Module 3: Nuclear Technology and Silver Age Superheroes


Our Most Nostalgic Module Yet

The Silver Age of Comics from the mid-fifties to the early seventies marked a time of popularity, growth, and commercial success for comic book companies like Marvel and DC. At this time, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby have joined the ranks at Marvel and are producing a lot of the characters— heroes, villains, and more— that many of us know today, like the Hulk, Iron Man, the members of the Fantastic Four, and the Silver Surfer. These figures specifically are some of the first I ever encountered on television growing up. I vividly remember holding my breath when Edward Norton's Hulk accidentally spilled a drop of blood into a bottle of orange soda at a factory he worked at; I remember seeing Michael Chiklis' Thing wear a tie and offer flowers to his partner; my mind began to layer together both the written and cinematic scenes of Robert Downey Jr. in the dark cave with Yinsen after being kidnapped by the Ten Rings (originally Wong-Chu, lol), toiling away at his first suit before he busted out in an explosion of rock and shrapnel to escape. I had forgotten that I'd even watched those movies until reading over the origin stories and connecting certain plot points and connecting them to their movie adaptation. This era of comics influenced how people— not just nerds, but mainstream media consumers— think about superheroes to this day.

Taking into consideration the time period of this Age of Comics, its themes of the dangers of nuclear technology were very clear and tied to public attitudes about it at the time (which were nervous, of course, and wary of nuclear power's already-proven destructive capacity during WWII). Especially in the first issue of The Hulk, with the back and forth between Dr. Banner and his lab assistant. There seems to be interwoven potshots at world powers and their indulgence in nuclear power at this time, as well, and commentary on the perceived infallibility of fascists by fascists:




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