{"id":11758,"date":"2023-11-20T18:38:40","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T23:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=11758"},"modified":"2023-11-20T18:39:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T23:39:41","slug":"pat-robertson-supervillain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/11\/pat-robertson-supervillain\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Robertson: Supervillain"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>Televangelist Pat Robertson, who died in June, was a man with a strange assortment of friends and enemies. Among his friends was fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell, who blamed<\/a> the 9\/11 terrorist attacks on \u201cthe pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians\u201d. Other friends were<\/a> Liberian war criminal Charles Taylor<\/a> and the dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko<\/a>. His enemies included Hinduism, which he called<\/a> \u201cdemonic\u201d, Islam which he said<\/a> was \u201csatanic\u201d, and Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbyterians who were<\/a> \u201cthe Spirit of the Antichrist.\u201d Venezuelan Presidents Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro were also in this category. Robertson called for both<\/a> men<\/a> to be killed.<\/p>\n

One lesser reported Robertson foe was Marvel Comics\u2019 Children of the Atom, the Uncanny X-Men. From 1966 until his death, Robertson had run a daily television program called The 700 Club. A 1984 episode of the show focused on the current state of comic books. Among those discussed was Marvel Graphic Novel 5<\/a> (January 1983), featuring the X-Men story God Loves, Man Kills. The members of the mutant superhero team are repeatedly referred to as \u201csubhumans\u201d<\/a> (keep this in mind). Robertson calls the story, which features a televangelist as the antagonist and religious imagery, \u201cblasphemous.\u201d To cap it off, Robertson and company falsely claimed that the price of the graphic novel ($5.95) was typical, although the average monthly comic in 1984 cost sixty cents. The implication is that not only are comic books corrupting children, but the publishers are getting rich off it to boot.<\/p>\n

While Robertson\u2019s comments mainly focused on the religious aspects of the comic book, it’s more probable that he was upset about the story\u2019s deliberate political commentary. The late 1970s and early 1980s were a bonanza for televangelists like Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and the Christian Right. They had defeated the Equal Rights Amendment, gotten their man, Ronald Reagan, into the White House, and were eager to roll back the advances of the 1970s movements for gay and abortion rights. Hate groups were also on the march in Skokie, Illinois and Greensboro, North Carolina<\/a>. Into this environment entered God Loves, Man Kills and its villain, televangelist Reverend William Stryker.<\/p>\n

\"Cover
IMAGE Credit: Marvel Database<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Earlier Marvel stories had addressed bigotry too. In the two-part story in Avengers 32<\/a>–33<\/a> (September-October 1966), the superhero team battles a nativist, racist group called the Sons of the Serpent, obviously modeled after the KKK. However, when the story ends, it’s revealed that the Sons are led by General Chen, the head of a \u201chostile Oriental nation\u201d (contextually, a stand-in for China). Chen wanted to use the Sons to sow division in America to make it easier to conquer. This is a reversal of the common segregationist argument that civil rights protestors were communist \u201coutside agitators.\u201d God Loves, Man Kills does not employ this plot. The bigotries of its villains are as American as apple pie.<\/p>\n

X-Men writer Chris Claremont, who had a background in political science, described his parents as \u201cyoung socialists in England\u201d 1Neal Adams<\/a>, agreed with the political thrust of the story saying<\/a>, \u201cSure, it’s possible to exclude politics from comic books, but not from art. Comics produced through avoidance of the real world are hardly satisfactory on any meaningful artistic level.\u201d<\/p>\n

God Loves, Man Kills begins with one of the most shocking and disturbing scenes in a mainstream superhero comic. Two children are hunted down and shot dead by a gang known as the Purifiers. The leader of the Purifiers tells them they are being murdered because they \u201chave no right to live.\u201d The children\u2019s bodies are strung up in a playground with the slur \u201cMutie\u201d scrawled on them in a scene visually referencing countless lynchings and hate crimes, especially given that the children are Black. Unsurprisingly, the cover of the comics lacks the seal of approval of the Comics Code Authority<\/a>, which would forbid this kind of on-panel violence.<\/p>\n