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Alt-Right Traces in Comics Publisher’s Past, Now Marketing Trump?

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Pope Francis is an extremely popular figure. His Holiness was once known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina before he ascended to the papacy, just as his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI was previously Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger of Germany. And, at the time of his own ascension, it made no small news that, as young Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI was a member of the Hitler Youth (though, reportedly, an unenthusiastic and even subversive one).

So, when it was announced last year that the publisher formerly known as Bluewater Productions would do the graphic novel The Life of Pope Francis, eyebrows might not have been raised. After all, comic book biographies of real-life celebrities and political figures had been Bluewater’s modus operandi, having also done an earlier biography of Jesus Christ.

Bluewater Productions, however, is no longer Bluewater Productions. Their site currently lists their new name as Tidalwave Comics in its URL and its logos. But traces of their site content as well as their listings on sites such as Comixology and Tumblr still has them listed under their 2015 rebranding: Stormfront Comics.

As noted by Bleeding Cool, that new name has some ugly connotations:

It’s just… Stormfront is an interesting choice of name, and one I am more familiar with as the name of a neo-Nazi organisation.

By January 2016, the company apparently again redubbed themselves, this time simply Storm Entertainment, in response to the news, to them, that “Stormfront is a word normally associated with fascism and fascist sympathiser organisations.” And, since that time, their “Tidalwave Comics” moniker has quietly surfaced — one without distinctly alt-right connotations, yet deployed inconsistently and with little fanfare.

Is the “Stormfront” name an unfortunate, innocent artifact of their past? Or does it remain in stealth deployment? Certainly, this is a company that has produced a book on progressive Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren as part of a female empowerment series…created entirely by men. They also produced one of the few Donald Trump-centered comics, one that Salon.com felt “relie[d] too heavily on aggressive racial and religious stereotyping.”  Of course, this is also a company that highlighted Amazing Race star Andrew Shayde’s comments saying that Trump would makes an exceptional villain…as he promotes his Tidalwave series Monsters Among Us.

Was “Stormfront” a naive misstep? Is it a dog whistle? Or is the publisher who, as Bluewater “received negative publicity regarding their creator contracts and dealings,” playing us all, attempting to attract all ideologies to their products, regardless of the ethics? What’s in a name? Francis? Ratzinger?

Incidentally, Donald Trump also remains an extremely popular figure. And, under the Tidalwave Comics Twitter handle, the company released this not-unrelated announcement yesterday:

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