Introductions

I grew up reading comic books in the 1960s. It was the height of the Silver Age but that was lost on me. At the time, I had no idea that comic books were an accidental art form, the results of a slow evolution and the accumulation of many little changes that eventually became the standard way to tell a story visually with sequential art and text.

In this blog, I will be exploring how comic books evolved and then developed over time, looking at the characters in these books with a focus on superheroes because it is these characters that reflect our culture. They are a modern mythology for us to express our rage (the Hulk), our patriotism (Captain America) or our sense of being different (X-Men).

Comic books in the early years were awash with a mix of material: comic strip reprints, non-costumed detectives, spies, counterspies, and science-fiction tales set in the far future. Most of these have fallen away and return from time-to-time, while superheroes have remained and exploded more than ever since the mid-1980s. Since the birth of the Internet and the ability to publish digitally and directly to readers, the medium has transformed again and now boasts many types of the stories that reflect the audience that reads it. But superheroes remains the bulk of the stories told in this fashion. For this reason, I shall follow the evolution of the characters in comic books and explore the impact of the most lasting of heroes.

Comic books can trace their roots back to ancient mythologies of Egypt, Greece, Japan, and Mesoamerica. These tales reflect adventures of gods and heroes, much like the one we find in comics.

Eventually these tales disappeared as the Judeo-Christian religions swept across the world and were replaced with fairy tales. Gone are the gods and heroes in place of one-use characters and stories with a moral or purpose. Eventually recurring adventures of a single character return with the rise of detective stories in the 19th century. Next, pulp characters appear giving us a rich mythology of adventure once more.

Comic books borrowed from that rich tradition and expanded it until now these characters are engrained in our culture, our vocabulary, and our thinking.