Comic Books Exploring Important Social and Historical Issues

As I continue to learn about the history of comic books, I'm becoming more and more aware of how comic books have been used to deal with social and historical issues. For instance, in his book "From Krakow to Krypton" Arie Kaplan discusses Superman "as social crusader" (85). He notes the comment by George Reeves about the Superman TV show in the 1950s that "We even try, in our scripts, to give gentle messages of tolerance and to stress that a man's color and race and religious beliefs should be respected" (85). I was surprised to read this, simply because I don't generally think of 1950s America as a time of tolerance. This was before the Civil Rights movement and before ideas about general diversity were widely received. I did notice in his comment that he refers to tolerance for " a man's" race and beliefs, not including women. While not probably intentional it was interesting to me because it reflects a time of male privilege in America - he says nothing about women and doesn't use a term like "human's" or "person's." However, his comment does reveal an emphasis on tolerance in a time when tolerance for other beliefs and equality for people of different backgrounds, racial or otherwise, was not widely considered.

Another issue that comic books tackle is the Holocaust. I was really surprised to learn about this. The X-Men villain Magneto is a Holocaust survivor. Another X-Men character, Kitty Pryde, is the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. This information about these characters came out in the 1970s, which was a time in which Americans began to be more conscious of the Holocaust. I found it fascinating that comic books dealt with issues of tolerance in the 1950s and Holocaust memory in the 1970s. Frankly, I never thought of comic books as discussing important issues until I started this course.