You might not know the name Brett R. Smith, but there’s a good chance you’ve seen his work through Image, Devil’s Due, Aspen and DC Comics. The colorist is now hoping to make money off of hate by delivering a comic for the pro-Donald Trump conservative movement hate group alt-right.

Smith is a staunch conservative and recently worked on the Clinton Cash graphic novel adaptation which Smith claims was commissioned by White House propagandist Steve Bannon in 2016 in an attempt to sway millennials. That graphic novel become a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Now Smith is working to bring the criminal controversial conservative web celebrity Kyle “Based Stick Man” Chapman to comics.

“Based Stick Man the Alt-Knight” was a nickname given to Chapman after a video featuring him assaulting Antifa protesters with a wooden rod went viral in March during protests at the University of California, Berkeley. He was arrested for the assault and spent a few days in jail during that time he became an alt-right white nationalist celebrity. Chapman has a long history of arrests including robbery, theft, and selling weapons which has led to repeated incarceration and parole violations.

While Chapman doesn’t consider himself racist, his wife is Asian and son half-Asian, he is the founder of the “virtually all-white Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights” and considers himself a “proud defender of ‘American nationalism'”. That has put him on the radar of hate group watchdogs like the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center. It shouldn’t be surprising he’s become a celebrity in the white power nationalist movement and that celebrity is being turned into a comic.

Now Smith, along with conservative comic writer Mike Baron (Nexus, The Badger), are bringing the racist icon to comics in hopes of taking on the “social justice warriors” in the comic industry. Baron has issues with companies changing the race and gender of characters to reflect the shifting demographics of America as opposed to creating new characters. Baron also apparently overlooks the comic industry’s past history of just slapping on “woman” or “girl” to an existing character (Batman, Batwoman, Batgirl) or long history of mantels being passed down (Hal Jordan to Jon Stewart and the apparently ok Hal Jordan to Guy Gardner).

Smith has said “This is not only a culture war, this is war. The highest form of warfare is to subvert the culture because you don’t have to raise a standing army. We’re never going to change the culture from Washington. We’re going to do it from comics, from movies.”

It’s unknown if Smith and Baron are aware of Chapman’s long rap sheet and their promotion of a repeat violent offender.

This isn’t the first conservative comic to be released and it certainly won’t be the last, but it’s the most blatant attempt for a cash grab to make money off of the alt-right movement in comics.

(via Mic)

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