Should tv shows, films and comics talk about politics and social issues?

[ed2962]

I mean that is the thing. There has always been an undercurrent of politics. From the mentioned Xmen and the metaphor, to Golden Age Superman going after war profiteers, gambling dens ect.., Captian America, human Torch, And Namor going after Germany and Japan (Though the stories with the Japanese were badly racist) like you mentioned Black Panther has not only a black superhero but the head of an advanced African Nation, Spiderman had joe Robertson as an Editor of a major Newspaper and that was one of Marvel's biggest titles even before Robertson there were black people in the comic. Kind of snuck into the back round, and not just as gang members or criminals, they were cops and students at Peter's college. There was the issue rights after gwens dad died and Bullet was running for DA and he was very racist and they touched on that in the arc.
Then there was the Superman issue where Lois used a machine to turn black for 24 hours. A well meaning but poorly handled attempt at handling Racism. The Spiderman drug issues then the Green lantern/Green Arrow Speedy drug issue, heck a lot of stories in the Green Arrow/Green Lantern stories were political.

So people who say politics in comics is a new thing have not been paying attention while not in your face and super woke comics have always had a hand in politics.

Conversely though, Iron man's first origin is about him making weapons to fight the Viet Cong ( later issues have Nikita Khrushchev showing up). Hulk's first origin is Bruce Banner building an atomic bomb so the US can fight the Russians. There's an Avengers story that blames US racism on communists. A later Avengers comic mocks feminism. There's an X-Men comic where Rogue blows a kiss to Reagan. Sue Richards dismissing feminism. Then there's GI Joe, the 80-90's version of Punisher, and any number of comics that were implicitly pro-military or chauvanistic. Then there's straight up war propaganda in 40's. So yeah, politics were always there, but I wouldn't say they were always so-called "woke".