During the 1950’s the comic book industry in America was a bit misguided and lost. There was no longer a fraternal bond between comic book writers, there was now a competition between them to be the best writer out there. Comic book editors were trying to come up with new ways to draw their readers in during a post war era that lacked potential villains for superheroes to fight. Comic books began to become graphic and violent. With many kids being free to roam the neighborhood and do what they please until dinner time these comic books were considered to be a bad influence on children. The gruesome images that were depicted in the comic books came under fire when children were caught doing things that are “not socially acceptable.” During this time however it is not fair to blame comic books for this violence. Teens and young children were misguided due to a lack of parental support. In many middle class American families there was no cohesion. The families worked more as a machine than a family. The mother would cook, clean and prepare dinner while the father was at work. The children would go to school then spend their afternoons with friends in the neighborhood being forced to amuse themselves with whatever they could find. When the father would come home it would be time for dinner and after that everyone would go their separate ways again. This is not an example of a cohesive family, but a family who is acting like their entire lives are simply jobs. This lack of guidance and support is what the teenage violence can be blamed on, not the graphic nature of comic books. Although I believe the comic books may not have been suitable for all ages, I do not believe they should have been controlled as much as they were by the comic code. They should have created some sort of rating scale like they use today in video games. This would have allowed comic book creators to still be as creative as they want while keeping more graphic comic books out of the hands of young children.
Ohhh my goodness... When I decided on trying to analyze the mythological origins and references in superhero comics, I had no idea the can of worms I was opening up... On the one hand, it was awesome to see just how many connections there were between superheroes and psychology/mythology/philosophy, but all the information also made it terribly difficult to distinguish what I should be using and how to tie it all together. When I was talking to one of my sorority sisters about it she said, "Oh yeah, well, research essays are kind of like putting together puzzles..." and I think that really sums up what writing this paper was like for me. Fortunately, I was really interested throughout the whole process and I very much enjoyed writing the paper. Being a psychology major, I was especially interested in reading about the Jungian archetypes that had a lot of parallels with major modern comic books superheroes. I was also able to incorporate Joseph Campbell's "hero cycle...
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