"The Super Heroes"
1930's
It was the late end of the depression and things were pretty bad. The new deal was doing it best to help people and tried to reduce crime, which was at an all-time high. It was at this time that comic books made their debut at the time it was old newspaper comics resold, but new material had to be made.
June 1938
Superman made his debut in Action Comics #1. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster, the two had tried to get the idea into newspaper comics. But sadly they were rejected by every company they went to. Then they got a job at a new comic book publishing company, where they could use this character in a few stories. What made superman unique was that he lived in the same world as his readers, he had superpowers and with his creation the Superhero genre was born and so was DC comics.
May 1939
Batman made his debut in Detective Comics #27. Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, with the popularity of Superman DC decide to create a second hero as to compete with Superman. What made them different other than their appearance was that Superman fought for a liberal social agenda, but Batman just fought crime. At the time Batman was seen as feared creators of the night
1940's
With the fear of war looming over the horizon, the people had to do a lot to prepare for the coming war with the Axis powers. The Superheroes went from a select few over a dozen and rising, Superheroes started fighting the Axis powers before the U.S. government. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor we were at war and so were the superheroes. This would be known as the golden age of Comics for comics sales were thru the roof.
March 1941
Captain America made his debut in Captain America #1. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Captain America was a superhero who wore the colors of the American flag as his costume. As you see in the picture with him giving the right hook to Hitler, that picture was gave Marvel Comics hell they got hate mail from Nazi sympathizer and isolations. Now Captain America was the third well known superhero at marvel with other hero's with the submariner and the first human torch who was an android who fight crime.
December 1941
Wonder Woman made her debut in All Stars Comics #8. Created by Dr. William Molten Marston, before wonder woman there were no female superheroes. DC comics decide that they needed a female superhero to help reach an appeal with girls. Wonder Woman also had appeal with boys as well; she was not just powerful she was also beautiful. After the birth of Wonder Woman, other female superheroes were made which would bring a positive change in the indistrey.
1950's
After the 1940's many superheroes had faded into obscurity and their books were canceled except Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The peoples taste were changing a new comic genre were created like westerns, teen romance, crime, horror and war stories. But some of these stores would get the industry in trouble with government. It would mostly come from EC comics. With the raise of juvenile deliquesce in the 1950's Dr. Fredrick Wertham went to a detection center and ask what the children were reading and it turns out they were reading comic books.
April 1950
When William M. Gaines took over his father's comic book publishing company Entertaining Comics. He would set a new trend with comic's books with crime, war, and what they were most famous for were Horror comics. EC comic's horror and crime stories were well drawn and had great story telling to them and people were hooked on them. Some of the stories were also very political which has been in comics since the 1930's but these brought a new message to the readers.
1954
In 1953 the "seduction of the innocent" was a book written by Dr. Fredrick Wertham. In the book he challenged the comic book industry, with the statements about superman being a sanest, that Batman and Robin were gay and that Wonder Woman didn't act like girls were supposed to act. But what he really went after were the crime and horror comics, the senate had committee meeting about the violence and gore in comic books. Out of fear of government censorship the industry decide to establish a self-censoring organization called the Comics Code Authority, where publishers had to send the scripts out in advance for approval. They made strict rules about what was supposed to be in comics and many writers and artist lost their jobs, EC comics almost went out of business, if they didn't have mad magazine to help them.
1960's
After the establishment of the Comics Code Authority, the times in America were changing in a new direction and the return of the superheroes which would be the being of the silver age of comics. DC though of the idea of science fiction updates of some of their once golden age heroes and introducing the idea of superhero teams like the justice league. But Marvel would shine very bright in the decade with new superheroes that were different from DC. At Marvel the people would push the limits of the Code with writers like Stan Lee and Artist like Jack Kirby.
August 1962
Spider-man made his debut in Amazing Fantasy #15. Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, at the time many comic book readers were teenagers and college students. So Stan Lee after the success of the fantastic four, he decided to create a superhero that could climb walls. Stan went thru a long list of names before he found Spider-man. He decided that he wanted him to be a teenager and to have problems. When he told his publisher about this he thought he was crazy. So his publisher decided to have his story be told in the last issue of a failing science fiction magazen, after that he became a hit and Stan Lee was allowed to make Spider-man into his own title, what was great about Spider-man was that even though Peter Parker(Spider-Man) life was a mess before he got superpowers and even after he got superpowers his life is still a mess.
Stan Lee would also create superheroes like the Hulk, the X-men, Nick Fury, Iron man, The Avengers, Daredevil and the Black Panther (the First Black Superhero) that is still in publication to this day.
1969
When DC editor Julius Schwartz decided to change the image of Batman from the image of the campy Adam West TV show, he put writer Denis O'Neil and artist Neil Adams to work on it. It would yelled great results, they brought back Batman's dark and scary image back. Where he was this Dark Avenger of the night, and the stories that were relevant to the time like Batman hunting a Nazi war criminal killing people of Jewish descend. This change and a few others to a variety of superheroes would movie the industry forward.
1970's
At this time was a time when the Comics book industry would experiences a new revolution. Where stories would be more relevant and the birth of the anti-heroes, and deal subjects like drugs, racism and other subjects, with the edition of social commentary to superheroes and a sense of realisms the revolution had begun.
1971
During the Nixon administration, the government wanted to address the issue of illegal-drug use. So one day at marvel Stan Lee had received a letter from the government that they wanted him to talk about the negative side of illegal-drug use. Stan didn't want to preach to people, he just wanted to tell it like something that happened in a story. Stan wrote this spider-man story where Spider-man fought the Green Goblin and in a side story an inner city kid is on a drug trip and thinks he can fly and spider-man saves him. What was also going on Harry (the Green Goblin's son) swallowed a large amount of pills and nearly overdoses. When Stan went the Comic code authority to get the seal of approval the organization rejected the idea, because the code said they couldn't talk about drugs. Stan's publisher decided that they were going to run the three issue story ark without the codes seal of approval. The comics were a big hit and the code was liberalized
1975
Chris Claremont would take over as the writer of the uncanny X-men, a Stan Lee and Jack Kirby creation. Chris brought some of the old team back like Cyclops, Iceman, Jean Grey and the Angle. There would also be a few new mutants like Wolverine, Night crawler, Coleuses and Strom. The X-men represented the idea of intolerance, if you were black or gay or being picked on people could identify with the X-Men. Claremont's run of the X-Men would lead to the popularly of the anti-hero Wolverine, Wolverine is famous for his attitude and his claws. That he was the type of person to taken to the bad guys and not be afraid to use the same force.
1980's
It was the Regan years with stuff like the economy and the rise of technology. With this new era comic books like the movies of the time would get a shot in the arm. It would introduce characters with a dark edge and violence that of the blockbusters of that time, and more adult message with these stores of sex and love.
[Return to Home Page]