Something about Hulk and the Future

While reading the honestly quite compelling first issue of The Hulk, one panel in particular was extremely grabbing. 


These comments by the main love interest of a Hulk comic in 1962 are honestly quite poignant. It speaks to a changing society, one filled with some of the romance of Golden age comics, but with the freshness and change of the Silver Age. The parallels to war are quite interesting, since what war is changed quite rapidly during this period. In World War 2, which is still the defining event of modern America, war was the stereotypical war, boots on the ground, planes in the sky, etcetera, etcetera. Then, during the era of this comic, and especially in modern times, war became much more mystical. Battles are less and less fought on the field and are struggled with in the mind, in the airwaves, in the popular consciousness. Describing modernity and its' influences as supernatural forces, like the heroine does in the above panel, really gets to the heart of it. Just as the societies of old put things we now know of in detail, such as weather events or genetics, down to supernatural phenomena, many of the new forces that govern us are so intricate and complex that they functionally are supernatural phenomena. These strange forces around us, from microchips, to interest rates, from Russian expansionism, to the real estate market, could all potentially be understood, but are they really? Even academics who spend their entire lives devoted to these subjects disagree on some of the core realities of them, so what chance does the average, or even above average, individual have of perceiving what is going on around them? 

While, to be quite honest, the history of America from 1962 could be described as a fantastic and unimaginable adventure in some ways (if the McDonalds dollar menu was still at 2003 prices I would agree), perhaps this panel speaks of some of the optimism of the age that has died off in more contemporary times. It definitely is an interesting cultural screenshot if nothing else. 
 

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