Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
The argument made by Watchmen is that superhero stories cannot be political and continue telling superhero stories or being about superheroes.

IF you were to do a truly political story about IRON MAN it would involve a lot of bits of him lobbying to ensure policies that harm or affect his company aren't passed, it would involve him making deals with China or Bangladesh or other countries to outsource manufacturing and so on. Likewise, if you deal with Tony automating his labor process and doing it home, you are going to have to deal with him laying off workers from manufacturing jobs.

Tony Stark is based these days on Silicon Valley types and those are the real-world issues that involve them.

Almost any hero if you apply real politics to them and their story would fall apart and no longer function.

I think superhero stories can work as entertainment and social commentary but in terms of actual political insight or critique, the genre just isn't built for it.
That's a pretty good point there, because superheroes mostly operate in a world of black-and-white, straightforwardly good-versus-evil, while politics is highly morally gray with no heroes or villains, regardless of how they may present themselves or be presented, just people opposing each other because they want different things, or maybe even the same things that can't be shared or distributed fairly.