Comics becoming “darker” during the 1980’s, I think had to do a lot with the time period. During the 80’s drugs and violence began to rise tremendously. Cocaine became a popular among celebrities and the wealthy and crack cocaine took over the inner cities making and created drug wars. The drug problem became the Reagan Administration launched the war on drugs in order to put a stop to the up rise of drug use. The comic book creators knew the people reading these comics were using drugs and the dark style of comics appealed to these people. The writers were also using these drugs and put them in a state of mind were dark and violent comics is what they wanted to write. The comic book industry also had a hard time attracting new readers. Most of the readers were older and have read comics since they were a kid. The writers need to make comics that appealed to a more mature audience and would keep their attention. The artwork in the comics also changed, the comics in the 1980’s and a more graphic and terrifying. The 1980’s overall created a new style for comic books.
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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