Popular media, war propaganda and retroactive continuity

The construction of the enemy in Marvel comics (1942–1981)

Bibliographic Data

ID12904696
AuthorsAntonio Pineda (0000-0002-3767-8590, corresponding author), Antonio Pineda Cachero (0000-0002-0249-1881, Universidad de Sevilla, corresponding author), Jesús Jiménez-Varea (0000-0003-1456-2699, Universidad de Sevilla)
Year2023
Volume16
Issue4
Pages599-621
Publication date2023-02-14
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedia War & Conflict (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-6352 • E-ISSN: 1750-6360
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17506352231151871
OpenAlexW4320726307
LanguageEN
References cited20

The construction of the enemy is a technique whose potential effects are of outmost consequence for the relationships between the media, war and propaganda. In World War II, in addition to the official media, psychological warfare also relied on non-official propaganda conveyed through comic books whose levels of hatred for the enemy are hardly matched. This article aims to shed light on how superhero and war comic books mirror the construction and depiction of World War II enemies in American culture. The authors’ research compares the original wartime comics published by Marvel Comics with the representation of the war enemy conveyed by Marvel between the 1960s and the early 1980s. To test whether changes occurred, the authors conduct a diachronic content analysis of comic-book covers from both periods

Adversary · Art · Comics · Computer security · Depiction · Hatred · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Popular culture · Representation (politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · World War II · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Computer Science · History · Law · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies

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Open DOIOpen Access