Roger Logan
Professor Garvin
English 1010
Paper #3
Comic Book Boys Peter Middleton’s essay “Boys Will Be Men” begins with simple anecdotes about the relationships between boys and men of different ages. Middleton then changes his focus towards comic books, where his focus remains all the way through the rest of the paper. Circling back to his original thoughts, the focus on comic books leads to an analysis of comic books in regards to children and their development into men. In his conclusion to the essay, Middleton states, “Nevertheless, action comics for boys are certainly damaging because they offer false solutions to the difficulties of growing up which both sexes face” (Middleton 141). Often Middleton points out that the reason that little boys read such comic books is that their true role models, their fathers, are not home. So in their absence, the children latch onto the traits found inherent in the superheroes they read about. However, the newly found role models, and superheroes, do not represent that which should be portrayed to our children. Throughout many comic book series there seems to always be portrayed a sense of masculinity gone wrong or hypermasculinity. Along with others, though primarily in the comic series of both Batman and of Spiderman, this specific form of masculinity being shown to the children is expressed through a relationship between the superhero, and the law. In the end, comic books become what is essentially a display case for the extremes of masculinity and manhood, which is what the children that read the comic book series desire both outwardly and inwardly.
Batman, as a series has grown by epic proportions in recent years. And although most of us have probably not read the original comic series or even the more recent comics, most everyone has seen the more recent movies based upon the comics. The two movies, Batman