Frank Miller announced last week at WonderCon in San Francisco that he’s already 120-pages into a graphic novel that pits Batman against al Qaeda. Miller has been talking about this project since fall 2005, and now that the New York Post has picked up the story (and quoted Miller extensively), it’s reasonably certain that this effort is not some sort of joke. That’s unfortunate for Miller, who seems to have ignored the lessons provided by recent attempts to mesh masked vigilantes with the world of suicide bombers.

The announced project probably couldn’t come at a worse time, what with all the protests surrounding the publication of political cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. Simple, direct images like this can carry a powerful message, as any who’ve witnessed the ongoing riots can tell you. But when you add someone wearing a bat costume into the mix, it somehow sounds even more offensive, not to mention silly.

In the Post article, Miller admits that the book is propaganda, reminiscent of the comics published during World War II, when heroes like Superman and Captain America regularly battled Axis forces. Back then, Superman and Batman stumped for war bonds while the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner beat up Japanese and German soldiers. In fact, both Captain America and fellow Golden Age superhero Daredevil (no relation to the modern version of the character) gave Adolf Hitler a sock in the jaw on the covers of their respective comics.

At the time, comic books were a huge business—lower-tier titles were selling hundreds of thousands of copies a month, and big books, like “Superman” and “Captain America” had circulation numbers close to one million. It made sense to use comics as a propaganda tool because everyone was reading them, from kids on the street to GIs in the trenches. Many of the top comics creators and publishers at the time, including Jerry Siegel and Jack Kirby, were Jewish and had an immediate, personal stake in the war.

Of course, some minor editorial tweaks were made before superheroes went into battle. The nigh-omnipotent Superman could have ended WWII with a flick of his wrist, so it was up to writer Jerry Seigel to come up with a reason why the Man of Steel didn’t just fly to Berlin and chuck Der Furher into the sun. (Superman ultimately decided to fight on the homefront, leaving the battle in Europe in the capable hands of Allied soldiers.) The creators realized that having superheroes come into direct contact with such real world strife would be silly and disingenuous, not at all reflective of the real situation.
When the superhero world and the real world do directly collide, the results are pretty embarrassing. The most egregious example is the 9/11 “tribute” issue of “The Amazing Spider-Man” from Marvel Comics. In the comic, Spidey and the rest of Marvel’s heroes and villains look on in horror as the World Trade Center collapses. In one particularly cringe-worthy moment, super villains Dr. Doom and the Kingpin shed a tear as they gaze upon the carnage, despite being a murdering despot and a sadistic mob boss, respectively.

But even when superheroes try to tackle these real-world problems in mature and thoughtful ways, the stories still ring false. This was illustrated a few months after 9/11 when Marvel unveiled a new Captain America series. This time around, Cap roams through Ground Zero and battles authentic Middle Eastern terrorists bent on taking over a small town. In the meantime, the Sentinel of Liberty gets a heaping dose of liberal guilt and discovers the terrorists he’s fighting were literally created by America. Writer John Ney Reiber managed to at least identify some of the moral gray areas in the War on Terror, but didn’t offer any real complex arguments other than “It’s all America’s fault.” And while that’s a tempting argument to make, it’s far too simplistic to make the story satisfying, much less credible.

Since then, comics have been pretty quiet on the War on Terror. In 2003, now-defunct publisher CrossGen announced plans for a book titled “American Power,” in which spandex-clad heroes would fight turban-clad terrorists. In fact, this exact image was slated to be the cover of the first issue; however, CrossGen’s investors got shaky and, fortunately for all of us, the book never saw print.

The only time this sort of nonsense works is when it’s treated as a joke, which is the case with “Liberality,” published by ACC Studios. In “Liberality,” Chelsea Clinton is president, America has ceded authority to the United Nations, and vocal conservative pundits have been driven underground thanks to the “Coulter Laws.” As Osama bin Laden (now a U.N. ambassador) plots to nuke New York, it’s up to Sean Hannity and G. Gordon Liddy (both of whom are now cyborgs) to save the day. Keep laughing—the comic has already been featured on both Hannity and Liddy’s talk shows and has attracted a fair amount of mainstream attention. 

That’s not to say comics can’t say meaningful things about war, culture and politics. Joe Sacco’s work, including “Palestine” and “Safe Area Gorazde” are stellar examples of sequential journalism that elucidate without being hysterical. Marjane Satrapi’s “Perspolis” and its sequel provide a realistic, touching look at what it was like growing up in Iran in the late 1970s and early ’80s, and Greg Rucka’s series “Queen & Country” deftly navigates the personal, political and bureaucratic pitfalls of the War on Terror. And of course, there’s “Maus,” Art Speigleman’s seminal graphic novel about his parents’ experiences in Nazi concentration camps. What the above examples realize, and what Miller and other superhero comic creators seem to forget, is that war and politics are never simple, and it takes more than a single punch to save the day.