Skip to main content

In terms of race, do comics offer stereotypes?

Since the beginning of comics, the industry has as a genre not been very diverse in terms of race and ethnicity. Even in the crowds and background of comics the characters were all white, so the chance portray racial stereotypes wasn’t there. Comics began introducing different races slowly starting with having them in the background, and then they began including them as sidekicks. After they were included as sidekicks, there was in 1965, published by Dell Comics, the first black main character of a comic book in Lobo. Although this was a western hero story and only lasted 2 issues, this was significant because of what this said about black characters. The industry could tell by the amount of issues that it lasted that the readers of this time weren’t ready or interested in black characters as a leading role in comics. Taking this into account Marvel Comics decided to introduce a character that they had tried several variations of several times in the past, The New Black Panther. But instead of jumping to give Black Panther his own comic book they put him in a supporting role in Fantastic Four #52 in 1966. But the interesting thing about Black Panther is that his black costume covered his entire body, leaving no skin revealed. Another interesting choice that Marvel made with this character was making him from Africa instead of American. Then after this Marvel introduced another supporting character in 1969 in the Captain America #117, Falcon. Finally in 1972 Marvel Comics introduced the first black superhero with his own series, Luke Cage in Hero For Hire #1. With this character came the stereotype of black people being angry in the 1970s this can be seen by just looking at the cover of the first issue where he is standing in a sort of crouched stance with his fists balled and gritting his teeth.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why blame comics for societal failure?

Why blame comics for societal failure? Society blamed comics for the societal failures because it was a fairly new industry, and as things seemed to go “wrong” they figured it must be comic books. When a child grew up during the war, his father was probably killing people and the military and his mother was probably making things in factories to help kill the opposition. The only things kids had to “babysit” them was comic books, and they read many different kinds. So when kids starting acting differently in this new generation the figured it must be the comic books. Society didn’t want to believe it may have been the internal and external scars war causes on the soldiers and their families. Also the fact that young unattended children are reading these comics may not be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. When society fails it always needs a scapegoat then it was comic books next it was rock and roll. Society naturally resist change.

Mythology and Superheroes in Comics

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...

The 1950s Are Often Portrayed As A Period of Social Cohesion...

People didn’t set the standards; the standards were set for you. The 1950s were not a time of social cohesion but it was misleading because it was a time of “don’t air your dirty laundry.” Women were to act perfect; the “Stepford wife” if you will, while the men went to work like “Don Draper.” Although the comic codes were in full fruition, people found ways to cause a raucous. Comic books were the reason that children were acting violently. Comic books are a media outlet and they didn’t have to follow the conservative nature that the decade seemed to promote. One of the most popular selling genres of that time was the Romance comics. The romance comics not only attracted male readers, but female readers as well. This, alone, can be alarming for the “social cohesion” of the 50s because men expected their wives to be at home all day cooking, cleaning, caring for the children, etc. They didn’t want their wives spending any additional time reading comic books. Perhaps the comic co...