In my opinion, comics can definitely be considered inherently sexist. When comic books were first created, the genres that were used were targeted more to the male population. These genres include superheroes, crime, and horror. These donāt normally attract the female population. Along with the genres, many of the main characters in comic books are male. However, I donāt think that the creators did this because they were sexist. I think that the reason for this could be a result of the time period that many comics were created in. During the 1930ās to 1950ās, women werenāt normally the targeted audience that many mediums pointed their stories to. Most of them (mainly comic books) were created for the male population. Although, this could be argued because of the creation of the first popular superhero character, Wonder Woman. Many may say that her creation showed that comics werenāt sexist, but even she was originally created for men. Wonder woman didnāt become a symbol for feminist movement until years later. Her stories also portrayed her as very muscular with the ability to seduce men to get her way. The creators couldnāt even allow her to marry in fear that if she did, she would have to become a housewife, give up her powers and lose her thrill as a superhero. This shows that though creators may not have intended it to be so, comics have always been inherently sexist.
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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