Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Examples of Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped in Comic Books include:

  • A number of EC Comics in the 1950s. In that era, doctors would appear in cigarette TV commercials telling people how healthy they were. EC in general (and Mad magazine more specifically) worked anti-smoking elements into their features quite frequently. Other notable aesops include:
  • V for Vendetta, specifically the "Valerie" chapter, about a woman who had been a successful actress before the fascist regime slowly and cruelly destroyed her life, which ended in a concentration camp medical experiment, all because she was a lesbian. The narrative would not be half as effective if Moore had been subtle with it.
  • Warren Ellis is big on these.
    • The entire run of Transmetropolitan was a big, long, anvil about the importance of standing up for The Truth and speaking out for what you believe in, regardless of the personal consequences; and the evils of complacency and blindly accepting authority. Making the character who most embodied these principles a self-proclaimed bastard further emphasizes the already subtle-as-a-sledgehammer point.

Spider Jerusalem: I'm sorry, is that too harsh for you? Does that sound too much like the Truth? Fuck you. If anyone in this shithole city gave two tugs of a dead dog's cock about the Truth, this wouldn't be happening.

      • #40, "Business", is a stark look at child prostitution and the failings of underfunded social services. Despite the comic's post-cyberpunk setting, the story rings far too true. But the conclusion/anvil that the story comes to:

Why are your kids selling themselves on the streets? Because you completely fucked up the job of raising them.

      • "Monstering" also has a good one about journalism and the duty of news media:

It's the Journalism of Attachment. It's caring about the world you report on. Some people say that's bad journalism, that there should be a detached, cold, unbiased view of the world in our news media. And if that's what you want, there are security cameras everywhere you could watch footage of.

      • Another one was dropped by the Reservations:

"Remember the past, and learn from it, or you are doomed to repeat it."

    • His run on Thunderbolts is basically him railing against the aftermath of Civil War - "No, the police should not be living tactical weapons roaming the streets looking for someone to wail on."

Joseph Swetnam: Justice, like Lightning, should ever appear. To few men's ruin, but to all men's fear...
We applaud masked police beating the politically inconvenient in the street and then disappearing them.

"Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world - "No, you move.""

Captain America (comics): Without its ideals -- its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash!

  • Most of Grant Morrison's comics (most notably Final Crisis and Flex Mentallo) are tracts speaking against the Dark Age of comics, specifically the idea that comics should mirror Real Life in their violence and morally ambiguous attitudes. Morrison's takes on Superman and Batman are extraordinarily optimistic and straight-forward; Superman is often shown as a borderline God (especially in All-Star Superman) who tirelessly works toward the betterment of mankind, while Batman represents the peak of human ingenuity and intelligence, who can break free from any trap and defeat any villain. The whole thing is a stark and welcome contrast to the Frank Miller ideal of the tortured outcast Batman, and the ultimately ineffectual government puppet Superman.
  • The Green Arrow storyline where he discovers that his sidekick is addicted to heroin. During a time when the title had turned into a rather Anvilicious series, this particular arc was exceptionally well done and considered a turning point in the character, the series, and even to some extent comics in general being a transport for serious issues. Several anvils are dropped—not just drug-related ones, but Green Arrow's sense of betrayal of responsibility for his friend and his relationships with other superheroes. It's a remarkably deep arc during a time when most superheroes were wearing spandex tights and going "POW" at the villains.
  • In the "Forever" story arc of Powers, Christian Walker goes to show his abilities to Albert Einstein, to ask what they are and where they came from. In their conversation afterwards, Einstein delivers an astoundingly good speech about the nature of the scientific attitude, and afterwards...

Walker: I thought -- I thought maybe my story would upset you. I thought that I might be upsetting some of your theories of the--
Einstein: Listen to me, my new friend. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. Someone who can no longer pause to wonder, and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

  • A meta example is the Spider-Man comic book arc, "Green Goblin Reborn!", where Spidey encounters the negative effects of drug abuse, with his friend Harry ODing on pills. Despite this, the Comics Code Authority refused to approve the story for having any depiction of drug use—even when it was peppered with Anvilicious anti-drug messages. Stan Lee decided to publish the stories without the CCA seal of approval, and the ensuing public support prompted the CCA to relax its overly-constrictive guidelines.
  • Punisher: Max's darkest story arc, The Slavers, includes a lot of information—including a lecture, with slides—about the sex slave trade.
  • The two issues of Zot! in which Terry comes out to herself and Woody pens an editorial about the attack on a young man presumed gay.
  • The first story arc of Wonder Woman Vol. 2 drops the same anvil as The Day After, with Diana showing Ares that his plans to start World War III would leave him with nobody to worship him. Later, the "Who Killed Mindi Mayer" issue delves into drug use by revealing that Mindi technically wasn't murdered; she died from a cocaine overdose before her attempted killer pulled the trigger.
  • The moral of Watchmen is that morality is itself ambiguous. Hammered home extra hard by the death of Rorschach, perhaps the only remaining morally absolutist vigilante.

"I leave it entirely in your hands."

    • Also, life is a precious, fragile thing, and we should be grateful for every day we get.
    • Moral absolutism is bad. So are rape and child abuse.
  • The whole reason X-Men exists: you shouldn't be afraid of someone because they're different. Different people are people too - some are bad, some are good, and some are neither. Don't pigeonhole huge groups of people.
    • X-Men is also largely about the world's "good" mutants managing to band together and prove to the world that their powers can be used for good, no matter how many psychopathic mutants decide to abuse their gifts. Even when mutants have every reason to hate humanity, and could conquer the world if they chose to do so, they are always capable of choosing a higher path and working for the good of society for no other reason than that it's the right thing to do.
    • Another anvil dropped is that just because someone hates you does not mean you shouldn't do the right thing and not help them.
      • Of course, the X-Men comics have been breaking both of these aesops for about a decade and a half, so apparently if you drop an anvil long enough it will crack.
  • While Jack Chick has been infamous for being Anvilicious in a negative way, one particular tract, "Why No Revival?", provided a positive one. Instead of criticizing unbelievers (or Catholics), in a tract that was explicitly directed at Christians (and states that it is NOT for the unsaved), he instead criticized Christians who were afraid to admit their faith and beliefs to their peers. In contrast, he shows the ancient martyrs who were under the threat of death and yet were not afraid to say that they were Christians. In the tract, he criticized the hypocrisies of some Christians and shows why many churches faced various spiritual problems and no revival. Even if Jack Chick is woefully out to lunch on a lot of things, he knows this topic very well.
  • The main Aesop of Scott Pilgrim is that if you've made mistakes in the past, you shouldn't run away from them, but rather to accept those flaws to become a better person and avoid making the same mistakes all over again.
  • Kingdom Come is a brutal, heavy-handed Deconstruction of the The Dark Age of Comic Books with a decidedly apocalyptic tone that can come across as needlessly Anvilicious to modern comic fans. But considering the state of the comic book industry at the time of its publication, a subtler Take That might not have had the same effect. For this reason, many fans actually cite Kingdom Come as the definitive end of the Dark Age.
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