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So;
I got the Marvel Horror book which reprints the first appearances of Son of Satan and Satanna; and I got to thinking about a debate I had on another site about the current trend towards "mature content" in mainstream books.
And I was wondering if this isn't part of a cycle. The Marvel Horror stories WEREN'T written for kids. And not because of sex and violence but more 'cos they tried (with varying degrees of success) to get into the Psychology of said sex and violence. There was also a lot of philosophy and theology too; stuff kids probably woiuldn't care about.
Now, the "Marvel Age" of comics started in '62, and if we assume the average reader at that time was 8 or 10, they'd be around 18 come the seventies. So were books like this an attempt to keep up with their aging audience? I know Marvel was aware of "grown up" comics at that time; they even tried publishing their own "underground" book. I kinda suspect this is the case.
If so; what happened? I'd guess the mid seventies superhero boom; which wasn't so much a boom of superhero COMICS, but of superhero MARKETING. Most of which was in the form of toys, aimed at kids. Late 80's comics "grew up" again; but in the form of speculators looking for investments. Today? Could the current wave of brutality be a hamfisted attempt at this sort of thing?
Don C.
I got the Marvel Horror book which reprints the first appearances of Son of Satan and Satanna; and I got to thinking about a debate I had on another site about the current trend towards "mature content" in mainstream books.
And I was wondering if this isn't part of a cycle. The Marvel Horror stories WEREN'T written for kids. And not because of sex and violence but more 'cos they tried (with varying degrees of success) to get into the Psychology of said sex and violence. There was also a lot of philosophy and theology too; stuff kids probably woiuldn't care about.
Now, the "Marvel Age" of comics started in '62, and if we assume the average reader at that time was 8 or 10, they'd be around 18 come the seventies. So were books like this an attempt to keep up with their aging audience? I know Marvel was aware of "grown up" comics at that time; they even tried publishing their own "underground" book. I kinda suspect this is the case.
If so; what happened? I'd guess the mid seventies superhero boom; which wasn't so much a boom of superhero COMICS, but of superhero MARKETING. Most of which was in the form of toys, aimed at kids. Late 80's comics "grew up" again; but in the form of speculators looking for investments. Today? Could the current wave of brutality be a hamfisted attempt at this sort of thing?
Don C.