To a lot of people comics come off at a big sexist industry, in my opinion I think they are inadvertently sexist. I think a lot of the writing and male domination in the industry had a lot to do with the time period in which the comic was written. In the 1930’s into the late 1940’s when comics were in their golden age, women didn’t have a big role in society. They started to work jobs during the war, but after the war their jobs were given to returning service men and the women returned to take care of the house and kids. This transferred to the comics, the writers wrote about current times and events and women had no significant role or power during this time. There were no dominant women roles in comics until Wonder Women was created. The man who created Wonder Women, William Marston, was a psychologist who had strong feelings towards feminism, he thought women were equal to men and even better fit than them in certain positions. Without Marston it could have taken years before a woman was given a leading role in a comic book. As time progressed more and more women were seen in comics and given more important roles. I think comic book writers knew what readers wanted to see and read and they molded their stories around that. They made stories with characters that would sell comics and those characters happen to be men. Yes I think comics are sexist but the writers did and will continue to make comics that are popular and sell, and weather that is with male or female characters is up to the consumer.
Why blame comics for societal failure? Society blamed comics for the societal failures because it was a fairly new industry, and as things seemed to go “wrong” they figured it must be comic books. When a child grew up during the war, his father was probably killing people and the military and his mother was probably making things in factories to help kill the opposition. The only things kids had to “babysit” them was comic books, and they read many different kinds. So when kids starting acting differently in this new generation the figured it must be the comic books. Society didn’t want to believe it may have been the internal and external scars war causes on the soldiers and their families. Also the fact that young unattended children are reading these comics may not be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. When society fails it always needs a scapegoat then it was comic books next it was rock and roll. Society naturally resist change.
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