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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  1963 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Art Spiegelman: golden age superheroes were shaped by the rise of fascism

This editorial was probably prompted by the fact that Disney insisted that his intro to Marvel: The Golden Age 1939–1949 not contain the phrase

    “In today’s all too real world, Captain America’s most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America.”

(as linked by the Guardian at the top of the article)

Ladies and Gentlemen, Disney.

    The comic book format can be credited to a printing salesman, Maxwell Gaines, looking for a way to keep newspaper supplement presses rolling in 1933 by reprinting collections of popular newspaper comic strips in a half-tabloid format. As an experiment, he slapped a 10 cents sticker on a handful of the free pamphlets and saw them quickly sell out at a local newsstand.

Max Gaines founded EC Comics, which was taken over by his son Bill, who testified to Congress that comics weren't mind-warping debauchery. It was super-ineffective. So he pivoted and created this guy: