Supergirl takes a stimulating shower…
Superhero Sex: Pt. 4
Propaganda in Four Colors
Once again, Ronald Reagan comes to the rescue. Somehow, Ethan Persoff found this fine example of Reagan-era propaganda: a comic book, titled “Grenada: Rescued from Rape and Slavery,” which was produced by the CIA and distributed during the 1984 invasion by American troops. Reagan has a much more distant role in this one than in the Reagan’s Raiders books, but his presence is just as inescapable; the fantasy of the White Man’s Burden should also feel chillingly familiar to everyone who’s watched Bush and his minions prance about for the last five years.
Superhero Sex, pt. 3
In which Superboy is bad, and both he and Pa Kent become equally frustrated. [Read more…]
Superhero Sex, pt. 2
Superhero Sex
The first UK printing of Dr. Frederic Wertham’s master polemic, ‘Seduction of the Innocent.’
In 1954, a psychologist named Frederic Wertham published the most influential book ever written about comics: Seduction of the Innocent, a polemic that decried comics as a moral evil that caused everything from juvenile delinquency to sexual perversion. The result of Wertham’s book was a series of congressional hearings and finally the creation of the Comics Code Authority, the comic-book equivalent of the Motion Picture Production Code. [Read more…]