In some respects, the comics of the 1960s were spot-on with their storylines and themes in relating to their readers and growing their fanbase, but in others, they were still lagging behind. Marvel did a great job gaining new readers and expanding the popularity of comic books in this decade. They did this by making the storylines more relatable to the people who would be reading them. Superhero characters became more realistic and human. They struggled more often in this decade than they had in previous decades and dealt with subjects that are universally experienced by people in the real world. At the same time though, they did not fully adapt the stories to fit exactly what was going on in the real world at the time. This was going to have to change for the future if the comic book industry wanted to stay relevant and popular.
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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