From Batman's Depression-era battles against corrupt local politicians and Captain America's one-man war against
Nazi Germany to Iron Man's Cold War exploits in Vietnam and Spider-Man's confrontations with student protestors
and drug use in the early 1970s, comic books have continualy reflected the national mood, as Wright's imaginative
reading of thousands of titles from the 1930s to the 1980s makes clear. In every genre -- superhero, war, romance,
crime, and horror comic books -- Wright finds that writers and illustrators used the medium to address a variety
of serious issues, including racism, economic injustice, fascism, the threat of nuclear war, drug abuse, and teenage
alienation. At the same time, xenophobic wartime series proved that comic books could be as reactionary as any
medium.