Enid Blyton inspired by Marvel comics

[aminmec]

I've often wondered if Enid used to read Marvel comics which were very popular back then .
Spiderman's main adversary is called Green Goblin and it also features in some stories .There is even a book called The Green Goblin book if I remember correct
[img]https://www.google.co.in/search?client= ... 35NQM:[img]
There could also have been Ghastly Goblin or Gray Goblin but why is there just The Green Goblin .

Then the Butler of the superhero team of the Avengers is called Jarvis who features prominently in many of the issues of the series and Fatty and the rest of the five find outers encounter the servant Jarvis in Mystery of the Secret room .

[img]https://www.google.co.in/search?client= ... 9b1yM:[img]
Interesting coincidence here

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid Blyton obviously took a look at American comics but she considered them unsuitable for children and she wrote scathingly of them in articles, poems and letters, feeling that they were too violent and were a negative influence on impressionable young minds.

To quote from a letter which Enid Blyton wrote to Nicolas Bebbington (Tony printed the letter in Journal 64):

When I was in America 2 things shocked me - one was seeing the ordinary people buying the 96 page news-papers, tearing out the comic strip pages to read with absorbed interest, & throwing away the other pages without a glance! What a mentality! The second thing that shocked me was the prevalence of corruptive comics for the children - some of them incredibly vulgar and brutal... It's a great mistake to let children enjoy violence in any way, & particularly bad for unstable, sadistic or uncontrolled children. They just go out & act the violence that has excited and stimulated them! That soon leads to the Juvenile Courts.

It's fascinating to see how these thoughts fed into The Six Bad Boys.

Along with The Green Goblin Book (1935) Newnes published The Red Pixie Book (1934) and The Yellow Fairy Book (1936), so "Green Goblin" simply fitted the pattern. The Green Goblin character in the Spider-Man stories is a much later creation. I think the same applies to Jarvis - that the butler from the comic dates from much later than Enid Blyton's Jarvis.

[mynameisdumbnuts]

The six bad boys read comics in their hideout, correct? Do characters in the other books read comics? Are they symbols of villainy?

[db105]

Enid Blyton and American superhero comics seem two very different things for me. I associate Enid Blyton with rural life in England, while I associate superheroes with big Americans cities. The quote Anita posted is interesting, and I think it shows a clash of values. Probably it does not especifically refer to superhero comics, though. I would like to know the date of that letter.

In the US during the 50s there was a wave of moral outrage against the depiction of violence and criminal activities in comics for young children. They were blamed for juvenile delinquency whenever it was revealed that a juvenile delinquent had been a reader of comics. One very influential book was The Seduction of the Innocent, by a psychiatrist called Fredric Whertham who defended opinions in line to what Enid says in her letter. This outrage led to the creation of the Comic Code Authority in the mid 50s. The CCA authority was an effort by the industry to self regulate before the government restricted their activities. The CCA forbade the depiction of realistic crimes and violence, supernatural horror, explicit romance and many kinds of comic genres which were important at that time.

The result was that many genres virtually disappeared, and paradoxically the genre of superhero comics grew so much that they almost became synonyms with American comics. However, the style changed, and from realistic crime and violence, superhero comics turned into goofier stories. For example, you could have Batman transformed into a baby by some freak scientific accident and him fighting crime as bat-baby. A lot of it was very laughable, but often it was so zany that there is a real charm to it. At best, the writers compensated the restrictions by showing a lot of imagination. That period is called the Silver Age of comics and it lasted around 15 years, until the publishers abandoned the CCA and stories turned more realistic again.

In part that was due to the influence of Marvel. DC's superheroes (Superman, Batman...) had been created earlier, during the Golden Age, but during the Silver Age Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and others created the most popular Marvel superheroes (X-Men, Spider-Man...) and they tended to have more realistic stories than DC, which made them popular among teenagers while DC's zanier stories seemed more suited for younger children. The Silver Age ended, but by then the dominance of superheroes in American comics was well-established.

So Enid Blyton was not alone in being worried about the effect of comics on young children at that time.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks for the very interesting information about American comics, db105. The letter to Nicolas Bebbington was written in February 1950.

In answer to Mynameisdumbnuts, yes, the six "bad boys" (or at least the original Four Terrors) read comics down in their cellar. Another book in which Enid Blyton mentions comics is Five Run Away Together. Edgar Stick is described as "lying sprawled on the sofa, reading some kind of highly-coloured comic paper."

[KEVP]

The Marvel Comics character "Green Goblin" first appeared in Spider-Man #14, cover date July 1964. Enid Blyton's Green Goblin Book was published in 1935.

Tony Stark's (Iron Man's) Butler Jarvis first appeared in Tales of Suspense #59, cover date November 1964. Enid Blyton's Mystery of the Secret Room was published in 1945.

Clearly, Enid could not have gotten the ideas for these characters from the comic books, because her characters are earlier.

Both of these Marvel characters were invented by comics writer Stan Lee. (with at least some input from the artists as well)

Goblins have long been a part of European legends and fairy tales, going back to medieval and maybe even pre-Christian times. Both Enid Blyton and Stan Lee were just tapping into a well-known trope when they decided to write about "goblins". A "green goblin" gives a good alliteration, and green has long been traditionally the color of fairies and the supernatural.

The quintessential butler has always been the character "Jeeves" (technically a valet, not a butler), invented by the English author P.G.Wodehouse. I suspect that both Jarvis characters were inspired by Jeeves. I suspect that both authors used the name "Jarvis" because it still is a name somewhat reminiscent of the name "Jeeves".

Of course another possibility which I haven't yet researched is that Stan Lee could have been inspired by Enid Blyton . . .

[Rob Houghton]

I know Enid had a very low opinion of comics. As has already been said, she wrote about them and her feelings when she went to America. She also usually attributed the reading of comics to being something lazy or careless or troublesome children read! She pretty much had the opinion that children read these garish comics were uneducated yobs, lol!

I can't quite imagine Enid sitting back and getting engrossed in The Adventures of Spiderman.

[Wolfgang]

I wonder if Enid Blyton was aware of the Tintin series (not a Marvel series). From the fifth story (Lotos) on Hergé made enquiries about the locations his stories would take place so their background would give a more realistic impression on readers.

[Courtenay]

Now that's an interesting thought — and the Tintin stories do depict violence at times (mainly with guns), but never graphically or in any way that could be seen as glorifying or encouraging it. (Apart from one of the very early adventures, Tintin in the Congo, which I gather depicts Tintin shooting a whole herd of gazelles for very little reason, but I haven't read that one and there's certainly nothing like it in the later stories.) Mind you, I don't think Enid would have approved of Captain Haddock's comically portrayed drinking problem and his legendary bouts of swearing...

[mynameisdumbnuts]

Thank you, Anita! I'll have to keep an eye out for comics and the role they play in my next re-reads.

[Wolfgang]

(Apart from one of the very early adventures, Tintin in the Congo, which I gather depicts Tintin shooting a whole herd of gazelles for very little reason...)

Actually that incident was an accident - Tintin thought it was always the same gazelle and he missed it all the times...

[KEVP]

TIntin is much more international than Enid's heroes. Part of the attraction of Tintin is that he keeps going to faraway (but real) places. Enid tends to be much closer to home (unless it is set in Toyland, the Enchanted Forest, or a similar fairyland).

The original version of Tintin in the Congo is notoriously racist, at the time the Congo was a colony of Belgium (the home country of Tintin and his creator Herge). The Belgians infamously exploited the Congo and its people. Tintin in the Congo portrayed the people of the Congo as childlike natives, who needed to be ruled by a foreign nation. At the time, Herge genuinely believed this was an accurate portrayal of the Congo.

[Rob Houghton]

In The Six Bad Boys Enid gives us her view of comics in general - obviously the opposite to what she has Patrick say!

Tom made a difference to the gang. He was not so content as they were to sit in the cellar each evening and read comics. He bought some books down, but, except for Bob, not one of the others wanted to read a book.

"Its too difficult," complained Patrick, throwing down a book that Tom had handed him. "By the time I've spelt out a sentence I've forgotten the meaning. Comics are best - all pictures! If you don't want to read what's underneath, you needn't. You can tell by the pictures. I like comics best - and the cinema too - you don't have to think with either of them."

[Courtenay]

TIntin is much more international than Enid's heroes. Part of the attraction of Tintin is that he keeps going to faraway (but real) places. Enid tends to be much closer to home (unless it is set in Toyland, the Enchanted Forest, or a similar fairyland).

Other than the Adventure series, of course. There's something quite Tintin-esque about The Valley of Adventure in some ways, I think — with the plane flight to an unknown country, the mysterious villains, the prisoner, the wild landscape, the hidden treasures...

The original version of Tintin in the Congo is notoriously racist, at the time the Congo was a colony of Belgium (the home country of Tintin and his creator Herge). The Belgians infamously exploited the Congo and its people. Tintin in the Congo portrayed the people of the Congo as childlike natives, who needed to be ruled by a foreign nation. At the time, Herge genuinely believed this was an accurate portrayal of the Congo.

Yes, I was aware of that — I remember reading somewhere that he later regretted the stereotypes he used in Congo, but he remarked that he was simply going by what he and all other Belgian children were taught at school about the African colonies in the early 20th century. As Wolfgang says, in his later books Hergé did a lot more research and genuinely tried to be more accurate and respectful towards other cultures that he portrayed.

[Anita Bensoussane]

TIntin is much more international than Enid's heroes. Part of the attraction of Tintin is that he keeps going to faraway (but real) places. Enid tends to be much closer to home (unless it is set in Toyland, the Enchanted Forest, or a similar fairyland).

Other than the Adventure series, of course. There's something quite Tintin-esque about The Valley of Adventure in some ways, I think — with the plane flight to an unknown country, the mysterious villains, the prisoner, the wild landscape, the hidden treasures...

A couple of titles in the Secret series are also set abroad and I feel that The Secret Mountain (1941) is probably the most Tintin-esque of Enid Blyton's books. An eclipse of the sun is crucial to the plot of The Secret Mountain and the same device was to play a part in one of Hergé's Tintin comic-books, Prisoners of the Sun (1949). Enid Blyton and Hergé were no doubt aware of classic stories in which characters make use of an eclipse for a similar purpose, e.g. King Solomon's Mines (1885) by H. Rider Haggard (in later editions the solar eclipse was changed to a lunar eclipse because a solar eclipse could not have occurred in the way that Haggard described) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain. Turning to history rather than fiction, it's claimed that explorer Christopher Columbus took advantage of a lunar eclipse in 1504 to convince the indigenous people of Jamaica that their god was angry at their treatment of Columbus and his men.

I can't help thinking that The Secret Mountain would work well in comic-book format as it's packed with thrills and action. In the 1970s my sister and I subscribed to the girls' weekly paper Jinty, published by Fleetway. By coincidence, it was soon after I read The Secret Mountain that Jinty serialised a picture-strip story called 'Alice in a Strange Land' (illustrated by Terry Aspin), about a group of schoolgirls who survived a plane crash in South America and wandered into a lost city of sun-worshippers. One girl was nominated sun goddess and was to be sacrificed to the sun by a high priestess. There was no eclipse but there was a convenient earthquake. The story ran from February to June 1979 and had the same air of disquiet that pervades The Secret Mountain, as well as a number of the same elements – an aeroplane, a forest, a temple, underground passages with a river, a raft, robes and head-dresses, and ceremonies related to sun-worship which involved chanting and human sacrifice.