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Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR® Masters Theses & Specialist Projects Graduate School 8-2014 Where Was the Outrage? The Lack of Public Concern for the Increasing Sensationalism in Marvel Comics in a Conservative Era 1978-1993 Robert Joshua Howard Western Kentucky University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Howard, Robert Joshua, "Where Was the Outrage? The Lack of Public Concern for the Increasing Sensationalism in Marvel Comics in a Conservative Era 1978-1993" (2014). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 1406. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1406 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses & Specialist Projects by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WHERE WAS THE OUTRAGE? THE LACK OF PUBLIC CONCERN FOR THE INCREASING SENSATIONALISM IN MARVEL COMICS IN A CONSERVATIVE ERA 1978-1993 A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History Western Kentucky University Bowling Green, Kentucky In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts By Robert Joshua Howard August 2014 I dedicate this thesis to my wife, Marissa Lynn Howard, who has always been extremely supportive of my pursuits. A wife who chooses to spend our honeymoon fund on a trip to Wyoming, to sit in a stuffy library reading fan mail, all while entertaining two dogs is special indeed. ACKNOWLEGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank the staff at Western Kentucky University. Dr. Anthony Harkins spent a great deal of effort into helping me perfect my thesis and now has far more knowledge of comic books than he will ever need or most likely want. Dr. Carol Crowe Carraco must be acknowledged for the levity she brings to academia and also for lending moral support on the project. Dr. Jack Thacker has also made himself readily available for questions and has made several suggestions that have made this a better thesis. I would also like to thank several academics and comic book professionals that I have met on the comic listserv. Danny Fingeroth worked at Marvel Comics for several years and has been extremely supportive giving his free time to answer several of the questions I had while writing this thesis. Charlie Boatner of the International Guide to Comics shared several sources with me as well. Finally, I would like to thank the University of Wyoming and Stan Lee for making the decades of fan letters, manuscripts, and interviews available to the public. iv CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter 1: Comic Books a Source of Juvenile Delinquency in the United States?: 1930- 1954 ……………………………………………………………………………………… 8 Chapter 2: “We would have to kill off Aunt May, or have Spider become a homosexual…”: The Rising Sensationalism in Comic Books, 1978-1993 ………….… 34 Chapter 3: Careful of Creating Caricatures: Marvel’s Increasing Emphasis on Racial Equality, 1978-1993 ……………………………………………………………………. 65 Chapter 4: Invisible Women: To be Seen and Not Heard; Marvel’s Approach to Female Characters, 1978-1993 ……………………………………………………………….... 94 Conclusion: Do Comic Books have a Future?, 1993-Present ……………………….... 137 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………...152 v WHERE WAS THE OUTRAGE? THE LACK OF PUBLIC CONCERN FOR THE INCREASING SENSATIONALISM IN MARVEL COMICS IN A CONSERVATIVE ERA 1978-1993 Robert Joshua Howard August 2014 159 Pages Directed by: Anthony Harkins, Carol Crowe Carraco, and Jack Thacker Department of History Western Kentucky University This thesis explains the connection between comics and public reactions in two separate eras of conservatism. Comic books were targeted by critics in the 1950s because their content challenged conservative norms. In 1954, a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on Juvenile Delinquency tried to determine if comic books were having a harmful impact on children. The senators were concerned that comic books objectified women, taught children to engage in violence, promoted bigotry, and perhaps even encouraged homosexuality. The concerns caused outrage that was encouraged by the press. As a result, comic books adopted a form of self-censorship through the Comic Code Authority. The censorship combined with challenges from other media collapsed the comic book market until the next decade. Between 1978 through 1993, the United States entered a second period of conservatism. During this period, comic books reflected far more sensational content than that which had caused the public to react so strongly in 1954. And yet this time, there was almost no public outrage directed at comics. The purpose of this study is to find out why sensational content did not result in the same degree of public outrage that had occurred in 1954. This thesis starts with an overview of the controversies about comics in the 1950s era. Then, in the remainder of the thesis, comic books produced between 1978 and 1993 by the most popular mainstream comic book company, Marvel Comics, focusing on Daredevil, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Ghost vi Rider, and the X-Men. The thesis also draws extensively on fan mail from the Stan Lee Archives in Laramie, Wyoming, and in the comic books themselves. Comparing comic books and the period’s changing media landscape, I show that comic books were deemed subversive and a source of scandalously sensational material out of step with much popular culture in the 1950s, but blended so well into the media landscape of the 1970s and 80s that they were safe from public outrage. Therefore, even though comic books became more violent and engaged in escalating levels of sexual objectification of female characters, fans approved of the new tone. vii Introduction Comic books trace their origin to the comic strips found in newspapers in the early 20th century. Max Gaines and Harry Wildenberg, both of whom are credited with producing the first real comic books and being instrumental in the creation of some of the first superheroes, discovered in 1933 that by manipulating the plates used for the Sunday comics, they could create a cheap magazine which they could fill with archived comic strips thereby giving comic books their standard size.1 The comic books created by Gaines and Wildenberg were supposed to be a short-lived advertising gimmick, but they became a sensation. The cheap price and small shelf space made them a hit with both consumers and distributers. Further, since the funny pages had already been published by newspapers, there was no perceived need for oversight. The medium continued to mature in the 1940s. As comic books became more established, publishers produced original, less censored content. However, the lack of censorship led to problems. Since they came from comic strips, it was easy for critics, who saw comic strips as a form of low culture, to apply the same criticism to comic books. These critics derided the comic book and argued their sole purpose was to entertain the masses rather than elevating its status. Comic books survived these early skirmishes, however, due in large part to World War II. During World War II, comic books promoted American patriotism by serving as propaganda for the war effort. The government immediately saw the potential of comic books. For example, the Office of War Information (OWI) created a media division devoted to creating cartoons and comic books that allowed it to carry its message directly 1 Bradford Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 3. 1 to the people through comic books. The OWI was only one of several government entities that saw the propagandistic potential of comic books. Before the end of World War II, the Department of Treasury, the Federal Security Agency, and the military had all produced comic books.2 Thus, the U.S. government in large part helped to legitimize comic books during World War II.3 The Second World War was also an enormous opportunity for public comic book companies as well. Several comic book artists and writers got their start in the Army. In keeping with the war effort, mainstream comic book companies produced content dripping with nationalism. For instance, the first edition of Captain America, produced by what is now known as Marvel Comics, shows the title character belting Adolf Hitler across the room. This may explain the incredible popularity comic books enjoyed at home and abroad. For example in 1942, 15 million comic books were sold each month, and by 1943, sales had climbed to 25 million copies.4 But these sales figures did not last long. Returning GIs weary of war resented patriotic content forced upon them, and many GIs did not embrace comic books when they returned to the United States at the end of the war. The market for comic books was saturated since veterans no longer seemed interested in buying comic books. For example, Captain Marvel Adventures only sold at half the rate in 1949 that it did during the war.5 At the same time, many comic book artists and writers were now unemployed. As a result, the comic book industry had a 2 Richard Graham, Government Issue: Comics for the People, 1940s-2000s (New York: Abrams Comicarts, 2011), 16. 3 It should be noted that the Army’s test of core knowledge focused on mathematical reasoning before the end of World War II; however, afterward troops were given tests that included only a measurement of their literacy. Thus, comic books served an important function in the World War II era since many of the troops were most likely less proficient at reading than post-World War II Americans would be; Thomas G. Sticht and William B. Armstrong, Adult Literacy in the United States: A Compendium of Quantitative Data and Interpretive Comments.