Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Representations of HIV/AIDS in Popular American Comic Books, 1981-1996

Avila, William Richard
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1616593578624264

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies.
From 1981-1996, the United States experienced an epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) that held profound implications for issues ranging from civil rights, public education, and sexual mores, to government accountability, public health, and expressions of heterosexism. Popular comic books that broached the subject of HIV/AIDS during the U.S. epidemic elucidate how America’s discourse on the disease evolved in an era when elected officials, religious leaders, legal professionals, medical specialists, and average citizens all struggled to negotiate their way through a period of national crisis. The manner whereby comic book authors, illustrators, and publishers engaged the topic of HIV/AIDS changed over time but, because comic books are an item of popular culture primarily produced for a heterosexual male audience, such changes habitually mirrored the evolution of the nation’s mainstream, heteronormative debates regarding the epidemic and its sociocultural and political implications. Through studying depictions of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in popular comic books, alterations in the heterocentric, national discourse emerge revealing how homophobic dismissals of the “gay plague” in the early 1980s gave way to heterosexual panic in the mid-1980s, followed by the epidemic’s reinterpretation as a national tragedy in the late-1980s. Ultimately, this study uncovers how, in the early 1990s, HIV/AIDS awareness became a national cause celebre and a fad effectively commoditized by the economic forces of American popular culture until its novelty waned when the epidemic phase of the U.S. HIV/AIDS crisis drew to a close in the mid-1990s. Throughout, representations of HIV/AIDS in popular American comic books show how comic book creators sought to elevate their medium beyond the confines of its perceived juvenile trappings by exploring topical and controversial material that would appeal to the expanding market of adult buyers that blossomed from the early 1980s until the comic book industry imploded circa 1994. In utilizing a matter of major sociocultural and political significance to achieve artistic and commercial aims, this study demonstrates how the business dictates of the comic book industry, principally the need to attract and retain readers, drove the medium’s creative considerations of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Jeffery Brown (Advisor)
William Albertini (Committee Member)
Timothy Messer-Kruse (Committee Member)
Michael Decker (Other)
375 p.
American History; American Literature; American Studies; Mass Media; Public Health
HIV AIDS comic books; HIV AIDS epidemic; HIV AIDS popular culture; HIV AIDS mass media; HIV AIDS awareness; HIV AIDS United States; comic book history; American cultural history; homophobia; heterosexism; gay plague; popular comic books; 1980s-90s

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Avila, W. R. (2021). Representations of HIV/AIDS in Popular American Comic Books, 1981-1996 [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1616593578624264

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Avila, William. Representations of HIV/AIDS in Popular American Comic Books, 1981-1996. 2021. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1616593578624264.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Avila, William. "Representations of HIV/AIDS in Popular American Comic Books, 1981-1996." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1616593578624264

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1616593578624264
2,359
© 2021, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.