This is what an obsession for comic book collecting will do to a man! Not to mention the desire to test a hypothesis.

Over the next few weeks I will be revising my Master's Thesis, chapter by chapter. Originally published in December 2003, I will make revisions to better fit the audience of the CGC journal entries rather than that of the original scholarly audience. Hopefully, readers will be able to enjoy and share the journey I had while conducting and collecting research on my thesis as I searched for the answer to the question: Were Batman Comic Books More Violent During the Golden, Silver or Modern age of comic books.

Title: A Content Analysis of The Levels of Violence in Batman Comic Books: A Test of Moynihan's Theory of Defining Deviancy Down.

This is an abstract of a Thesis presented to the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Western Illinois University in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by K.E. Runkle December 2003.

Abstract: In recent years, media violence has been a topic of considerable scholarly research and popular commentary. Most of the attention has focused on the violent content of movies, television entertainment and news, video games, and music. In general, studies of these specific media forms suggest that violent content is high and that it has been on the increase. this thesis focuses on another form of popular media: comic books. Are comic books also high in violent content? Has comic book violence increased, remained stable, or decreased over time? This thesis will provide partial answers to these questions by using content analysis of the super hero character Batman over a period of six decades. In addition, this thesis will test Daniel Patrick Moynihan's theory of defining deviancy down by examining representative issues of Batman dating from 1940 to 2000. Findings of this thesis run contrary to the research literature on the topic of violence in the media.

Please stay tuned, next week I will be jumping right into Chapter I, Introduction as I define the statement of the problem which helped drive this research project. Hopefully, the reader will find my journey as fun and enlightining as I did.

Copyright 2009 K.E. Runkle