Sunday, March 23, 2008

Wonder Woman Burning in USA

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, thousands of American kids discovered just how flammable comic books could be. Egged on by parents, teachers and such guardians of piety and patriotism as the Catholic Church and the American Legion, countless children (sometimes willingly, but often reluctantly) participated in schoolyard re-enactments of the Bonfire of the Vanities, setting aflame horror and crime comic books that allegedly had the power to corrupt their young innocence and transform them into juvenile delinquents
Comic books were born in the Depression-era United States as a tawdry, plebian offshoot of the more respectable Sunday funnies which ran in newspapers. Initially, comic books merely reprinted and imitated such established comic strip stars as Buck Rogers and the Katzenjammer Kids, but in the late 1930s, the medium was seized by a cohort of very young would-be cartoonists, often just teenagers who had no other prospect open to them. These cartoonists were a rag-tag collection of outsiders: Many were first- and second-generation immigrant Jews and Catholics; some were African-Americans; others artistically inclined young women who were hampered by sexism from working at ad agencies or newspapers. What united them was a Depression-fuelled desperation to turn their pulp-fiction-inspired dreams into bright, four-colour fantasies. Although they worked for fly-by-night publishers in sweatshop-like conditions, putting out garishly produced pamphlets that were sold for a dime to children, these pioneering cartoonists created a pantheon of heroes that would soon define U.S. culture: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Plastic Man and many others. It's a world that is superbly recreated in Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. (read more...)

1 comment:

    "Jews played pivotal roles in the golden age of comics, and can claim credit for the birth of numerous superheroes. Our David Kaufmann asks: “What, if anything, does it mean that the industry was so heavily populated by Jews?”