That distinctly anti-Nazi bent will surely be all over a book about Marvel’s own “Golden Age” comics of the era, especially since it was the success of that striking Captain America cover that helped propel the company to continued success throughout the decade and beyond. You almost have to wonder exactly who Marvel thought they had hired to write this essay in the first place. Spiegelman is the son of Holocaust survivors; his award-winning and celebrated Maus, based on conversations with his father, is considered to be one of, if not the single most consequential use of the sequential art form ever published. It is universally acclaimed and taught in classrooms worldwide. To expect Spiegelman to write an intro about comics of a certain era, many of which were expressly political, and not draw attention to the unfortunate parallels with today’s world seems, at best, like a case of self-deception.

Of course, while Marvel “is not allowing its publications to take a political stance” that doesn’t stop Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter from donating millions to Donald Trump and Trump-supporting candidates, “advising” on Veterans’ affairs (and we all know what great shape the VA is in), and hanging around Mar-a-Lago, where our work-and-facts-averse, TV-and-golf-obsessed President spends a significant portion of his time. The irony of a corporation that counts among its most celebrated iconography the image of a star-spangled hero punching a fascist dictator in the face, not to mention the company that published noted stand-ins for many groups of “othered” people, the X-Men, deciding they must remain anodyne and apolitical at any moment in history shouldn’t escape anyone.

This marks the second time in as many weeks that a major entertainment entity has caved in to fears of political backlash. Universal pulled the release of The Hunt, ostensibly because of sensitivity in the immediate aftermath of back-to-back mass shootings. Of course, The Hunt wasn’t scheduled for actual release until well over a month after those incidents. But if powerful media companies wait for an “appropriate” time (read: a period without a mass shooting) to release violent stories, we’ll be waiting a very long time indeed, as such tragedies continue to happen with nightmarishly increasing frequency. It is likely coincidental that Universal pulled the movie shortly after President Trump was spouting some especially vague and incoherent drivel about the “racism” of Hollywood, perhaps obliquely referencing The Hunt. Amusingly, it appeared from the trailer (which the studio has attempted to have scrubbed from the internet) that The Hunt is actually about “red state” type heroes being hunted by villainous coastal elites.

The President, whose behavior can charitably be described as “erratic” and who has spent the entirety of his brief political career propagating racist conspiracy theories, emboldening fascists at home and abroad, and cozying up to strongman dictators the world over, has yet to offer comment on anything specifically Marvel Comics-related, likely because he doesn’t seem to be much for reading of any kind and the topic of Spiegelman’s essay hasn’t come up yet on whatever piece of Fox News programming he is currently devouring via DVR. But rest assured, if he ever does hear about it, he will offer his usual calm and measured response via Twitter.

Marvel: The Golden Age 1939 – 1949 will now instead feature an introductory essay from Roy Thomas. Thomas is, of course, more than qualified to write such an essay. A legendary comic book writer, vast swaths of his career have been devoted to writing new adventures about superheroes fighting fascism during World War II, having done extended stints telling wartime tales in (among others) Marvel’s The Invaders as well as DC’s All-Star Squadron. Perhaps Thomas will be able to articulate the “apolitical” stance Marvel is looking for in a book about art that is, was, and always will be explicitly political. Or hopefully, Thomas finds a way to tell the same truth Spiegelman did: that we must heed the lessons our favorite stories and characters have been telling us from their very creation.