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Were comics at the forefront of social transformation or lagging behind in the 1960’s?

In my opinion, comics were in the forefront of social transformation in the 1960’s. All of the comics dealt with some issue or concern of the time. In the 1960’s, the country was going through a lot. Social reformations were happening as well as the Vietnam War. Many protests were happening for both the social aspect and the war. A good example of protests coming up in comics would be Stan Lee’s “Spider-man”. Protests and picket marches were common to see during Spider-man’s struggles. Also in comics we saw a lot of the Vietnam War taking place. The comics were short and sweet but told the story of soldiers in Vietnam. One in particular started off with a kid reading a poster and enlisting. He regretted joining until he realized how bad the Vietcong were. He agreed that the communists needed to be stopped and realized that the people back home were wrong. America needed to be in this war or else communism would take over. This was mostly propaganda that was used to change the publics view on the war and it worked to some extent.

Another way of how comics were in the forefront would be America fearing the Russians. An example of this in comics would be the Fantastic Four. In one comic, they were trying to beat the Russians to the moon to prove how powerful America was. It went wrong and they crash landed and obtained their powers. They were trying to beat the Russians because of the fear of communism. Americans feared communists because they thought the practice of communism was going to take over. People were terrified and it showed in the comics. Comic books were certainly going along with the social transformation during the 1960’s.

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