| Comic book superheroes arose in industrialized America as 20th-century iterations of Carl Jung’s archetypes, replete with Joseph Campbell’s monomythic stories that echoed those of the halcyon gods of the past. Like America, Superman and the other superheroes successfully represented our idyllic persona selves and they projected their shadow side upon externalized “evil” forces. By the 1960s, a great shifting occurred when Marvel Comics introduced three-dimensional heroes seeking individuation, but beset with tragic Achilles’ heels of anxiety and tragic emotional wounds. Using a heuristic approach, this thesis will study from a depth perspective how Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and the pantheon of Marvel Heroes reflected the pathology of the American culture of the 1960s, as it wrestled with its own wounds—such as racism, poverty, the generation gap, and the Vietnam war—and the zeitgeist of a polarized society craving wholeness and integration. |
