6. Green Lantern/Green Arrow Make Things Political
Previously, an attempt to engage with contemporary politics within comic books took the form of blatant propaganda, as evidenced by the countless early DC and Marvel titles of the thirties that saw Batman straddling a US battleship's canon or Namor The Sub-Mariner wrestling with a Nazi submarine. Not much room for nuance, and no real commentary on the sort of things that were being illustrated. Engagement with political subjects was the sole preserve of politicians, and maybe a few newspaper comic satirists whose punchlines were so entangled in smugness and inside baseball references they were impenetrable to anyone who wasn't a politician. Things began to shift in the sixties and seventies, though, as the American public as a whole started to become more politically aware and the underground counter-culture started to question a lot of what was going on in the country. It's from this that Green Lantern/Green Arrow sprung, a surprisingly progressive title from the infamously conservative superhero comics industry. where the two characters - paired more for their similar names than any real resemblance - fought society's ills as much as they did crime. Though short-lived, the left-leaning story arcs by Neal Adams and Dennis O'Neil saw the superheroic duo coming face to face with corruption, racism, drug abuse, and even a short plot that centred on the contemporaneous Manson family murders. Adams and O'Neil may have not been on the book for long, but their work saw a sea change that allowed the big issues of the day to be covered in what had previously seemed the trivial arena of the comic book. Again, Civil War was partially their fault.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
