User blog comment:Nausiated/Racism and the Marvel Universe/@comment-1009000-20120121104456

I've always found the realtion between comics and racism to be a highly interesting one - considering that from the early days, a lot of their comic creators were jewish, I've always felt that there was a subtext with a clearly anti-discriminatory message there. Even though, of course, some of it is still racist by a wide margin from a 21st century pont of view. I just recently read the first few issues of the Doc Savage series - written in the 30s and published in 1972. the first two feature a really horrible treatment of mayan people and culture (I'm not talking mel Gibson-style, more like Brirish colonial...) that comes across as extremely unreflected - in the same year, marvel published an openly anti-apartheid story in the fantastic four, where they almost openly criticize the south african regime. back to your question, though: as for revamps, marvel's been doing this and that. Captain America is the most obvious example: He was hunting communists in the 50s, because that was the popular thing to do. when it became out of fashion, they simply erased that part of history, waiting until the 1970s to retcon (and reintegrate) that part of his history - obviously because the political ideas, not only in society in general, but with the marvel contributors specifically had changed. personally, I always wonder which of his stories will be retconned twenty years from now...