Comic lovers: Please Help!!

[Yenling29]

Hello-

I am a Sociology major at UCSB, and trying to get some ideas for writing a large paper on something like, "Comics and how they relate to our society and culture."

Can you help me?

 

It has always interested me, how comics have almost paralleled, "our times." By this I mean, characters like, "The Red Skull" and "Captain America" were created during the war. I like the ask myself, "Why were they created and what was there aim at influencing the Youth of that time period."

 

I feel that when the X-men came out in 1963 they represented racial minorities in America. As I'm sure you know the X-men are mutants that were rejected and sometimes even feared from normal people. The time period in which this comic was release was around the time of civil rights movements for racial minorities.

 

I think the biggest question I am wondering is if comics are a very positive, kind of positive, or a negative influence on our society? Or which comics have been positive and which negative?

 

There are so many different comics that influence our society and culture, but when I first began thinking about the X-men, I really though, "For sure comics have had a very positive message for our culture and society, they teach to be accepting of racial minorities, don't do drugs, be patriotic, and much more."

 

But then I got to thinking, Why aren’t there more racial minorities as lead characters? The only one I could think of was Spawn, and that seems to have died out. Is our society not ready for this kind of lead character? And how do comics portray women? Most women in comics have abnormally miss sharpen bodies(you probably know what I mean). And how many women actually read comics?

 

*Does anyone have any links, articles or books they would recommend on this?

*I would love any feedback, or opinions.

Thanks so much sorry post is so long

[That Ron Dude]

This won'tbe too much help but the Comic's journal long ago did an article on the lack of quality of drug stories in comics. They discussed the Frank Miller/Roger McKenzie PCP story as being misinformed and unrealistic. I think the article was by Ted White but I am not sure. It was on the mark.

 

Marvel relevant stories back then, were always events, not part of life. "Let's be relavent this issue guys."

 

Writing is better now, but I have no idea how relevant the comics are.

 

Today comics seem to be a strange little media catering to very few people that have very little effect in themselves on anything except the film industry. I work in a small city about 20 miles outside of Toronto, with a population of 125,000. It has two comic stores, the second one opening only a few months ago. I teach high school. Most of my students have never held a comic book in their hands. The ones who have, have usually consumed them as graphic novels purchased in a large book store.

 

I think most of the lead characters today were developed forty years ago (or more!) when all the main media characters were white. I have always found it amusing that fine Jewish boys like Stanley Lieber and Jack Kurtzberg and Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster and Bob Kane (Kravitz, Kanofsky, Kanowitz? help me out here) created characters like Clark Kent, Reed Richards, Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, Lois Lane and other stereotypical Goyim. Harvey Kurtzman created Milton Koznofski and Alfred E. Neuman.