This journal entry is a conclusion to complete Chapter II of my master's thesis which i began in my journal entry last week.

Enjoy!!!History of Comic BooksComics are a vehicle for traveling into the American past. During the 1940's super hero comic books focused largely on WWII as the major theme of their stories. During the 1950's, super hero comic books changed their theme and for the most part they focused primarily on crime and twarting the communist regime. In the 1960's and 1970's, comic books once again changed their major themes to match the confusing involvement of the U.S. in the Vietnam War along with the protests found within many colleges and universities, such as anti-war demonstrations, peace marches as well as the cynical attitudes of American citizens as government officials were caught in scandals.Comic books, as most people may envision them today did not start out in the fashionable sense of Batman and Superman comic books (Berger 1973). Comic charavter such as the Yellow Kid, The Katzenjammer kids, Krazy Kat, Little Nemo and Mutt and Jeff began as newspaper comic strips and were indroduced as early as 1895 (Berger 1973). Printed in the color yellow, and with the rise of techonological advancements associated with newspaper productio, The Yellow Kid was born (Berger 1973). Created by Richard Outcault, the Yellow Kid, with its depictions of immigrant children set in lower-class urban areas and having no regard for adult authority figures, soon acquired substantial popularity among the general public (Berger 1973). The introduction of balloon dialogue and the use of a set of progressive panels to explain a story soon became the norm in which other comic strips would come to follow (Inge 1978). Over the course of several years comic strip characters such as Popeye, Barney Google, Bringing Up Father, and Moon Mullins began to appear in the newspapers. However, the action/adventure genre of comic strip characters did not fully develop until the introduction of the first science fiction comic strip, Buck Rogers in 1929 as well as the introduction of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan which was converted from novel form to comic strip (Inge, 1978:79). In their early form, comic books, were cardboard bound reprints of classic works such as The Yellow Kid, Barney Google and Mutt and Jeff (Inge 1978:79). The following is a brief explanation of how the comic format began: "The comic book as we know it, however began in 1933 when ten thousand copies of Funnies on Parade were printed with thirty-two pages of Sunday color newspaper reprints within a paper covered booklet about 7 1/" by 10" in size and intended to be given away as a premium for using the products of Proctor and Gamble " (Inge, 1978:80). Funnies On Parade attracted so much popularity, that thirty-five thousand issues of Famouis Funnies by Dell publishing were sold for ten cents a copy. According to Inge (1978:81), "this was to become the first monthly comic magazine which also reaved a circulation peak of nearly one million copies during its twenty-five year existence." Inge (1978) also notes: "While other publishers would begin successful imitations of this reprint comic book, such as Popular Comics, Tip Top Comics, King Comics a major innovation occurred when in 1935 National Periodical Publications issued More Fun, the first comic book to publish original material written and drawn for its unique page size and format."Later, in 1937, National Periodical Publications which would soon become DC comics issued Detective Comics devoted to detective and crime stories (Inge 1978). In June 1938, National Periodical Publications issued Action Comics No. 1 featuring the very first Superman story, revolutionizing the industry and paving the way for other super hero characters such as Batman, The Sub-Mariner, The Human Torch, Captain America, The Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, The Spirit, Daredevil, Plastic Man, Shazam and a plethora of other characters some enduring many years of popular public interest (Inge, 1978).Defining Deviancy DownIn 1993, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan published an article titled "Defining Deviancy Down: How We've Become Accustomed to Alarming Levels of Crime and Destructive Behavior" in which he discusses the French sociologist Emile Durkheim and his book The Rules of Sociological Method (1895). In this book Durkheim (1966:65) states that "crime is present not only in the majority of societies of one particular species but in all societies of all types. There is no society that is not confronted with the problem of criminality." Although the definition of what constitutes a criminal act may change from time to time, there are still those people who feel it necessary to commit criminal acts (Durkheim, 1966:66). More specifically, Durkheim (70) maintains that "crime is, then necessary; it is bound up with the fundamental condition of all social life, and by that very fact it is useful, because these conditions of which it is a part are themselves indispensable to the normal evolution of morality and law." That is to say, without crime society would not function properly yet too much crime can be detrimental to the way a society functions. Extending a discussion of Durkheim's thesis, Moynihan (1993) argues that deviancy, specifically violence, has become so normalized in America that what was once defined as a deviant act forty or fifty years ago is considered a normal act by today's standards. According to Moynihan (1993:18) "the normalization of violence is categorized by "the growing acceptance of unprecedented levels of violent crime." That is to say American society now accepts violent crime as the norm rather than the exception. This thesis will test part of Moynihan's analysis of normalizing violence as it pertains to comic books. Testing Moynihan's thesis of "defining deviancy down", Maguire (200) used professional wrestling to evaluate the validity of Moynihan's assertion that deviant behavior has become normalized in American society. In this study, Maguire (2000:553) examined 12 months worh of Monday night wrestling programs from "January through December of 1999." The author's "main objective of the present research is to identify dominant patterns of behavior and the social meanings that attach to them" (553.) He then compared "behavioral patterns of the previous era of professional wrestling" (553) with that of the behavior patterns of the current era of professional wrestling. The study analyzed such themes of the worls of wrestling as morality, racism, sexism, use of sex, violence, forms of violence, weapons used to commit violent acts and the types of victims commonly assaulted (verbally and physically).To conclude, Maguire (563) maintains that Moynihan's thesis should apply to both macro-level and micro-level studies. Maguire's test of professional wrestling is a micro-level analysis along with this present test of Moynihan's thesis using comic books. In addition, Maguire asserts that deviancy has been defined down within the arena of professional wrestling. Unlike Moynihan, Maguire (563) states "the process can be reversed." Therefore this current thesis is a further test of Moynihan's, using a different form of mass media entertainment, comic books.HypothesisThe current literature on the topic of media violence suggests that violence is on the increase and has been for some time now. Some psychological research goes as far to state that violent and aggressive acts are linked to video games (