Steve Rogers was a gaunt fine arts student growing up at the time of the Great Depression. His alcoholic father died when Steve was a kid, and his mother died from pneumonia after Steve graduated high school. In early 1940, shocked at Nazi Germany’s horrific atrocities, Steve tried to enlist in the army. Failing to meet the physical requirements, he was invited to volunteer for Operation: Rebirth, a project designed to augment US soldiers to the height of physical excellence with the inventions and discoveries of Professor Abraham Erskine. Rogers willingly accepted and became the first test subject. After injections and ingestion of the "Super Soldier Serum," Rogers was exposed to controlled bursts of "Vita-Rays" that activated and stabilized the chemicals in his body. The process successfully altered his physiology from its scrawny state to the maximum of human efficiency, including significantly enhanced musculature and reflexes. Soon after the process, Professor Erskine was assassinated by a Nazi operative, leaving Steve the only remains of Erskine’s genius. Renamed “Project: Rebirth,” variations of the Super-Soldier serum were later tested, under inhumane conditions, on African-American soldiers. The most successful of these was Isaiah Bradley, and Project: Rebirth’s resources were eventually absorbed into a multinational superhuman research project renamed Weapon Plus.
Rogers was assigned to serve in the military as a soldier who served both as a counter-intelligence agent and a symbolic US hero to counter Nazi Germany's propaganda achievements headed by the Red Skull (Johann Shmidt). Wearing a costume based on his own design fashioned after the American flag, Steve was given a triangular bulletproof shield, a personal pis...
... middle of paper ...
...n #24. Captain America was called "Captain America, Commie Smasher!" Captain America featured during the next year in Young Men #24-28 and Men's Adventures #27-28, as well as in comic issues #76-78. Atlas' struggled superhero revival proved no use and the character's title was canceled with Captain America issue #78 in September 1954.
Works Cited
Daniels, Les (1991). Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics. Harry N. Abrams. p. 37. ISBN 0-8109-3821-9.
Simon, Joe; Jim Simon (1990). The Comic Book Makers. Crestwood/II. p. 50. ISBN 1-887591-35-4. Reissued by Vanguard Productions in 2003.
Simon, Joe; Jim Simon (1990). The Comic Book Makers. Crestwood/II. p. 51. ISBN 1-887591-35-4. Reissued by Vanguard Productions in 2003.
Thomas, Roy, Stan Lee's Amazing Marvel Universe (Sterling Publishing, New York, 2006), p. 11. ISBN 978-1-4027-4225-5
Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, documents the author's discovery of her own and her father's homosexuality. The book touches upon many themes, including, but not limited to, the following: sexual orientation, family relationships, and suicide. Unlike most autobiographical works, Bechdel uses the comics graphic medium to tell her story. By close-reading or carefully analyzing pages fourteen through seventeen in Fun Home one can get a better understanding of how a Bechdel employs words and graphic devices to render specific events. One can also see how the specific content of the pages thematically connects to the book as a whole. As we will see, this portion of the book echoes the strained relationship between Bruce Bechdel and his family and his attempts to disguise his homosexuality by creating the image of an ideal family, themes which are prevalent throughout the rest of the nook.
Somewhere around 1939 and 1941 Detective Comics and its sister organization, All-American Publications, presented well known superheroes, for example, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, the Flash,
In April of 1861, the American Civil War broke out. In June of 2006, the Marvel Civil War broke out. 145 years of separation still bind these two seemingly unrelated events. The nonfiction and fiction worlds may come across as totally different. One involves actual American heroes fighting over abolition versus slavery and federal versus states’ rights while the other involves fictional American superheroes fighting over freedom versus security, individual rights versus the need for regulation. More specifically, the Marvel Civil War was caused by a controversial Superhero Registration Act that required all superheroes to register themselves under the government as government agents.
All graphic novels are structured to provide few words so the reader can follow the story through the illustrations. The comic panels are drawn to be extremely vivid and revealing. In Watchmen, a story based in a Cold War America, political symbolism is everything. Alan Moore strategically places numerous clues for the reader throughout the story to develop and reveal crucial components of the character’s lives, the setting, and the theme of the novel.
One way he influenced the comic book world was by revolutionizing the way characters behaved in his stories. Many of the characters in the older comic books were given makeovers to make the audiences like them more because they were flat and lacked emotion. This was called the Silver Age of Comics. The older characters lacked a personality. Stan Lee was an office assistant at Timely Comics in 1939 and soon after that he became an interim editor in the 1940s (Stan). When Martin Goodman, the publisher of Marvel Comics, Timely Comic’s new name, since 1939, asked Stan Lee to create a team of superheroes better than the Justice League of America, their rival in comic books, Stan Lee had his doubts. Mr. Goodman thought that comic books should be dumbed down because they were for “stupid children.” Stan Lee did not agree with Martin Goodman’s idea. Stan Lee already wanted to quit, so his wife advised him to go ahead and write the story the way he wanted to write it. If Goodman fired him it would be okay since he already was contemplating quitting. Lee decided to write a story about four people who got superpowers after an accident in space. They were completely different from other superheroes because they did not wear costumes. The story was also based in New York City instead of Metropolises or Gotham City like Superman and Batman. These characters also had a real personality along with a real job, no secret identity, or alter egos. This story was known as the Fantastic Four. It was extremely different than many other comic books. (Garcia)
In Fun Home: A Family Tragic Comic, Alison Bechdel uses the graphic novel technique of bringing visuals and concise text to her audience to reveal the relationship with her father in a perspective that can not be modified through the readers perspective and interpretation. Bechdel employs this type of writing style to help visualize a better interpretation of how she describes the differences in both her and her fathers’ gender roles throughout the novel. This tactic helps discuss and show how these gender roles were depicted as opposite from one another. But, in this case being opposite from one another made them gain a stronger relationship of understanding and reviling that these differences were actually similarities they also shared.
Alexie, Sherman. "Superman and Me." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 19 Apr. 1998. Web. 14 May 2014. http://articles.latimes.com/1998/apr/19/books/bk-42979
Layton, Bob and Michelinie, David [w] and Ron Lim [p]. Iron Man: Legacy of Doom. I. New York: Marvel Publishing. 2008. Print.
The purpose of the essay is to answer the question: How has Archie Comics reflected changing gender norms in the United States of America from World War II to the present of women in contemporary American society, in its eventual challenge of the position of men as the dominant sex, and in its inclusion of previously marginalized sexual orientations? As entertainment primarily targeted to middle-class America, Archie is a helpful avenue by which to understand acceptable views. This paper will present gender roles portrayed in Archie Comics in three different time frames: the Forties, the Sixties, and the new millennium. It will analyze the establishment of traditional gender roles set forth in the earliest Archie Comic strips. Next it will critique the ways in which it responded to the challenges to these traditional norms and assess whether the comic incorporated these challenges or rebuffed them. Finally, this paper will evaluate the role of modern-day Archie Comics as a vanguard in the new discussion of gender roles and sexual orientation in America. For the purpose of analysis, issues of Archie representative of the era will be examined in conjunction with larger historical developments. These include: the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the post-feminist world following the 1970s, and the rise of LGBT acceptance.
In 1941, Stan Lee, the creator of the Marvel universe, released his firs comic book about the patriotic hero Captain America. This comic was released during World War 2 to give the Americans a sense of hope and to let people know that we’re not alone. Marvel does a good job with its comics because they want to show you that even when times get tough, as long as you have hope things will get better. A good example of this would be Spiderman. When his Uncle Ben died, his last words to Peter were, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Spiderman goes on to
Lawrence, John Shelton. "The Stan Lee Universe." Journal Of American Culture 36.1 (2013): 64-65. Academic Search Elite. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
In 1930, Chic Young released the first ever “Blondie” comic strip in the newspaper, changing the industry forever. “Blondie” is one of the longest running comic strips today, turning 84 years old this year. The success of the strip cannot be disputed as everyone knows of it through one way or another. The comic strip is used as a comedic relief of whatever political or social strife that is in the news as of this moment in history. The comic strip “Blondie” is a long running cartoon because it reflects the American middle class family in such a way that everyday problems become adventures and it’s a comedic relief of the struggles of everyday life.
The well-known comic The Family Circus by Bil Keane, which is run in over 1500 newspapers, shows the hectic life of an American family, giving meaning to the saying, "Kids will be kids." It is based on the actual life of Bil Keane’s family and his experiences as a child. The most commonly noted features of his comic are the circular shape he often encloses the pictures in, and the dotted line that follows the children around, giving away their every move. Many other cartoonists try to capture the Family Circus mood by incorporating these features into their own works.
The L.A. Reader picked up a copy of his comic strip and liked what they saw. Life in
“The Golden Age of Comics” PBS. PBS, 2011 Web. Retrieved on February 11 2014 from http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/the-golden-age-of-comics/