Hip hop and punk rock once inspired in me a theory: That one of the few positive side-effects of a frightening political climate and/or an economic crises is the emergence of new and inspired artforms. Well, this theory was pretty much proven false during the eight years of George Bush vs. The Axis of Evil, and if all that the current economy has to offer us artistically is the rise of the Auto-tune, then my theory is well and truly dead. That said, Jennifer de Guzman has written an article matching some of the major moments in comics to the socio-economic disasters that were simultaneously taking place in the real world. So maybe I wasn't so dumb after all...An excerpt from: Life in Comics: Can Creativity Save Comics from Troubled Times?
In the 1930s, while people were struggling with poverty and confronting the looming threat of fascism, Siegal and Shuster invented a (Super)man who did not have to struggle and who used his power for the benefit of humanity. In the early 1980s, when the economy was failing but the country had no clear moral battle on the horizon, alternative comics began to take on, as Charles Hatfield writes in his book Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, "the exploration of searchingly personal and at times more political themes."...What will troubled economic times bring us this time around?
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