Social Impact

 

Racism

 

By the time of the Civil Rights Movement, comic book writers and illustrators started creating “non-white Super Heroes”. At first, these characters resembled the well-known stereotypes. This completely changed when characters like Storm, from X-Men and the Green Lantern appeared in comic books. The colored heroes played important leadership roles and did not abide by the rule of being a minority. Marvel’s X-Men have been known to be diverse in color, cultural backgrounds and personality. What is ironic about the X-Men is that they are persecuted and used “anti-mutant-prejudice-as-racism theme” for their stories.  A hero that came up to diversify the comic book genre was the Black Panther. DC’s characters the Green Arrow and the Green Lantern, in their comic books, fought issues of “racism, politics, religion, cultism, and drug abuse”. In one issues of their comic books, an African-American man called the duo racists because they only saved white people in danger and never helped black people. The times have changed and so have comic books. Their characters are diverse and different, and international heroes like Spider-Man from India , have changed the universe of comic books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

• http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblogs/geekspeak/archives/Panther2.jpg (image)"Bronze Age." Bronze Age- Television Tropes & Idioms. 8 July 2008         
  <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/main/bronzeage>.
  "Interdisciplinary Comics Studies." Image TexT: Exhibits: Exhibit 1: Green Lantern and
   Green Arrow. 12 July 2008 <http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/
  exhibit1/glantern_garrow_text.shtml>.
  Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked. Dir. Steve Kroopnick. Perf. Stan Lee and Frank
  Miller. 2003.