Superman to Pooh: Comics characters that became the face of protests

As Taiwanese cock a snook at China with cartoon-inspired patches, a look at other such statements

Popular cartoon character Winnie the Pooh finds himself at the receiving end of an ongoing political one-upmanship between Taiwan and China. People in Taiwan are rushing to buy patches being worn by their Air Force pilots that depict a Formosan black bear (also known as the Taiwanese black bear) punching the friendly, honey-loving yellow bear. Pooh has remained a favourite target for Chinese censors, thanks to a proliferation of internet memes comparing the pantless bear with China’s president, Xi Jinping.

The patches show an angry Formosan black bear holding Taiwan’s flag and punching Pooh, with the slogan “Scramble!” The endangered Formosan black bear is seen as a symbol of Taiwanese identity. The accompanying slogan refers to Taiwanese jets scrambling in preparedness for Beijing’s three-day military drills around Taiwan that began on April 8.

The drills were ordered a day after the island’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, returned from a brief visit to the United States where she met Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the US House of Representatives, despite Beijing’s warnings.

While the use of Pooh for making a political statement might seem unique, there are similar instances of cartoon and comic characters becoming a symbol of protest and resilience.

In 2020, not too far from Beijing, Thailand’s pro-democracy students’ movement adopted the Japanese cartoon hamster, Hamtaro, as a mascot to garner support from young people around the country. Protesters would often hold demonstrations in public places by running around in circles like a hamster wheel, while singing a modified version of the cartoon’s jingle. These lyrics claimed that the Thai government loved feasting on taxpayers’ money, and demanded that Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha dissolve parliament immediately.

Earlier, in 2012, costumed performers in New York’s Times Square dressed up as Snoopy, SpongeBob, Spiderman and other popular comics and cartoon characters, to protest the re-routing of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The parade is a three-hour roadshow full of costumed characters, floats and balloons. It is held annually in Manhattan and ends outside Macy's Herald Square. The Times Square performers, who are often a central part of the parade, had come out in protest when the parade organisers decided to bypass Times Square. They claimed this not only took away from the parade’s historical significance but also robbed them of a much-awaited and hefty payday.

While not always used with the immediacy of protest icons, cartoon and comic book characters have often emerged as iconic signifiers with larger, more longstanding political movements.

George Herriman’s Krazy Kat character, for instance, was brought back by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists in the late 2010s as a symbol for celebrating Black queerness within the larger BLM movement. Krazy Kat was conceived by Herriman in 1913 as a black gender-nonconformist cat, whose antics often presented a sharp critique of race relations in antebellum USA.

Similarly, Superman’s alter ego is often hailed as a champion of Jew’s rights in the US, while Archies was briefly employed in Minnesota Church reforms.

In the UK, Alan Moore’s magnum opus, V for Vendetta, repurposes Guy Fawkes's mask as a symbol of anarchy and protests. However, with the popularity of the graphic novel, the mask is now more popular as an icon of anarchy, anti-fascist ideologies, and various strains of far-left protest movements, including the global hacktivist group “Anonymous”.