During the late 1960's, the main event or social issue that was taking place and was the topic of everyday life in America was the war in Vietnam. Because the war was so heavily opposed, people rioting and protesting were common in city streets and collge campuses. This sparked a whole new era in America, and like with everything else, the comic book industry followed. Because peace was so closely related with drugs and the "hippy" movement in this era, comics started incorporating this into their stories, however vague or underlying the message was. Because of this new drug wave that swept the country, comic book stories like the Amazing Spider Man series started incorporating drug messages in their plots. For example, we see Peter Parker experience his friends being exposed to drugs because of a girl conflict. it was suddle messages like these, among other cultural trends, that were so relevant to American culuture in the late 1960's that the comic book industry started to incorporate into their stories.
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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