Ok, a customer of mine, and an all-around great guy, Vince Stone, sent me a link to a news article about a comic book series he used to work on as the artist called "Captain Confederacy." The comic was originally published by a small comic book publisher in the 1980s, and was later published by Marvel as part of the Epic line in the early 1990s.

It is the story about how the South won the Civil War and had their own superheroes. It is not a racist comic, but, in fact, a comic that deals with racism and how it is wrong, using an alternate reality to make its' point.

A mother bought the comic for her child and gave it to him for Christmas. The child, not understanding the comic, brought it to his mother's attention. She is now complaining that the comic is racist. Wanna bet she didn't actually read it? She obviously ignored the title when she bought it, after all.

Here's the article:

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060106 /NEWS01/601060320/1001'

Has anyone else read this series?

The mother in question: "I'd actually like to see whoever is writing this to stop putting out this offensive material," Boswell, 55, said. "The way they're doing this, it can really warp some young minds."

No, I'd actually like to see a parent look through what they are going to purchase (you know, a character wearing the Confederate Flag on the cover of a comic called "Captain Confederacy") to determine if their child would be ready for an adult examination, a "What If...?" if you will, of history instead of blindly purchasing something because it's cheap, not looking through it for content, and using it as a stocking stuffer.  Wow! Novel concept, parenting.

Never read it or even heard of it

On the broader point the mother made, I do think there is some responsibility on behalf of companies in the product they put out-a sort of social or global responsibility-especially in superhero form.

On this comic, I would wonder why Captain Confederacy and the costume and all didn't raise a red flag to her-

to check the contents to see if (a) racist or (b) if not, if the point might be lost on her child, due to age and/or maturity.

She may have just grabbed a whole bunch of them for $1 or .50 cents or whatever.  But she didn;'t have to make a federal case of it

Man I should have contacted Bill O'Reilly about that Wolverine issue where the nazis are America. Sheesh! Oh well, never did find the issue

Every day, more and more people want to complain about something, and the media are more than happy to make it national news.