Superman Protects Undocumented Workers

Submission 28,406

Part of a series on Superman. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Superman Protects Undocumented Workers refers to a controversy surrounding an issue of Action Comics, in which Superman guards several undocumented workers from gunfire from a white man who accused them of taking his job.

Background

On September 13th, 2017, DC Comics released issue #987 of Action Comics. In the issue, Superman protects a group of undocumented workers from an armed, white gunman, accusing them of taking his job (shown below). Superman then intimidates the gunman and says, "The only person responsible for the blackness smothering your soul is you."

Development

That day, the Hollywood Reporter^[1] published an article on the comic, referring to the gunman as a white supremacist. The publication also notes that the comic comes a week after President Donald Trump made a series of controversial comments about deporting DACA recipients, who were brought to the United States as children but do not have documentation.

Shortly after, Fox News ^[2] published an op-ed entitled "Superman defends illegals against angry American." In the article, the author describes Superman as "The Man of Steel has now become a propaganda tool for the defenders of illegal aliens."

On Twitter] people had various opinions about the comic. Some made the argument that Superman, being from Krypton, was an illegal immigrant. Twitter user @ryanbeckwith tweeted, "As an undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. as a child, Superman is technically a Dreamer." The post (shown below, left) received more than 5,700 retweets and 11,000 likes in two days.

More on Twitter continued to argue both sides of the debate on Twitter. Some claimed that the comic book was in keeping with the character, others called the book topical, while others accused the comic of being propaganda (examples below). On September 13th, Twitter^[6] published a Moments page on the controversy.

The following day, Redditor ^[4] mad-liberals posted a photoshopped version of the panels, featuring Superman protecting a group of Pepe the Frogs from Hillary Clinton, on the /r/The_Donald subreddit. The post (shown below) received more than 7,200 points (88% upvoted) and 200 comments.

On September 15th, Redditor^[5] NotThoughtOut posted about the comic. They received more than 2,100 points (95% upvoted) and 500 comments in five hours.