Fans and scholars agree that the Golden Age began with Superman’s appearance in Action #1 in 1938. In general, the end points of the ages are not discussed, but for the Golden Age, Plastic Man #64 in 1956 works well. The patriotic impetus driving the Golden Age ended with the WWII, but superhero comics continued to be published, with a surge in cancellation occurring in 1949, and a few heroes—Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, and Captain Marvel predominantly—continuing publication into
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certain idealized cultural self-image” is transmitted (38). This idealized cultural self-image is an aspect of genre’s role as cultural ritual for “social problem-solving operations” in which ideological conflicts are repeatedly confronted “within a certain cultural community, suggesting various solutions through the actions of the main characters” (24). By narratively animating and resolving basic cultural conflicts, genre products celebrate our collective sensibilities,
“providing an array of ideological strategies for negotiating social conflict” (29). This resolution does not solve the basic cultural conflict;
rather it simply recasts the conflict “into an emotional context where it can be expeditiously, if not always logically, resolved” (32). At the earlier stages of a genre’s evolution, these resolutions work to transmit and reinforce prevailing social ideology and to “reaffirm what the audience believes both on an individual and communal level,” whereas “later in a genre’s development [genre products]
tend to challenge the tidy and seemingly naïve resolutions” of the earlier stages (38, 33).
Superhero comic books of the Golden Age fit this pattern of expressing the prevailing social ideology of their times. According to Bradford Wright, early superhero comics promoted two prevailing ideological visions of their time: New-Deal style social reform and WWII patriotism. Wright argues that comic books “implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, underscored key New Deal assumptions”
by “targeting the forces of corporate greed in stories that echoed Roosevelt’s rhetoric against ‘economic royalists’” (22). Superman initially worked for reform in a number of areas including mining, prisons, automobile safety, housing, and corruption in local government. Wright discusses a number of Green Lantern stories in which the superhero brings corporate criminals to justice and “takes satisfaction in another victory for the public welfare over corporate self-interest” (23). These stories, preeminently those of DC superhero comics, seem direct arguments for an activist and interventionist federal government to regulate business and labor unions, fight the corruption of local political machines, battle organized crime and racketeers, and serve as the defender and champion of the common American. These “comic books endorsed the need for outside intervention and tacitly stressed a common interest between public welfare and a strong federal government. In this context, superheroes assumed the role of super-New Dealers” (Wright 2001, 24).
book industry. It also indicated that the “conversation” between producers and consumers that Schatz discusses occurred with consumers favoring superhero comics, which led to greater levels of their production (1981, 5-6). Between Action Comics #1 (June 1938) and Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) only the Crimson Avenger, the Arrow, and the Sandman appeared to be following the superhero model, and they were more indebted to their pulp and radio predecessors. Batman appeared in the same month as Wonder Man and the Sub-Mariner. Following that important May came Wonder Woman, the Flash, Hawkman, Captain Marvel, Robin, the Flame, the Blue Beetle, the Human Torch, Doll Man, Amazing Man, Hour Man, Green Lantern, and many many more. This flood of characters, all clearly identifiable as superheroes, deluged the comic book world following the appearance of Batman and indicates that a new genre had emerged. In the first three years from 1938 to 1941 the primary superhero archetypes were created.107 The archetypes listed below are not necessarily the first example of each, but the ones that have become the best known and most influential.
Superman and Batman provide the two primary paradigms of superherodom: the superpowered superhero and the non- superpowered superhero. Wonder Woman provides the next central paradigm, the superheroine, as well as the mythical or mythology- based hero, although Captain Marvel might be considered just as important for this second category. The Flash is the preeminent example of the single-powered hero. Parody comes with the Red Tornado, but perhaps Plastic Man should be listed here as he has had a longer, more influential, and more exemplary career. Although the Shield was first, Captain America is the patriotic superhero par excellence. Robin stands as the first sidekick and can also be considered the first kid superhero. While the Silver Age Spider-Man stands preeminent in the troubled-hero category, the Golden Age Sub-Mariner’s status as the first anti-hero superhero might place him within the troubled-hero category, thereby rounding out the superhero archetypes, all debuting by the middle of 1941.
Formal Transparency
According to Schatz, a genre in its experimental stage is formally transparent; that is, the genre is only a medium through which “a
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independence that once came with proprietorship” (102). The powerful identity of Superman provides a form of escape for the reader beyond the repressions of daily life; the Superman “stories thus promote an acceptance of powerlessness in one’s daily life for the sake of an ersatz existence beyond it” (103).
This acceptance of powerlessness and the normalizing of corporate capitalism is related to what Richard Reynolds labels the
“key ideological myth of the superhero comic” that “the normal and everyday enshrines positive values that must be defended through heroic action” (77). Superheroes put their individuality, as expressed in their superidentities and costumes, fully in service of the status quo by beating back any challenges to it. The supervillain is a central expression of these threats. The trouble lies not in society, as it does in the early adventures of Superman, but outside it, in accordance with the idea of the monomythic Eden: “a small, well-organized community surrounded by a pastoral realm whose distinguishing trait is the absence of a lethal internal conflict arising from its members”
(Jewett 1977, 170). This outsider aspect of the supervillain enters with the Ultra-Humanite (Action Comics #13).
Action Comics #13 © 1939 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
Up to this point, Superman fought people in power—lax mine owners, corrupt officials, war profiteers, brutal prison wardens—
who failed to live up to the responsibilities with which their power endowed them. The problems he faced all had ordinary human causes and could be solved through ordinary human institutions—in fact the early adventures of Superman are primarily stories of Clark Kent’s exposure of corruption through his newspaper stories; he only uses his Superman identity to enable him to get the story and write the expose. But the Ultra-Humanite, a power-mad supervillain Marvel Comics took up the cause of WWII patriotism most
graphically and emphatically (40). The most famous example of this patriotism is the cover of Captain America #1 (March 1941), which shows Captain America punching Hitler in the face.
Captain America Comics #1 © 1941 Marvel Comics. All Rights Reserved.
Especially after Pearl Harbor, superheroes went to war against the nation’s enemies, often directly participating in military action and championing “a loosely defined Americanism synonymous with lofty ideals like democracy, liberty, and freedom from oppression”
(42). Backing the U.S. war effort in this way was an extension of the New Deal liberalism superheroes had portrayed in the pre-war period. Wright sees these war comics as a way for New Dealers to ask “Americans to commit to collective action for the sake of reform, but now such action was for patriotic unity behind the war effort and reform on a global scale” (35).
The primary narrative convention of the Golden Age is the defense of the normal, with defense of property rights and relations included therein. Thomas Andrae traces the way that Superman moves from being “a thorn in the side of the establishment” and a fighter for the oppressed to having a “wholesale identification with the state” and being a fighter “confined to the defense of private property” (“Menace” 1980, 100). This shift parallels the erosion of individual autonomy under monopoly capitalism. Clark Kent signifies this neutering of individualism by his acceptance of Perry White’s bullying and his constant need to hide his powers and conceal his true self. Andrae writes, “Kent’s powerlessness, alienation, and inauthenticity are symptomatic of the status frustration of the new middle class of salaried employees who can find neither fulfillment nor dignity in their professional life nor hope for the security and
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juncture.
The final end date, and the one that makes the most sense, is Plastic Man #64 (October 1956), which hit the stands the same month as the revival of the Flash in Showcase #4. The appearance of the new Flash marked a major shift in superhero comics and ushered in the next stage of the genre’s evolution. Therefore, the previous age and stage ended just before Showcase #4’s debut. Furthermore, Captain Marvel and the whole Marvel Family had ceased publication just a year before with Marvel Family #89 (January 1954). Captain Marvel and Plastic Man best exemplify the Golden Age with their simpler and more humorous approach to superheroics. None of the revivals of either of these characters has successfully recaptured the Golden Age whimsy of C.C. Beck or Jack Cole, so the end of Plastic Man is the end of the Golden Age.