The Physics of Superheroes: Spectacular Second Edition Read Online Free PDF Page A

character (as well as in the 2002 film version), the fateful bite was from a genetically engineered superspider that escapes during a molecular-biology lab demonstration. Thus the one constant would appear to be that the creation of the superhero is a way of binding the cultural anxiety of the day, whether of the “distant other” in the 1940s, radioactivity in the 1960s, or genetic manipulation today.
    The original incarnations of various superheroes in the late 1930s and 1940s were products of their time and reflected life during the Great Depression and World War II. After the war, soldiers who had acquired a comic-book reading habit while overseas continued to buy comics after returning to the States, and certain publishers catered to this older audience with adult-themed stories featuring more graphic violence. Some of the young comic-book writers and artists had also been drafted into the armed services, and their wartime experiences resulted in a more serious, and in some cases darker, tone to their postwar work. In 1945, Maxwell Gaines ended his association with National Comics and started a new publishing firm called Educational Comics, printing such titles as Picture Stories from Science, Picture Stories from American History, and Picture Stories from the Bible. After his untimely passing in 1947, his son William Gaines changed the firm’s name to Entertaining Comics (EC) and shifted their inventory to such comics as Tales from the Crypt, Crime SuspenStories, Weird Science-Fantasy, and The Vault of Horror. These comics were neither suitable nor intended for the same young audience as Captain Marvel. It was just a matter of time before someone noticed and complained.
    Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1953 bestselling book, Seduction of the Innocent, forcefully argued that such lurid stories corrupted the minds of young children, leading them directly to careers as juvenile delinquents. In a cycle that appears to repeat itself in every generation, there was a growing concern among parents and authority figures in the post-World War II era over the coarsening effects of popular culture on the attitudes and mores of teenagers. The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, headed by the ambitious Sen. Estes Kefauver, held hearings on the connection between comic books and teenage crime. Initially, the committee intended to focus solely on horror and crime comics, but Wertham, a consultant to the subcommittee, brought superhero comics to the senators’ attention. Seeking to avoid the imposition of federal oversight and regulation, the major comic-book publishers created a self-regulatory agency called the Comics Code Authority (CCA). The publishers developed a set of rules governing acceptable comic-book content, with explicit instructions that gore, lewdness, drug use, zombies, and vampires were prohibited in any comic book bearing the Comics Code Authority seal of approval on its cover. Many of the guidelines created by the CCA seemed designed solely to ensure the destruction of nearly the entire EC line of comics (the only survivor being a relatively new comic satire magazine by the name of MAD ). All comic-book stories had to be submitted to the CCA (whose staff was funded by the publishers) for approval before being published, similar to the current ratings board that vets motion pictures.
    While it played an important role in the 1950s and 1960s in convincing parents that comic books could be viewed as “wholesome” entertainment, the influence of the Comics Code Authority has waned over the years as the average age of the typical comic-book reader has increased. This is reflected in the decreasing size of the CCA seal on comic-book covers. In 1964, the seal took up an area roughly that of postage stamp, or two thirds of a square inch (as it was a prominent marketing tool to assure parents that the story contained within was acceptable for their children), while it was less than a quarter of a square inch in