Finding artists and work that has accomplished this would probably be the first goal to get done I guess. It makes me think of katsuhiro Otomo.

I feel like more then any other comic or manga artist out there, he has managed to be the most somehow counter culture-y so it's really important to analyze his work I think.

I can't really think of many others. I think Marvel started out and tried to be sort of like what I described already, Marvel is more obviously "liberal" then DC, they have like Spiderman and Xmen who deal with themes like this.

But I feel like over the years, Marvel has become a lot more steeped in traditionalism in certain ways, also I feel Marvel is almost more directed at "geeks" and "nerds" (it's like their bred and butter")

Also Marvel replaced a lot of male characters with female characters and features LGBT characters and such too to be more liberal, which also (along with gore and the occult) another trapping or issue I would have to deal with, because that's almost what you would do if you are trying to cater to demographics like I mentioned (maybe)

But Katsuhiro Otomo is so good at that to me, but Steam Boy and Metropolis weren't that successful for some reason unlike Akira. Upon reading and having already watched the anime I came away thinking at some point recently, "wait a moment, all of Otomos work is pretty counter-culture-y" and i thought maybe I could bond with those types of people over it, yet Akira as an example, doesn't have a reputation or is associated with subcultures and counter culture all that much, like it's not something you see in Hot Topic as an example.

Some things that come to the top of my head when thinking of influences, Spiderman and Batman are both like the most popular and influential superheroes, I try to think of what makes Batman so popular and it's not just that Batman is dark, I think Batman has this really darkly romantic quality that appeals to people