Argi Sayari

History 579

Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America

Bradford W. Wright. John Hopkins University Press, 2001

Bradford Wright’s Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America systematically analyzes the history of comic books as it pertains to American culture. Using comic books as a primary source, Wright offers substantial evidence to help illustrate how comic books continually reflected the national mood. Since its inception in the 1930’s, many mainstream cultural and often politically driven themes developed depicting the times. Superheroes were regularly caught in stories that infiltrated the daily lives of their audience including crime and corruption pervasive of the depression era, battling Nazi’s in World War II, Cold War paranoia, and teenage angst that followed amongst draft dodgers of the Vietnam War and heavy experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. In addition, comic books faced and endured accusations of promoting delinquent and subversive behavior endangering the moral fiber of American youth. And most importantly, Wright explains, “To critically examine the history of comic books is to better understand the changing world of young people as well as the historical forces intersecting to shape it” (p. xiii).

Wright traces the emergence of comic book success to the 1930’s with the creation of Superman. He argues,

Postindustrial American society raised new tensions. Whereas heroes

of the previous centuries, like Daniel Boone, Natty Bumpo, and Wyatt

Earp, could conquer and tame the savage American frontier, twentieth-

century America demanded a superhero who could resolve the tensions

of individuals in an increasingly urban, consumer-driven, and

anonymous mass society.

The Great Depression created a distance between the American dream and reality. To fill that gap from depression-era popular culture came a new found, passionate celebration of the common man. Enter Superman. He not only helped affirm young, alienated, dispossessed “Clark Kent’s” of society in their desire to remain in the background, but was cast as a champion of the oppressed devoted to helping those in need from real life problems (p.11). In a time of hopelessness Superman appeared as a progressive super-reformer. In one tale he crusades for automobile safety (a la Ralph Nader, thirty years before) destroying a car factory after finding that the owner has been using cheaper material to make higher profits at the cost of American lives (p.12). These stories contributed to Superman and consequently comic book success because it offered the reader an escape and an underlying sense that righteousness will again one-day prevail in a cynical society.

Through an extensive reading of surviving comics from the 1930’s to today, Wright masterfully shows how they closely followed, and even presaged, major trends. During the depression (mentioned above) Superman fought corporate greed. World war II was no exception as references appeared early like Will Eisner’s ‘Espionage’ published in Smash Comics as the first comic book series to focus on the war in Europe (p.39). In 1940, a super-hero known as the Sub-Mariner “pledges to aid the Allies in their struggle against the Germans in the Atlantic” (p.40). And who could forget the nation’s super-soldier Captain America donning “the recognizable red, white, and blue costume, his shield of stars and stripes, and his patriotic bravado as he slugs Adolf Hitler on the cover of his first comic book a year before the United States declared war on the Axis” (p.32). Publishers also sought to boost their image by linking their product to patriotism and the war effort. Superman urged readers to give to the Red Cross and Batman asked boys and girls to buy stamps and war bonds (p.34).

Unlike the second “Great War,” the comic book industry was at odds with Communism and the Cold War. This in part had to do with the peculiar nature of the emerging conflict. There were too many questions. Was the U.S. at war or not? Is peaceful coexistence possible? What should the appropriate U.S. response be? To combat this uneasiness, comics took on a very ambivalent role to political events like the Korean War having failed to crystallize with Americans in comparison to fighting the “good war” against the Axis. Staggering sales of war and super-hero tales during this time meant a new approach was needed yielding to the creation of romance, science fiction, and horror comic books which gained much notoriety and even attracted many girls as comic consumers.

Comic books, however, were not always fine and dandy. Horror and crime comics, often lurid and grotesque even by today’s standards, soon were condemned by concerned parents, pundits, and politicians, who, with scant evidence, blamed the images for a rise in juvenile delinquency and a destructive demoralizing force in society. With Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954) and subsequent U.S. Senate hearings, comics briefly became the most vile mass medium. “Not even the communist conspiracy,” one senator declared, “could devise a more effective way to demoralize, disrupt, confuse, and destroy our future citizens” (p.172). The controversy subsided when the industry adopted a self-censorship code in 1956 and the debate over causes of delinquency transferred to movies, television, and rock music which had followed comics’ lead in targeting teens.

Throughout the next decade the comic book industry found itself in a recession largely restricting themselves to a pre-adolescent audience. As censorship slowly abated, Marvel Comics slowly resurged in the 60’s and 70’s with a commitment to addressing teenage angst with the creation of new super heroes like the Fantastic Four, Amazing Spiderman, Incredible Hulk, Silver Surfer, and the Uncanny X-men. These heroes were appealing to college students because they could relate to the Hulk as an “outcast against the institution” (p.223) and like Spiderman, Peter Parker had money issues and girl problems. Other heroes like Dr. Strange expressed darker characters in society dealing with alcoholism and engaging in sorcery, spells, and psychedelic artwork. Attention was again drawn to social issues and violent realism became popular by way of graphic novels in the 1980’s.

Wright does an excellent job in taking the reader through a comic book journey as it relates to American culture. He concludes that comics did not “fail to keep up with changes in American culture,” rather “American culture has finally caught up” with comics in its devotion to the perpetuation of adolescence. (p.284)