Skip to main content

Were comics at the forefront of social transformation or laggging behind in the 1960's?

Comic books in the 1960’s were certainly at the forefront of social transformation. Comics in the 60’s used many topics and events that were around during that time period. They used currents events in their stories to keep their readers interested and active in reading their comics. The cold war and Vietnam War were common topic written about in comics during the 60’s. These common topics kept comic book in completion with the television and radio which had taken over the media outlet. Another thing comic book writers did to keep comics progressing going was to recreate some of the comic book characters. The writers made the characters more realistic and humanized and seem like an average person when he not fighting crime, this allowed readers to better connect with the characters and understand them. Spider man was a one of the bigger characters that was recreated. He was Made into and nerdy college kid with an average life who gained powers after he was bitten by a radioactive spider. At first he didn’t try and stop crime, but tried to use his power for personal gain like any average person would do. Only when tragedy strikes does he realize he needs to use his power for the safety of the people. Many stories were revamped on this sort of manner. With the new themes and characters I think comic books were towards the top of social transformation. 

Comments

Post a Comment

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.
2 comments
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more

The 1950s are often portrayed as a period of social cohesion. Why is this misleading?

When we think of the 1950's, most people think of similar things such as "Leave it to Beaver", very conservative and cliched pop music, and high patriotism. Our view of that time is one of social conformity to conservative values, with a traditional nuclear family where the father worked and the mother stayed home, where a majority of people attended church, where crime was relatively low, where a majority of American citizens were extremely patriotic, and where entertainment media emphasized these same conservative values and were subjected to censorship if they did not conform. This is misleading because while these things were all true to a certain extent, the world was obviously not perfect and not everyone was conforming or upholding traditional values, even if it seemed like they were. The 1950's were actually a very tumultuous time period, with the end of World War II leaving Europe war torn and in debt, the outbreak of the Korean War and the clashes of opinion...
1 comment
Read more