowing members of other societies to join the ingroup, and in ancient times there would be zero examples of dominant societies that voluntarily changed to accomodate either migrants joining the dominant society or separate vassal societies. Minority societies did not manipulate but were manipulated. Minority "outgroups" could be (1) transported away from their native land to some other location, (2) absorbed into the majority culture under various restrictions, or (3) allowed to function in the majority culture as sojourners but subject to random expulsion. The Ethos of Sharing arguably grew somewhat stronger with the rise of pietistic religions like Buddhism and Christianity. These systems of faith stressed a latitudinarian approach to cultural differences, though one could argue that this ecumenical approach had the ulterior purpose of spreading a particular religious credo through the medium of cultural tolerance.

All of this groundwork concerning the inherent conservativism of human societies should provide context for the fact that the United States of America, for the first 150 years of its existence, tended to exclude potential immigrants who did not resemble the dominant culture. The Naturalization Act of 1790 specified that naturalization of aliens was limited to "free white persons." Isolated members of various minority groups did gain citizenship over the course of the next 175 years. Yet America immigration law was not substantially affected by any Ethos of Sharing, except in special cases, such as the Truman Directive of 1945, which fast-tracked visas for displaced persons from war-torn Europe. 

Then in 1963, President John F. Kennedy attempted, but failed, to overthrow the exclusionary strictures. Roughly two years after Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the 1965 Immigration Act, thus ensuring a greater liberalism in terms of making American immigration law less exclusionary.

Now, exclusion on the basis of race was always wrong, so I don't take issue with the 1965 act on that basis. It's demonstrable that human beings of all ethnicities were able to assimilate to the American culture and to become valuable members of the society, and that without being as legally restricted as, say, Jews and Christians in Muslim societies. However, buried within the Democratic imperative of liberation was the assumption that immigrants of other cultures would ALWAYS be willing to assimilate to established American culture.

As with the contemporaneous Civil Rights Act, political advantage, as much any sincere beliefs in societal tolerance, informed the changes in the older exclusionary immigration policy. However, the admission that "exclusion was wrong" led to the unjustified corollary that "inclusion must always be right." Liberals promoted the sophistry that, because the majority culture had been unforgivably racist and/or sexist, members of minority cultures had no responsibility to assimilate with the majority culture. This would slowly morph into the idea that the federal government could (and should) be blocked by so-called "sanctuary policies" at the state level. In the 21st century has become an "Ethos of Sharing" in which the state expects the federal authorities to accede to the wishes of the "minority culture" of that state.

In Part 1, I mentioned how most Liberals who addressed the phenomenon of illegal immigration almost invariably resorted to the "Honest Juan" paradigm. Said paradigm always portrays the illegal as a wholesome, honest person who's just trying to make a better life for himself and his family. I will admit comic books and films didn't promote this idea nearly as much as television shows, particularly legal dramas, where the sympathetic lawyer is always on the side of the poor but honest illegal. Even TV shows with a conservative slant, such as 24 (2001-2014), didn't tend to critique lax Liberal policies with respect (say) to admitting dangerous aliens into the country.    

I don't doubt that many of the Libs who support illegal entry sincerely believe that by assisting illegals, they're atoning for the sins of "Racist America." This is currently most evident in the fanatical anti-ICE protests of the past year, both in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, though in some ways these protests are a side-development of a general Democrat meme, in which everything the opposing party does today is irredeemably racist in nature. The upshot of this Ethos of Sharing, which resulted in the growth of sanctuary cities as a consequence of the 1965 Immigration Act, is that its proponents cannot deviate from the falsehood that every illegal must be an Honest Juan. Thus, Minnesota Liberals have made the not-quite-conscious decision to share their state with a wide variety of criminals, from rapists to drug-dealers to child molesters. I've even come across a few Liberals who defend this policy on the basis that there are an equal proportion of criminals within the ranks of legal American citizens. It's as if they think there should be "equal opportunity" for criminals from, say, Somalia to rip off the majority culture, because that culture is so irredeemably evil in nature. 

While it's not totally incorrect to critique the ethics of the dominant majority, there's no concomitant guarantee that the minority is going to be any more virtuous. Surprisingly, one of the few places I saw some pop-cultural pushback against the one-sided vilification of the dominant majority appeared in the 2017-18 Marvel series called FALCON. This eight-issue series appeared in the same year that "Black Captain America" failed to replace "White Captain America" in the hearts of comics-fans. Marvel then put Sam Wilson back in his Falcon outfit, and in the first issue, Falcon-Sam explains his ethical compass to a friend in terms that reference then-recent developments in the "Secret Empire" arc:

Steve being a traitor validated every cynic who felt America was an idealized metaphor for the dominant culture's survival and the minority's suffering. I can't let that idea take hold. People need HOPE"-- FALCON #1, writer Rodney Barnes, 2017.

To be sure, that ship had already sailed. The very agenda of Superhero Replacement in the 2010s showed that some people believed the very thing Barnes' Falcon wished to tamp down, and grievance-based anti-Americanism had been around since the rise of liberation movements around both Blacks and women. The chaos in Minnesota continues to validate protesters who have subscribed to the notion that their minority opinion re: illegal immigration "trumps" the opinions of the dominant majority, to say nothing of federal law. I don't agree that this belief is, as Barnes said, merely "cynical." Rather, false idealists like the Minnesota protesters have convinced themselves of their rightness by drawing upon a very old formula relating to uncritical liberality.             

SUPERHERO REPLACEMENT THEORY PT. 1

The term "replacement theory," a designation for a Right-leaning conspiracy theory, didn't come into vogue until French author Renaud Camus coined the term in 2011. In that context, Camus argued that vested interests in Europe were attempting to replace White Europeans with immigrants, legal or otherwise, the better to control the population. Camus made the interesting remark, derived from Brecht, that "the easiest thing to do for a government that had lost the confidence of its people would be to choose new people."

In September 2025 I argued that many of the political disagreements in American society stemmed from a conflict between two ethical systems: the Ethos of Keeping and the Ethos of Sharing.  In that three-part essay-series, I concentrated on explicating the idea first and then provided particular examples of the idea's application in pop culture. This time, I'll go the other way and start with an example.

Since I won't address "replacement theory" in terms of immigration law and politics until Part 2, here I'll concern myself with "the superhero replacement theory" that arose at Marvel Comics in the 2010s. This was a loose editorial policy aimed at portraying the Marvel Universe as having been too dominated by the Dreaded White Male, a tendency that the new breed of editors, like Axel Alonso, proposed to correct. TIME thought it worth covering this replacement of old characters with new ones, supposedly more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity and gender-- and all this roughly a year before the Marvel Cinematic Universe became heavily invested in its own replacement theory.

Alonso, a journalist turned modern-day mythologist, is leading the world’s top comics publisher during a time of great disruption. In an industry historically dominated by caucasian males, Alonso is breaking the laminated seal of stodgy tradition by adding people of every ilk to the brand’s roster of writers and dramatis personae. Under his watch, the Marvel universe has expanded to accommodate costumed crimefighters of myriad ethnicities: a biracial Spider-Man, a black Captain America, a Mexican-American Ghost Rider, to name a few.-- "Meet the Myth-Master Reinventing Marvel Comics," 2017.

It's ironic, though, that the TIME essay appeared in 2017, for by that time, the most famous/infamous replacement-- that of White Captain America by Black Captain America-- had utterly failed. According to the first collection of SAM WILSON CAPTAIN AMERICA, there were about a dozen stories in which Sam Wilson, formerly "The Falcon," assumed the mantle of star-spangled avenger. Following those dozen appearances, Marvel launched CAPTAIN AMERICA: SAM WILSON. This title lasted 24 issues from 2015 to 2017, with all scripts written by Nick Spencer. Spenser made his biggest splash with the notorious "Secret Empire" plotline, in which White Captain America was revealed to be an agent of Marvel's Nazi-adjacent terrorist cabal. Hydra. But I only read the first six issues of Spenser's WILSON, which just happen, in a serendipitous manner from my POV, to concern illegal immigration.

Spenser doesn't bestow individual titles on any stories in the six-issue arc. So because Wilson-Cap's main opponents are the Sons of the Serpent and the Serpent Society, I'll give the arc the arbitrary Marvel-style title "Serpents in Eden," albeit with the caveat that my ideas of who the serpents really are isn't the same as Spenser's. I'll pay Spenser a small compliment: while "Serpents" is a one-sided Liberal take on immigration, it's not nearly as stupid as either of the MCU stories focused on Wilson-Cap: 2021's teleseries FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER and 2025's CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD. But Spenser is unapologetic about slanting his discourse on America's unsecured borders by relying on that hoary old Liberal cliche. the "Honest Juan" paradigm.

So Wilson-Cap is approached by the grandmother of one Joaquin Torres about her missing grandson. I think Spenser meant to imply that both Joaquin and his grandma were US citizens, though the writer doesn't actually say so. But Joaquin does resemble just about every other illegal-lover in American pop culture. Joaquin sets up resources to help migrants survive their attempts to illegally cross the border-- which proves he's a good guy, because he's saving lives but not directly providing aid in said crossings. (The grandma is careful to say that Joaquin is not a coyote.) Wilson-Cap soon discovers that a new incarnation of the Sons of the Serpent-- originally an American-nationalism group introduced in the 1960s-- has been kidnapping migrants to use for the subjects of mutation experiments. 

However, these Sons are only hired thugs, working for the Serpent Society, rebranded as "Serpent Solutions." The new snake-fiends are oriented upon getting rich White conservatives to invest in their villainous schemes-- because, as we all know, there are no Liberals who ever promote massive illegal schemes. In the midst of all this politically tinged superhero actions, not much is said about most of the migrants victimized-- except Good Samaritan Joaquin. As it happens, when he gets mutated, he gets turned into a guy with natural arm-wings, so that by the climax of "Serpents," Joaquin gives up helping illegals and assumes Wilson-Cap's old ID of "The Falcon." Not that Wilson-Cap ever totally dropped the avian part of his identity. I think two crusaders with wings, but not with a mutual bird-motif, feels a lot like gilding the lily, but that's me.

There are certainly some entertaining bits in "Serpents." Wilson-Cap has a "will they-won't they" thing going in these six issues with old femme-favorite Misty Knight, and for a good portion of the story the hero gets transformed into a wolf-man, which is a callback to a nineties CAPTAIN AMERICA arc, "Man and Wolf." But naturally Spenser's political take on illegal immigration is completely dishonest. He puts into the mouth of the villains' leader the standard claim that objections to illegals is all about xenophobia: "Afraid of losing your job? Perhaps you'd be interested in a border wall to keep out immigrants who might undercut your current pay." The presumption here is that average Americans ought to be willing to let their wages be cut by greedy corporations-- the same ones Spenser excoriates-- because the presence of cheap scab labor makes such wage-cutting feasible. As with most Leftist racial theories, the persons thought to be "marginalized" are incapable of causing harm, even unintentionally. They can only be framed as victims, even if real-world victimage doesn't involve getting turned into human-animal hybrids.

As an ironic conclusion to this particular part of Marvel's replacement experiment, after the final issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA SAM WILSON in 2017, another group of raconteurs came out with an eight-issue FALCON series running from 2017 to 2018, possibly in an attempt to please the readers who wanted Sam Wilson to return to his previous super-ID. However, Axel Alonso was only credited as Marvel's editor-in-chief for the first three episodes of this series, and by issue four he had been ousted from the position by his successor C.B. Cebulski, whose editorial credit appears on the remaining five issues. I didn't read this series any more than I read the rest of the Spenser issues of WILSON, so I don't know what rationale was used to restore the status quo. But clearly the failure of Wilson-Cap indicates that the Marvel readership wanted to "Keep" Steve Rogers as their Captain America and didn't support the commandment that they ought to "Share" their entertainment with Liberals seeking to rewrite superheroes to be one-dimensional expressions of political correctness.

Next up: more stuff about "Sharing" when it takes the form of shoving messages down the mouths of consumers.

                     

OH CAPTAIN! BLACK CAPTAIN!

I stated some of my opinions of "Black Captain America" in my review of THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER, but here's another take on it that I wrote for a political forum.

________

Disney/Marvel devoted a whole series to the idea that it was terrible to have a white guy be Captain America, and that having a Black Cap would be the best solution to intersectional injustices of the past.

On the contrary, though, if your vision of America is one of White guys making everyone else go to the back of the bus, then what does a Black Captain America say about that? The fantasy is that it says, "we're overcoming all the intersectional injustices by casting a Black person in this role." But it could also say, "we, Black Americans, are claiming all of the power White people accrued when they conquered this country, but we don't accept any of the guilt of those acts." 

The advantage of a White Captain is that it captures the way White Americans thought about themselves at a point in history, when they were unquestionably the dominant racial group in America. Now you can take that idea and play it straight, as most conservatives would, or you can satirize it, as liberals would. But the idea of Black Captain America doesn't lend itself to any multivalent interpretations. You either follow the Lib program of what it's supposed to mean, or you don't. 

And frankly, I liked the Falcon. He's the first Black American superhero, so why is that heritage so easy to put aside for a mere gesture of phony intersectional triumph?

ADDENDUM: And if the showrunners were really trying to sell the idea of the new Black Captain-- why didn't they entitle the series CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE WINTER SOLDIER?