To call these works propaganda is to insist that any work with a point of view is propaganda, a word that has an unfortunate connotation and that is most often linked to governmental efforts to promote an agenda, perhaps through devious means, and perhaps not. Certainly, the Iron Man comics had a point of view and set forth the attitudes of their creator. In this sense they could be seen as propaganda. However, Lee is not the government and is only expressing his point of view in his literature just as would any other artist, and calling the books propaganda seems excessive. By this definition, any written, created, or performed work with a point of view would be identified as propaganda, and that would make the term meaningless.
The fact that the character is able to change his mind shows that his creator could do the same, and this also undercuts the idea that these books are propaganda and instead shows them to be the record of one man's development and also that of the country. Iron Man berates himself for the way he viewed the war in the 1960s: "What kind of man was I to keep designing weaponry for that kind of war?" (360). Tony Stark's reason for changing his mind relates directly to his support for the troops, belying the challenge of congressional hawks that not to support the war was also a denial of the worth of the men fighting the war. Lee sees opposing the war as supporting troops who are being wasted by a failed government policy.
The War in Vietnam was not a clear-cut conflict with easily understood goals and an easily identifiable enemy as had been the case in most earlier wars undertaken by the United States. In addition, it was not a war that the U.S. entered all at once, for instead the country was sucked into the conflict over a period of time. This made for a war with unclear motives and goals, for motives and goals were determined at each stage and changed with changed circumstances until it was...