Class

That comics are READING MATERIAL for the lower classes is an assumption made in almost every country from the nineteenth century on. This typically locates both READERS and MEDIUM as in deficit, although it may also be celebratory, as when Will Allred argued that American comics were “created by the working class for the working class” (2012: 261). Class can be significant with regard to specific characters or titles. For instance, Kevin Michael Scott said of Daredevil (1964–) that “no other comic (…) placed its hero so squarely in the realm of the poor and working classes” against “the corrupting bargain made between government, crime, and wealth (…) to profit from [them]” (DiPaolo 2018:169 and 171). In another example, Andrew Alan Smith discusses how Ben Grimm continues to perform a working-class identity despite accruing wealth and EDUCATION, suggesting class is a “sticky” factor in self-definition (DiPaolo 2018). Another link involves comics created to generate social aspiration amongst working-class readers. An example was the British girls’ comic Girl (Hulton Press 1951–1964), which offered COMIC STRIPS about “acceptable” activities for middle-class girls, including ballet; “respectable” careers, such as nursing; and school STORIES focused on fee-paying schools, not those available free to all (Gibson 2015).