#fightdrugs

[megan-hallidays-research-blog]

Stan Lee, Spider-Man

While gathering research for my essay I decided to change the initial essay I had wanted to do, due to the fact I preferred a different approach to the whole thing. So as before I kept my essay to do with censorship and propaganda, but instead of doing comic books before and after censorship I wanted to focus on the time periods and go into more detail about why censorship happened, why there was propaganda, what good it had and what bad effect it had overall. I hope to have a decent analysis and understanding on how they had impacts on comics and how comics changed due to this by the end of my essay.

Here is my analysis on Stan Lees comic about Spiderman’s friend who was addicted to drugs. The comic was created to help bring awareness to drug issues in the society at the time, although it wouldn’t get the CCA stamp of approval he went ahead and published it anyway. Stan Lee was a comic book writer who challenged the CCA by not abiding to their rules and regulations, I found that he wrote an issue about spider man. Lee being the face of marvel comics held a giant influence within the comic industry and his defiance of the CCA created an impact within how comics were being produced and censored. Lee published a Spider-Man comic with “real world issues” which featured Spider-Man’s best friend struggling with drug addiction, he published it because he thought it was a topic that should and not hidden away, and that fictional characters are created based off real world issues and problems. Lee managed to avoid the rules of the code by self publishing. In 1971 after Lee had published his comics the CCA went back on a lot of their rules, and they became less strict with their outdated rule guideline. After the rules were lifted many other publishers followed suit and started publishing their comics which explored darker and more mature themes.

Referencing

Sergi, J (2012) Tales From the code: Spidey FightDrugs and the Comic Code Authority. Available at: http://cbldf.org/2012/07/tales-from-the-code-spidey-fights-drugs-and-the-comics-code-authority/ (Accessed 01 May 2018)