Esquire magazine

Gloria Emerson Take the Plunge by Gloria Emerson first published in ESQUIRE Magazine, May 1976. Reprinted courtesy of Esquire and the Hearst Corp. 

Like Superman and Captain America before him, Spider-Man be=came a cultural icon for his era. Somehow the figure of an angst-ridden, quasi-nuclear costumed hero answered a variety of social needs. In one tale, the hero has to borrow bus fare to track down the villain. By the mid-1970s, Spider-Man sales had topped even those of Superman. In 1965, Esquire magazine noted that Spider-Man s image was as popular in radical campus circles as that of revolutionary leader Che Guevara. 

William Severini Kowinski is a writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He has published articles in a number of magazines, such as The Smithsonian, Esquire, New Times, and The New York Times Magazine. This selection is taken from his book-length study, The Mailing of America An Inside Look at the Great Consumer Paradise (1985), which investigates the effects of shopping malls on the lives of modern Americans. 

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