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# (Untitled)
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/415/
- Published: 2005-03-31T22:40:00.000Z
- Updated: 2022-05-18T10:11:56.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: TWE, #wpChunk

On Comics

[Interesting article about society's attitude toward comics](http://www.jeetheer.com/comics/intellectualmarijuana.htm?ref=thedailyeudemon.com). For the first half of the century, the article says comics were condemned as “intellectual marijuana” and contributors to juvenile delinquency. In the last half of the century, they were accepted, thanks in large part to Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong. Here are two excerpts:

“The careers of two Catholic intellectuals, Marshall McLuhan and Father Walter Ong, illustrate how comics re-won respect in the post-war era. In the 1940s, long before his fame as a media guru, McLuhan was exciting the imagination of bright, young students by confidently linking together disparate phenomena, from modernist art to medieval theology, into a single worldview. He gathered around him a circle of fledging scholars, including a young priest named Walter Ong, who were eager to join in his quest to make sense of the modern techno-communication landscape – what we now call, thanks in part to McLuhan, the media.   
  
”In their early work, the McLuhan circle tended to be critical of mass culture. Ong, for example, attacked Mickey Mouse in 1941 as 'Mr. Disney's West-Coast rodent,' while McLuhan in 1951 suggested that Superman was a potential dictator.   
  
”Yet as they immersed themselves in the subject, they quickly became more appreciative of popular culture, finding possibilities for creativity and even liturgical beauty in art aimed at a broad audience.   
  
”In 1951, Ong was openly praising Walt Kelley's *Pogo* for displaying a linguistic playfulness reminiscent of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. McLuhan, meanwhile, came to cherish *L'il Abner* and *Mad* magazine as evidence that sophisticated satire could be appreciated by both young and old. And he was critical of society's kneejerk reaction to comics in general.”  
  
”In their shifting attitude toward popular culture, the McLuhan circle was a harbinger of change.”