Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Senior Theses and Projects Student Scholarship Spring 2013 The Avengers: How Superhero Comics Preserve Ruling Class Ideology Wendy Huang Trinity College, Hartford Connecticut,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Huang, Wendy, "The Avengers: How Superhero Comics Preserve Ruling Class Ideology". Senior Theses, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 2013. Trinity College Digital Repository, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses/618 The Avengers: How Superhero Comics Preserve Ruling Class Ideology Senior Thesis Submitted to: Professor Johnny E. Williams May 1, 2013 By Wendy Huang 0 Table of Contents Introduction Page 3 Chapter 1: Page 5 Ideology in Media Chapter 2: Page 11 Superhero Comics Chapter 3: Page 21 Linking Superhero Comics to Ruling Class Ideology Chapter 4: Page 26 Data Analysis Conclusion Page 41 Comic Book References & Works Cited Page 44 Appendix Page 47 1 Acknowledgement I would like to thank Professor Johnny Williams for his guidance, patience, and the sociological imagination he helped me develop throughout my four years at Trinity. Without his direction and the immense amount of knowledge I gained from his teachings, this project would not have been possible. 2 Introduction Most conversations today in regards to media primarily involve films and television shows. This is reflected in the comic book market toward the end of the twentieth century; the decline of sales resulted in the decreased number of comic bookstores around the United States and Canada (Bongco 2000). This decline is attributed in part to the growth of television and film industries which have made comic books less popular and appealing as a form of entertainment.