Social Maturity Reflected in Comic Art

[Martin Hash]

Though I enjoyed all comics as a kid (and adult), and saved my “collection” for my own children, when it comes to bragging rights, only “Action” comics (Golden and Silver Age) hang prominently in my Study. The entire collection hangs in numerical order, 1-402 (not complete), on the room’s four walls, and they are the favorite of visitors - old and young alike. After being surrounded by those classic covers for several years, and serenely contemplating them as archetypes, a definite trend became apparent – I could actually see the maturing of America. The lingering innocence of the 1940s and 1950s gave way to a complete tearing of the social fabric by the end of the 1960s that is beguilingly chronicled in a peculiar sequence of cover art.

1950.jpg

My collection is extensive enough that it contains three representations of Native Americans, or “Indians” in the parlance of the day, confronting Superman. The covers occurred once in each of three successive eras. Indians made their first spotlight appearance at the end of the 1940s. They are clad in loincloths, throwing stone-age tomahawks that bounce harmlessly off of the invincible Superman, who is shown wearing a war-bonnet, indicative of what kids found exciting about the Old West in those days.

1955 first Silver Age.jpg

Indians again headlined in the 1950s, but they had metamorphosed into caricatures of what was on television at the time: The Lone Ranger, Daniel Boone, and countless ‘50s westerns where the savages were more demurely dressed. Of course, they still had a feather in their hair but they also wore pants under their loincloths. Interestingly, the cover is very similar to the previous Indian cover even though the stories are entirely different. Apparently, the idea of masses of Indians attacking a lone White Man was the cultural stereotype.

1971 last Silver Age.jpg

The last time Indians could be and were used to attract young buyers was in the age of protest and cultural revolution - the 1960s. After a decade of unrest, political assassinations, the rise of youth culture, and outrage against discrimination, a social conscious had developed in America and in the comics American’s read. At that time an island in San Francisco harbor that used to contain a famous prison, Alcatraz, was occupied by Native Americans demanding its rightful return to their possession. The public confrontation was front page news everywhere, a testament to a new cultural awareness. All of this was reflected on the cover of Action #402, with Superman tied to a burning stake, and quite frightening mod-generation young Native Americans with amber skin and long, black hair angrily declaring his demise. Innocence was past – the comic readers of the next generation would be more sophisticated and much harder to propagandize from then on. Also, the artwork of that comic is superb - bold, of the new style of comic covers that exaggerated perspective, and insisted on focus, expression, and strong poses.

It is worth noting that the first and last issues of the Silver Age of comics has Native Americans on the cover. Certainly it was not intentional because defining the Silver Age is surely arbitrary seeing as how it starts on 200 and ends nearly on 400, at 402 – probably the choice was either a deliberate or subconscious recognition that the illustration of the subject indeed signaled the beginning and end of an age.