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©Marvel Comics, Savage She-Hulk 1980

©Marvel Comics, She-Hulk No. 25, March 2008

Debates

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Before the history of the fun and exciting She-Hulk, is the not-so-fun and not-so-amicable debates surrounding the purpose, legitimacy, and credibility of comic books. It is important to mention the historiography concerning the dark and shadowy misperceptions of the friendly neighborhood comic book in order to encourage their scholarly use by fans, creators, scholars, and the imagination because not writing or learning about comic books “would be a casualty of history”.  [Thompson, 13]

Psychological Debates

The now infamous psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham and the subsequent 1954 Congressional hearings on juvenile delinquency and comics added fuel to the great war over the good, the bad, and the ugly comic book.  Wertham essentially argued that harmful qualities existed in comics such as crime, violence, sex, nudity, gore, and anti-law enforcement subject matter.  The result of the hearings was to administer the Comics Code.  The Comics Code Authority was more or less a morality label affixed on every comic that met certain moral and ethical requirements.  Though Wertham’s theory was later disproved, the terms “comic book” and “reprobate” standards had already set in.

The anti-comic sentiment was not new however, as some ten years earlier, comics had come into their own and were deeply criticized by editorial comments, librarians, and parents alike.  Teenage rebellion was alive and kicking in the 1950s and what better statement than to override parental authority by reading comic books.  Comic historian and authority Ron Goulart in Great History of Comic Books (1933) chapters fourteen and eighteen are especially helpful in the critical history of the comic book as it applies to the nature of comic book history. [Goulart, 200,263]

An unintended consequence of the CCA was that it created an underground and independent comic book or Comix.   No independent comix publishers were required to meet the same standards as Marvel and DC because they self-published.  Independents quickly found a strong fan base and now directly compete with traditional comic book publishers.  Oddly enough, independent comix have a tendency to reflect a realistic superhero/heroine as well as an edgier superhero/heroine side of  popular culture which serves to confuse the general public and academician who may not distinguish from the self-censoring morally conscious publishers.  Morality and comic books is yet another dichotomy in comicdom and aptly represented in Shulkology.

©Marvel Comics, Sensational She-Hulk, vol 2, No. 4, August1989

She-Hulk explains why her clothes never come off when she fights, well, almost never.

To keep up with the publishing superpower of independents and remain competitive in a waning market, Marvel Entertainment dismissed the CCA in 2001 and self-labeled with an “adult content advisory”.    The adult content advisory is similar to movie ratings; All Ages, (A) for ages 9 and up, (T+) for Teen,  (Parental Advisory) like PG+ and then some, and (Max) for content similar to R-rated movies.  In some aspects, the bold move acted to legitimate the soft porn and extreme violence present in contemporary comic books while the consequences only serve to dig a deeper hole that the comic industry can’t seem to fight it's way out of.

Seventy-six years ago in 1934, a dark cloud set upon the alleged wholesome comic book. The corollary to be drawn here is that the comic book in 1934 was up against parents, librarians, and the general public, whereas the comic book of 2008 has intelligent, grown-up fans with incredibly strong rhetoric set against the villainous ivory towers of academia. As opposed to comic books, it’s not who has the better superpower, because the strongest voice in reality wins the race. Robert Overstreet’s market report in the Overstreet Guide (2006)  bears out the dramatic impact of the current mood in comicdom:

One conclusion is abundantly clear: we can no longer accept the head-bowed, foot-shuffling, mumbling, attitude that suggests there is something wrong with those of us who have made comics our business. [Overstreet, 67]

It’s no wonder that anyone who was a part of the comic book world had felt this way with sentiment from academics like this, “The dumbing down of American culture has now reached the stage that comic books are now being treated as serious literature”.  Ouch! Blam! Gasp! are a few comic words that come to mind with that verbal hit. The rest of this essay as noted in George Mason University’s History News Network by Thomas C. Reeves in (2006) gets lost in that same Alice-in-Wonderland-like translation, taking Reeves from objectivity to opinion.  Reeves stated “the written page is losing ground almost everywhere to text arranged by the visual”.  With that false logic, there should be an old-fashioned run on the book, (my play on words), yet, there they are; in libraries, private collections, retail locations, and “gasp” all marked down at garage sales.  What is really the bare bones of Reeves’ argument is that comic books are replacing real literature, such as Shakespeare.

But comic books are not the only threat to “real” books. Senior Research Scientist Janet Murray in Hamlet on The Holodeck (1997) noted that “the computer is not the enemy of the book.  It is the child of print culture, a result of five centuries of organized, collective inquiry and invention that the printing press made possible.” [Murray, 8] Print culture has born many children, where Murray claimed the internet was “a new kind of storyteller” and where comic books are treated as the bastard child. [Murray, 9] 

To address the notion that the narrative in comic books are “dumbing down American culture” is to dismiss the complex and sophisticated alternate universe narratives.  Murray brilliantly weaved the correlation between comics, the internet, and books.  She stated that the comic book “audience, [had] an eagerness to transpose and reassemble the separate elements of a story...” [Murray, 40] This is no easy task, as the comic book fan keeps one narrative while working in another plausible or not plausible storyline.  Moreover, the fan will make complex suggestions that become part of the rhetoric where the suggestion may actually become part of the storyline.

Marvel's one page ad depicted a refined Incredible Hulk daintily sipping tea whilst accompanied by the Savage She-Hulk who sits fireside perusing the newspaper. The suggestion is both a mockery of class distinction and an inclusion of the comic book as no longer coarse or vulgar. It is in fact reminiscent of Richard L. Bushman's argument in The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (1992), that "Gentility heightened self-consciousness, not in any deep philosophical sense, but in the common meaning of becoming aware of how one looked in the eyes of others. Self-aware performance came about naturally as a result of adopting genteel standards of behavior to elevate human life." Marvel comics was at least aware of it's perceived low-culture status, and was in 1980, by showing a parody of itself, beginning the slow change from bastardization to legitimacy. ©Marvel Comics, Savage She-Hulk, vol 1, No. 8, September 1980

Grant Woods probably never imagined that his American Gothic would be recreated with a green woman. She-Hulk looks terrific no matter what she's wearing. Artist/writer Dan Slott inferred Shulkies marriage to the Man-Wolf here, meaning she is no longer a single-green female. She-Hulk is also domesticated and representative of Americana. It is a compliment to visionary artist Grant Woods

©Marvel Comics, She-Hulk, no 11, October 2006

There is room for literary spices of life such as; personal interpretation, variety, imagery, and artistry.   Controversial history adds only a small measure of what makes American literature great.  Academics are cautioned against leaving out one of the most vital ingredients that is affordable, creative, reflective, and global-the comic book. That damage had been done psychologically, economically, and creatively is inarguable.  But comics also have a strong history of enduring and have bounced back in popular culture in the eyes of the public and academicians.  The distinction between the two audiences merits further investigation and hopefully clears up the perpetual Freudian child-like state associated with comic books. 

All Grown-Up 

The general public consists of a grown up version of a comic book reader who has passed on the superhero tradition to their friends, family, and children.  New and former comic fans found a certain validity in Hollywood’s rollout of favorite superheroes re-created in films such as;(not an exhaustive list)  Batman (2005), Superman (1978), Cat Woman (2004), Ghost Rider(2007), Iron Man (2008), and the upcoming release, The Dark Knight (2008).  Movies and merchandising helped the general public to develop an appetite for the forgotten comic book in addition to re-establishing comics as real literature.  At the same time, the information age has facilitated increased knowledge and awareness in comic books making them more popular than ever. 

The comic fan has grown up, has a career, and in most cases, a family.  The adult reader, as of the release of this website, is the new reader, whereas children only comprise a small portion of comic book readership today.  For an idea of what is and is not selling, the comic book news website ICv2.com is a reliable source.  It does not have demography of readers, meaning age, gender, and so forth, but the titles on the top ten lists alone demonstrate that it is adult male patronage fueling the comic book industry, not the children.  Besides, children have better things to do, like hack into school sites and change their grades.     

Oral History  

The debate in the use of popular culture and history has been presented in many forms and is in fact, not new.  For example, if we only go back a few hundred years, early modern historian Renate Lachmann found that :                                   

Though it is speculative as to what the folk culture thought about sharing and even losing part of their culture, comic fans have made their thoughts well known.   The fans have always known that comic books are monumental in the history of popular culture.

Robert Overstreet, Mike Benton, Ron Goulart, and M. Thomas Inge report the same findings in their histories of comic books.  But this sentiment is best spoken to by philosopher Frederick Nietzche whose view was “that knowledge works as a weapon of power.” [Storey, 97] Of course, Nietzche’s discourse here was concerned with political power, but it is a true enough statement for the sentiment expressed by fans and scholars alike. For scholars know that knowledge is power but it is perhaps their approach to the procurement of knowledge in comic books that needs refinement.  Or maybe it is the refinement of the blogger who can be a source of misinformation and is often less objective than a scholarly source.  Wikipedia is an excellent example of this kind of false objectivity represented as truth or fact.  Somewhere in the middle is the truth between the fan and the scholar.  With increased awareness comes controversy, and that is where academics have lasting impacts. Academics is a term meant to convey the scholarly study of academia by scholarly persons not just historians,psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and open to all scholars.   

Historian and media professor David Cannadine stated that scholars make:

the triple mistake that print is deep, images are shallow; that print actively argues and images passively illustrate.  Now this particular blunder is a result, I suppose, of the self-reinforcing failure of all those graduate departments to educate their students in iconography (the scholarship of the meaning of images) and iconology (the relationship of those meanings to the cultures which produce and receive them)...The prejudice born of this visual philistinism is that images are somehow a product or obedient expression of the things that historians habitually do know about: political power; economics; religious doctrine. But images can constitute culture as well as be constituted by it. [Cannadine, 24] 

Cannadine’s well made point was originally applied to imagery in television and film, yet when coupled with comic book culture, it genuinely makes the point that comic books (because they are first and foremost imagery) can no longer be dismissed as cherubic discards within popular culture. 

There are plenty of other twentieth-century scholars who have enforced Cannadine’s well-stated theories.  Broadcaster and historian Tristan Hunt noted that Raphael Samuel, like E.P. Thompson, “who so passionately celebrated the world of ‘unofficial knowledge’, [and] the study of history outside the strict contours of academic life was a consciously political act’. [Cannadine, 93] Whether the study of comic books in university classes across the country is or is not a political statement against stodgy-ivory-tower historian attitudes is speculative, but it does make for a fun and ‘popular’ study of popular culture. The following examples of comics featured in the educational curriculum offer evidence that comics are becoming widely accepted as legitimate literature. The Read*Write*Think international reading foundation offers an educational series; Comic Books in the Classroom featuring:

1. Onomatopoeia.
2. Genre Study.
3. Narrative Structure.

At the college level is Palomar College professor Rocco Versaci, and author of “This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature”. Versaci stated that “the comics form makes it obvious to readers that they are getting an interpretation of the author’s thoughts, not the absolute truth”.   Comic books however, do resemble versions of the truth in popular culture.  Versaci will teach a “Comics as Literature” course in the fall of 2008 at Palomar College. [Palomar]

WWW Comic Book Audience

     For the web approach is daring, to reach the audience you must decide your intended audience.   Some historians have a hard time of reaching an appropriate audience and even argue over who is the appropriate audience. But the bottomline is that historians have to utilize all forms of media, because amateur and public historians have already established a network which is not necessarily qualified academia. This is no less true as script writer and military historian Max Hastings stated:

the only reason people like me are in steady work is that we possess some ability to convey information to the public in a way the public can understand, even though we are generally less informed on a given subject than many academics. We provide a bridge however rickety, between scholarly research and a wider public. [Cannadine, 103]

This research is similar to Hastings, by branching out into the blogosphere, webverse, and vast alternate universes in comicdom, scholars and a general audience are encouraged to arrive at the combined truths of Nietzshe and Rabelais:

                     “to find knowledge and laughter, look inside the comic book”.

Women and Gender

According to Novick, a document should be “more than the empirical interpretation of a document, it is the ability to convey a relationship to society and culture that the document has come from” [Novick, 159] Ergo, She-Hulk comics should have central themes about women and gender issues throughout the comic book runs.  In fact they do raise these same significant issues as demonstrated by She-Hulk’s struggles as Jennifer Walters competing with male chauvinist Buck Bukowski at the law firm. Subsequent issues of She-Hulk deal with issues of female empowerment where the female can be sexy, successful, and self-assured.  

Science vs. Art
4th Wall

One of many examples of She-Hulk's ability to break the 4th wall and speak directly to the reader. Thus imparting agency to the reader and the creator while opening up many new adventures. Fans either loved or hated the 4th wall and it was most prolific during her career as The Sensational She-Hulk.                 ©Marvel Comics, The Sensational She-Hulk, vol 2, No. 4, August 1989

Here, the influence of postmodernist philosophers Frederick Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein are especially instructive.  Their theories on the science vs. art debate address the ideology that more than one “objective reality exists”. [Nietzsche]   An outstanding argument for comic books and is especially helpful in investigating She-Hulk's ability to talk to the reader and artist by breaking the 4th wall.  

Dave Byrne first presented the 4th wall theory where She-Hulk looked out at the reader and commented directly to the reader. [Byrne] The 4th wall is the inclusion of the reader in the scene by the character with the main objective as witty humor.  It is not the same as the magical realism of Don Quixote where the windmills were genuinely perceived as giants, but it does have powerful implications.

For Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, the 4th wall is “the existence of reciprocal influences between the observer and nature [which] means that knowledge does not just reflect reality; it really creates a new reality in the process of knowing it.” [Wilson, 127] The significance for She-Hulk and her readers is a new relationship with infinite possibilities outside of her 2-D fictional character.  The profound E.P. Thompson in The Making of The English Working Class said the working class “[was] present at it’s own making” and the same could be said of She-Hulk when she broke the 4th wall.  [Thompson, 194]

The reader is now literally invited into the world of She-Hulk because she “knows” the reader is looking.  (This also enters into voyeurism and the objectivity of women in the gaze discussed under the Shulkology tab).  Woody Allen perfected this technique in Annie Hall (1977) where the subtitles speak the actors real thoughts.  She-Hulk’s similar technique not only breaks the 4th wall for herself and her readers but does so fictionally as well.  It’s as if she is now the Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams (1922) so completely loved that she has crossed over to what makes her real. 

For example, to boost her waning comic sales, she threatens her fans in The Sensational She-Hulk (1989) to buy her books "even if they don’t read them" and the fans respond with promises to do whatever she wants. [Sensational #1, cover] Of course, the fans know they are really writing back to the editors, not She-Hulk, and they know they are only responding to 4th wall artist Dave Byrne’s musings.  But here, as in magical realism, it conveys a sense of feeling in writing that is not easily communicated. 

That’s the beauty in the editorial pages, where a literary dialogue achieves a liminal reality between fact and fiction.  Blogging does not achieve this sense in the imagination.  Blogging actually receives responses from the artists and writers unlike editorial comments which are primarily the voice of the editorial staff.  There are benefits to both methods of fan input and creator output as discussed under rhetorical community.  

She-Hulk’s popularity grew under this new ability to break the 4th wall as She-Hulk “told” artist Dave Byrne how to draw her, what her likes and dislikes were, and triggered added fan attention because at any moment, she might really be talking to her readers.  Shower scenes gave entirely new meanings because She-Hulk could be participating in a form of voyeuristic fantasies or simply taking a shower.  

Comic Book Myth

Another component of the difficulties within the science vs. art debate lies the difficulty of deciphering the meaning of the comic book.  Comic books as literature contain an intense amount of myth, fantasy, and hyperrealism.  Hyperrealism, as culturalist John Storey stated “ is the characteristic mode of postmodernity. In the realm of the hyperreal, the distinction between simulation and the ‘real’ implodes; the ‘real’ and the imaginary continually collapse into each other”. [Storey, 178] 

©Marvel Comics, The Sensational She-Hulk, vol 2, No. 3, July 1989

Here, in The Sensational She-Hulk, as in countless other examples, is a sampling of hyperrealism. She-Hulk is alive but headless. She is operated by an evil genius who wants her superior body and strength, (Don't we all?), and has successfully be-headed her. Comic books abound with this sense of comic fantasy.     The realm of the other also proves an inert way to look at and examine the fragments of culture that are otherwise not easy to dissect.