In my opinion, anything that goes into the public media could and have a possibility of being forefront of social reform. Comics were somewhat forefront of the social reform in the 1960s. However, comics have clear differences compare to Television and other media. Although, comics deal with many social issues, and cultural problems they did not tell directly to the public. Mega comics company like Marvel comics talked about social issue, but their comics were consistent with what was going on during 1960's with their own way of provide messages to the public. Also, they focus on creativity and the storytelling other than social issues and other problems in the society. There were some comics deal with real world problems at that time. For example; fantastic four was one of the great comic that was dealing and talking about real world problems. Comics at that time were nearly similar, because comic industries were getting their idea from each other, they shared and received ideas from each others. Comics in 1960's also deal with reality verses fantasy. When you look at some of the characters that time you can easily say that comics loved to talk about escaping from the reality. Such as Spider man is just average guy who works at the company, and when he turns into the Spider man he loves being Spiderman and sometime he feels downside, but still he feels great thrill while he is being Spider man. Therefore, comics is mix between reality and fantasy. However, I would not say that comics did not had any effect on social transformation, but they were more of a reflection of social transformation.
A blog for and about the intersection of comic books and American history.
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