MANILA, Philippines — The general public’s biggest exposure to the comic book universe has always been and will always be through mass media.

Whether it is the countless animated series seen on children’s channels, or the film adaptations that continually try to outdo each other in terms of star power and special effects, people know about superheroes mostly because of what they watch on TV and in the cinemas.

What critics have to realize is that the comic book adaptations in film and on the big screen are usually made with the younger audiences in mind. But by no means is the comic book medium only for children. In fact, it takes a mature, adult mind to fully appreciate and understand most of the titles that are being published today.

Relevant then, relevant now

Comics are relevant. Anybody who says otherwise clearly does not know what he is talking about. They were relevant back in the 40’s when Captain America was leading his troops in battle against the Red Skull and his Nazi soldiers during World War II. And they’re still relevant up to today, with heroes like Batman and Daredevil waging war against the crimes on the streets.

Taking a mainstream comic to be used as an example of the relevance and maturity of the medium, one can read Marvel’s Civil War and see it both as a fanboy clash of everybody’s favorite superheroes, and as an allegory of the American political situation. In Civil War, heroes were forced to register their identities with the government. The Superhuman Registration Act split the Marvel Universe into two factions.

Real-world issues

On one side were Tony Stark’s pro-registration forces, who believed that the world would be safer if heroes would sign up under the command of the American government, revealing their identities and submitting themselves to the iron fist of the powers-that-be. Opposing this army were Captain America and his band of Secret Avengers, who believed that the Registration Act was a violation of freedom, and a danger to the private lives of the heroes.

While the comic is essentially a bunch of superheroes fighting each other like the bitterest of enemies, on a deeper level, the story was a metaphor for the state that America was in post- 9/11. The clearest way of seeing this is relating the Superhuman Registration Act with the USA Patriot Act, which basically gives law enforcement agencies in America more freedom in their surveillance efforts and more authority to search records or telephone/ online conversations that can possibly be connected to terrorism. The Patriot Act also gives agencies more discretion in detaining terror suspects, and more reach in regulating financial transactions of foreign individuals.

Many opponents of the Patriot Act have deemed it a violation of freedom and privacy. Mark Millar, Civil War’s lead writer and overall architect, could not help but inject this political outrage into his narrative. Millar described the comic as "a story where a guy wrapped in the American flag is in chains, as the people swap freedom for security."

Regardless of what side you take, both on the Registration Act and on the Patriot Act, it is clear that the Marvel Universe has taken a serious, real-world issue, and reflected on it through the comic book medium.

Another great allegorical comic book is Pride of Baghdad, published by Vertigo in 2006. The graphic novel, based on a true story, details the journey of four escaped lions who ran away from their zoo after it was bombed by Americans during the US invasion of the capital of Iraq. Although the lions found freedom, they soon learned that the world they now lived in was a terrible place and that life would only become more difficult for them, not at all better than when they were living in captivity.

Many critics see the graphic novel as a representation of Iraqi society, and how it declined after being freed from the rule of Saddam Hussein. The comic ends with the four lions being shot by American soldiers without provocation, and the city is bombed once again by fighter jets. The final captions note that aside from the four lions, “there were other casualties as well,” referring, of course, to the innocent Iraqi civilians caught in the deadly crossfire. Winner of the IGN award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2006, Pride of Baghdad brought up essential questions about what it really means to be free, questions that still haunt many societies around the world.

With comics like Unknown Solider, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and Dark Knight Returns, showing their readers the horrific truths about the world we live in, one cannot deny that comic book creators are not only telling the stories they want to tell, but rather, the stories they feel they have to tell.

It’s not a sin to read comics for fun. That’s what most fanboys do. But to take away the social value of the medium would be ignorant and inexcusable. Comics are as real as things get.

(Marco Mañalac is a stage/film/TV actor, host and comic book enthusiast. Follow him on Twitter @marcomanalac. Email him at marco.manalac@gmail.com)