470 POLITICS AND POLITICIANS
See also: Underground and Adult Comics; Memoir/Slice-of-Life Th emes
Selected Bibliography: Brown, Chester. Th e Playboy. Montréal: Drawn & Quarterly,
1992.
Jared L. Olmsted
POLITICS AND POLITICIANS. Whether they feature superheroes , spy smashers, or
countercultural bomb-throwers, comic books have from their earliest days been in-
extricably bound up with politics. Like other forms of mass culture, comic books both
refl ect and participate in the public sphere, registering and helping to shape popular
opinion about political questions such as civil rights, international relations, and the
role of government in private life.
Comic books emerged in the 1930s, the era of the Great Depression and the New
Deal, a period when many Americans began to question and revise their understandings
of American values and to deepen their engagements with politics. When superheroes—
powerful crusaders usually created by working-class writers and artists—emerged,
their adventures were often motivated by a blend of populism and leftism. Superman’s
earliest foes included crooked industrialists and politicians whose most nefarious qual-
ity was their indiff erence to the economic hardships of ordinary Americans. Indeed, one
early story featured Superman speaking up on behalf of a young juvenile delinquent,
blaming his troubles partly on his miserable social situation, and eventually demolishing
the slum the young man called home to make way for government housing ( A c t i o n
Comics #8, 1930). When Superman’s popular success led to a horde of imitators such
as Green Lantern and Hourman, these new characters often also emulated his politics.
Comics historian Bradford Wright notes that although comics creators rarely criticized
national political fi gures directly, their focus on “the failings of local government and
the dangers of provincial demagogues” highlighted the “need for outside intervention
and tacitly stressed a common interest between public welfare and a strong federal
government” (24).
As World War II intensifi ed in Europe, comic books in the United States shifted
their emphasis from the internal problems of the nation to the external threat of the
Axis powers. Comics helped to mold national consensus about the possibility of U.S.
participation in the war. Perhaps the best-known example in this regard is the cover
of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America #1, released early in 1941, an iconic
image of the patriotic hero socking Adolf Hitler in the jaw. Although Nazi villains were
not unusual in comics by 1941, it was also common for superheroes to battle against
foreign agents who wanted to drag the United States into a fi ght that many Americans
thought it should avoid. Th e publication of Captain America #1 brought that tension
home to Simon and Kirby in a very direct way: while the comic was a major success,
they also received hate mail and even death threats from isolationists and Nazi sym-
pathizers (Wright 36). Captain America was not the fi rst patriotic hero, nor would
he be the last, as a multitude of characters—whether star-spangled or not—leapt into
