on comic book heroes taking on reality

this is old news, but i kind of just discovered it today. in bbc news 15th February 2006, an article entitled "comic book hero takes on al-qaeda" reported that a familiar, well-known Gotham city vigilante with a bat emblazoned on his chest will be fighting al-qaeda in his new adventures.

"The latest Batman adventure will see the Caped Crusader take on al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
Comic book artist Frank Miller is midway through writing Holy Terror, Batman, which sees Batman defending Gotham City from a terrorist attack.

"It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of propaganda," said Miller at a US comic book convention.

The veteran writer called it "a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against".

He said the story was "an explosion from my gut reaction of what is happening now "

ok, i know comic books have a tradition of using their heroes to take on real life personalities. Captain America was conceived during the world war period to fight Hitler or Red Skull (a fictitious character who was supposed to be a close confidante of Adolf Hitler), Superman was conceived to uh... fight the Great Depression and crooked businessmen.
literary works are meant to have a message and it is the expression of the individual. but perhaps what gets to me slightly about batman fighting al-qaeda is that popular media is very blatant about its message and may serve not to offer a different perspective but just repeat and perpetuate an already existing train of thought. i mean, it's not as if you've never heard G.W. Bush utter the words "axis of evil"
maybe what concerns me, is whether by pitting a comic book hero directly against a reality, we are essentially buying into that jargon and coding things in terms of good and evil, black and white. i'm not saying terrorism is good or even neutral, but i think the solution lies deeper than showing how good, can and will, squash evil (in the form of batman no less). the situation to me seems more nuanced and if we are looking for peace, it seems like we should be thinking deeper and digging further and seeking to correct an even greater social injustice. what prompts terrorism, what the conditions that bear fruit to it. i don't think people are fundamentally evil, so if we want to get involved in a peace process, why are we skipping the issues and simplifying things into a simple binary code?

i love comic books, i love how they reflect concerns and try (like any good profit-driven industry) to incorporate current trends and thoughts into their artwork and stories. but since we are living in a post-modern world and since we recognise that none of us are purely "good", i think we should be careful about using our comic book heroes to bash up supposed "evils". dialogue can perpetuate itself and shape thoughts. if we are going to allow one side of the story, then maybe what we need is widespread dissemination of another train of thought as well.

of course, this is just my two pennies' worth :)