Comic book writer Tom King thinks Philly can save the world

Acclaimed comic book writer Tom King has never shied away from the political moment. Telling tender, mind-bending tales about immortal gods, Amazon princesses, and masked vigilantes, King has powerfully explored the anxiety, paranoia, misogyny, and absurdity that has defined America in the time of Trumpism.

King, known for hit comics like The Vision, Mister Miracle, Rorschach, and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, understands the stakes more than most.

Before shooting to comic book stardom writing Batman in 2016, King spent seven years in the CIA as a counterterrorism operations officer, including serving in Baghdad in 2004. The experience served as inspiration for his masterful and murky 2015 wartime crime thriller, The Sheriff of Babylon.

While the Eisner Award-winning author has never been shy about sharing his political concerns, including in 2019 when he tweeted his suspicions that Trump could be a foreign asset, his must-read comics are far from political diatribes. Like all classic comics, they glimpse the truths of our time through the struggles of the superheroes we like to think we could be.

King, 46, who lives in Washington with his wife and three children, will be appearing at Brave New Worlds comics in Old City on Election Day for a get-out-the-vote celebration. The author will be signing books and handing out free copies of his books to customers who show an “I Voted” sticker.

We talked with King recently from Hollywood, where he’s currently cowriting and executive producing the upcoming HBO series Lanterns. The author talked about the inherent hopefulness of comics and how Philly has the power to change the world.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

King: Yeah, I did a similar event at Fat Jack’s four years ago where I just celebrated Philly’s voice in the election. You just do everything you can — and one of the few things I can do is to say thank you to voters by giving them the thing that I can give out: my time and signage. Pennsylvania is where the rubber meets the road.

King: I spent my 20s in the CIA doing counterterrorism work overseas so I’m not uninvolved in government and how it works. And I live blocks from the U.S. Capitol. The Supreme Court are literally my neighbors. I remember walking my dog right before the [2017] inauguration, and this is one of these little absurd details that got lost in history, but they had a bunch of porta-potties and the porta-potties company was called “Don’s Johns.” And I guess the president-elect took offense to that so he had people go use a Sharpie marker and cross out ‘Don’s Johns’ from all these porta-potties. Literally, the guy had censored porta-potties in my neighborhood. I remember walking past and thinking, “Oh, this is going to be bad.”

King: The atmosphere right now is so bifurcated and personal that you can’t sort of help to step on that rail. Even Shakespeare, man. Look at Macbeth. He’s talking about the fact that they just got a Scottish king. You’ve got to write for your moment. That’s what it means to be a writer and to be alive. So to just try to ignore that to appeal to a larger base in order to make more money seems wrong to me.

King: You never want your comics to be your twitter feed. You never want to be lecturing somebody and being like, “This is bad, this is good, the world is black and white.” That just doesn’t make for good stories. It’s not about a lecture. It’s just about writing truth.

King: In a superhero context, it doesn’t work. Lex Luthor is evil, but he’s also super intelligent. That’s not Trump. No offense to the guy, but he’s not Lex. He’s not Doctor Doom. He doesn’t resemble anything like a superhero villain. His appeal is something else, something new, something shocking.

King: It’s aspirational. Like I don’t think of Wonder Woman as being very political. Someone is being terrible to women, therefore Wonder Woman should fight back. That doesn’t seem like a political stance to me. That doesn’t seem left or right to me. That just seems American.

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman aren’t inherently political. They’re inherently hopeful. All three of those characters were created in the shadow of the Nazi Party, two of them specifically by Jewish creators (Batman and Superman). So their origins are antifascist. The earliest Superman comic before we entered World War II had Superman going overseas and capturing Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. That’s baked into the pie. But it’s not political to be anti-Nazi. We all used to agree on those ideals.

King: If I had to say the random comic book reader, there’s something about the world that alienates them. There’s something that they feel a little bit disconnected about — a little bit rebellious. They feel a little bit of otherness. That crosses all political lines. That’s what I love about comics. It speaks to kids and grown-ups who do feel a little disconnected from the mainstream.

King: Everything’s at stake, man.

But honestly, you read Superman because you want to be like Superman. You read Batman because you want to be like Batman. Because they’re special. They’re important. They don’t accept the world the way it is. They try to change it. And I feel like voters in Pennsylvania right now have the opportunity to be like Batman, to be like Superman, like they don’t every other day of their life. If Batman and Superman were alive today they couldn’t do s— to stop what’s coming. But a voter in Pennsylvania can, and that’s pretty cool.

And if you vote for Trump, and want to come get a comic, you’re welcome to it. It’s a celebration of democracy and the fact that Philly gets a chance to change the world.

Tom King will be appearing at Brave New Worlds on Tuesday, Nov. 5, from noon to 3 p.m., 55 N. Second St., Philadelphia, Pa.