The link between American comics and superheroes

This is something that has been puzzling me for a while. Reading This Very Wiki (and other sites written mostly by and for Americans), I get the impression that Comic Books are mystically linked to Super Heroes in some way, and vice versa.

Now, I'm specifying "American" in the thread title because as far as I know, the association doesn't exist on this side of the pond. Like so many children, I grew up reading a lot of comics, and none of those had superheroes in them. There was the Donald Duck, a hugely popular weekly magazine filled with the adventures of Donald and several other Disney characters (and its monthly counterpart, the Donald Duck Extra, which had fewer but longer stories). There was the odd Suske En Wiske album. But most importantly, there was my dad's old collection of Franco-Belgian Comics (translated into Dutch). I devoured Asterix after Asterix, Barbe Rouge after Barbe Rouge, Gaston Lagaffe after Gaston Lagaffe.

Were there any superheroes in my emerging cultural consciousness at all? There were, but they were rather vague, and they were definitely not linked to comic books in any way. I was aware of Batman and Spider-Man, but I saw them primarily as film characters, and quite recent ones at that. (I also thought that the Pokémon animated series predated the Pokémon games, and that The Phantom Menace was the first Star Wars film ever released). As for Superman, my idea of him was even more vague: for a long time, I thought that he wasn't a character in any specific work at all, but rather a general symbol of the Super Hero cliché.

Clearly, the association of Comic Books with Super Heroes, and vice versa, isn't as natural as some of you might think. So, does anyone have an idea where it came from, and why it has prevailed so strongly?

edited 25th Aug '12 8:10:07 AM by MidnightRambler

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

Characters like Spider-Man and Superman are associated with comic books because that is the medium from which they originate and which they appear most frequently. They've been part of popular culture for decades

It's generally easy to find out if a film is an adaption or sequel to another work. Many people may have had no idea what Iron Man was before the film came out. However the press surrounding it's release announced it was a comic book adaption. Remakes occasionally try to avoid comparisons to the original film but it's easy to look it up online.

Superheroe as a genre is associated with comic books in America because it's been the most sucsessful one. There are multiple reasons for this, many of them cultural, but one of the most important is that the genre is best suited to that paticular medium and can highlight If you want to experience the best Superhero fiction you should read certain comic books. If you want to read the best American style Zombie fiction you need to watch certain films, not read comic books.

Other genres also work well in the medium but for the most part have been unable to infiltrate pop culture in the same way.

Am I a good man or a bad man?

You thought The Phantom Menace was the first Star Wars? How young are you?

As to your question, it goes back to 1954. In the 40s and 50s, superheroes existed, but were seen as merely a rather childish segment of action-adventure comics. The most popular comics in America at the time were actually funny animal series, followed by horror comics, with westerns coming in third. Crime comics were beginning to gain in popularity. Superheroes were way down, and had been in a decline since shortly after World War II ended.

At the time, every kid in America read comics. While there was a code of conduct for comic publishers, based on that applied to the cinema industry, but it was hardly enforced.

There were also concerns about increasing juvenile delinquency, and people were looking for a cause.

Into this milieu came Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who had done extensive work with delinquents. He noticed that all the kids he treated read comics; therefore, using the kind of logic that connects the eating of bread to serious crime, he concluded that comics turned kids against society, and argues as such in his best-selling book Seduction of the Innocent.

This caused uproar against comics, and in turn led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority in the same year to police comics. Since actually banning comic companies from printing anything would have violated the First Amendment, the Authority sought to exploit America's capitalist nature in its goals.

The Authority drew up a set of guidelines for comics. Among these were an enforcement of Black-and-White Morality, the requirement that good always triumph over evil, mandatory respect for authority figures such as teachers and policement, and bans on sexually suggestive or explicit material, graphic violence, death, any portrayal of drugs (even highly negative). It is often said that the Code forbade characters named Clint or the use of the word flick in case the ink ran and the world looked like cunt or fuck; this is not true, but writers often avoided those words anyway just to be on the safe side. A comic that passed these requirements was allowed to display an Approved by the Comics Code Authority◊ label on the cover.

Publishers were entirely free to try and put out controversial material, but newsagents*

would generally refuse to stock anything that did not conform to the Code's rules. As a result, those that trafficked in salacious comics simply went out of business.

This obliterated horror and crime comics. Westerns limped on for a bit, but in the end the Code made them just not very interesting.

Superheroes, on the other hand, were very easy to retool into family-friendly, conservative, fun action. The result was a boom for a genre that until then had been failing badly, as kids who wanted action and adventure in their comics had nowhere else to turn. Hence, superheroes went from being barely there to the second-best-selling genre in the medium. (Funny animals, naturally, were already compatible with the Comics Code).

For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, funny animals in general declined in a big way in the late 60s and early 70s, and funny animal comics were no exception. That just left superheroes. At around this time, the might of the Comics Code Authority started to weaken, and publishers were occasionally able to garner some attention by putting out the sort of material the Code banned. This resulted in a brand new rise in interest in comics, and since it's easier for an existing, popular comic to increase its market share than for a newcomer to gain an audience, the grip of Marvel and DC tightened, with all non-superhero genres falling by the wayside.

Most Americans reading comics today were born after 1975, meaning they grew up and developed their reading habits at a time and in an environment where all comics were about superheroes. Hence, the very idea of a non-superhero comic is an alien concept to many American readers.

(This, by the way, goes some way to explaining why British writers made such a huge splash in America in the 80s; since they came from an environment where superheroes were just one of many comic genres, the likes of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, and Grant Morrison had far fewer preconceptions of what a comic is and thus were a lot more willing to try new and interesting things).

Ukrainian Red Cross

"If you want to read the best American style Zombie fiction you need to watch certain films, not read comic books."

The Walking Dead would like to disagree with you. Manga has proven that almost any genre can be made entertaining in the comics, not just action. I guess you could count sports as action, though.

The Walking Dead proves my point. It's a tedious dirge that thinks it's being original. I never said that only action genres work in comics.

Am I a good man or a bad man?

Outside of Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead I can't think of any non-comedy zombie movies that work as well as The Walking Dead (28 Days/Weeks Later don't have zombies). It's actually the only American comic I read regularly. It has much better story-telling than for instance The Amazing Spider-Man: The Return of the Black Cat, which I'm currently reading. Some times it can a bit talky but that's how most American comics are.

Hmm, now that you mention it, that does make sense. Of course people would want to see Super Heroes use their awesome superpowers, so visual media work better than text; and since the special effects on films weren't all that good back then, comics were ideal.

I was born in 1993, so I'm 19 right now. I was six when The Phantom Menace came out. I saw it in the theatre.

I think I was justified, at the time, in thinking it was the first Star Wars release. Primo, I wasn't aware of the Star Wars franchise at all until I caught some of the media buzz leading up to the Phantom Menace release; secundo, everyone was calling it "Episode One"...

@Rest of that post: Thanks for the history lesson! This more than answers my question.

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

In America, comics are most closely linked to super-heroes because, prior to the super-hero's emergence, with Superman in 1938, comic books didn't have much of a specific identity, and didn't have any genres unique to the medium. Comics in the US began as simply reprints of comic strips, and then slowly began printing original material. Most comics were anthologies of various types of stories, the first to be dedicated to one genre was Detective Comics. The comics sold well enough to keep them in print, but none was an exceptional money-maker. Superman, in Action Comics, took off like nothing else ever had; it was wildly successful. Success breeds imitation, so there you go. For a long time, super-hero comics were the most visible and the most obvious, and, again, as the only genre born and, originally anyway, specific to the comic book form, to the American mind, super-heroes define comics. Even today, with most Americans, if you just talk about comics without qualifying it, they'll think you're talking about super hero comics.

Damn, you've just made me feel old.

Ukrainian Red Cross

American comics are so dominant throughout the world because American media is dominant throughout the world. If you go to virtually any country and ask them about foreign films, tv, ect, they're probably going to be more familiar with American output than that of other countries. I don't mean to imply that American media is better than other media, just that its more prevalent and maybe more available. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that American media is corporate owned more often than in other countries.

I think the corporate nature also plays a role in why American Comics tends to be superhero comics. Because they are corporate owned, they can't be author driven. Drama and comedy often rely on strong characters and that's difficult to maintain with revolving writers. Companies need strong hooks to sell their action-adventure books, and central character is a good way to do it. The characters have to be generic enough that they're easy for different writers to portray without seeming too wonky.

I don't think American comics are as dominant as American tv or movies. In Japan only few people read American comics (other than Peanuts or some other classic strip) and to my knowledge superhero comics aren't that big in France, where manga has been popular earlier than most western countries. The only American superhero comic that has been regularly published in Finland in its own magazine is Spider-Man.

I think people in Europe are generally more familiar with Asterix, Lucky Luker or Tintin than with Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns, not to mention something like Wonder Woman, which is very iconic in the US but basically unknown in most of the world.

edited 26th Aug '12 11:39:22 PM by harkko

This is true. American comics aren't that big over here either.

Still, the American culture itself is very present all around the world. Even if people don't read the comics, they do know big names such as Superman and Spider-man and know they are originally from comics.

edited 27th Aug '12 12:19:11 PM by Heatth

Does South America have any super heroes?

edited 27th Aug '12 12:25:38 PM by DeviantBraeburn

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

I can only speak for Brazil. We aren't culturally homogenous, you know. Furthermore, we in Brazil have a different language, so we don't share our entertainment as much as the Spanish speaking countries do.

Anyway, yeah, we do have super heroes. I've read about them somewhere, but never found a single comic*

. If one exist nowadays, it is not very popular. None of our super heroes ever were popular.

The most popular Brazilian comic is, by far, Monicas Gang (along with its teen spin-off). For a while, Holy Avenger were too. None of them super heroes*

.

Italians have Diabolik, Argeninians have El Eternauta, the French have Bob Morane, XIII, Largo Wynch, Nomad, the Belgians have Tintin, the Spaniards have... Mortadelo Y Filemon.

Really, reading Mortadelo Y Filemon tells you everything you need to know about the Spanish zeitgeist.

Mexicans have El Santo, Brazil has... Michiko To Hatchin?

edited 2nd Sep '12 8:07:24 PM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I've read about some Canadian super heroes, like Captain Canuck (actually his name, apparently) and Nelvana of the Northern Lights. Not sure how old those characters are...And I remember hearing that Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons worked on a Nigerian character named Powerman (no relation to Luke Cage).

Wolverine. Full stop.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I've tried downloading the comics of Nelvana, but they were WW 2-era, and impossible to find. Oh, well.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.

Wolverine is an American character who happens to be from Canada, like how Judge Dredd is a British character who happens to be from America, or Worf is an American character who happens to be from the planet Qo'nos

Ukrainian Red Cross