1950's
The middle decade of the last century was not a good one for the comics industry. After the War, sales dropped dramatically and then continued to slide down throughout the 1950’s. Super heroes all died out between 1950 and 1955 with only Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (and a few smaller ones) still being published. While the super hero was faltering, other genres began to surge in popularity. Western, romance, crime, horror and science fiction comic books all became immensely popular. It was the sudden rise in popularity experienced by crime and horror comics, coupled with an increase in juvenile delinquency that gave rise to Fredric Wertham and his crusade against comics. Dr. Wertham was a psychiatrist who was against comics. He perceived a link between them and juvenile delinquency but his conclusions were based on anecdotal evidence and generally amounted to the same thing that comes up in society every few years when ‘well-meaning and right thinking’ people are afraid of something. “X is a bad influence on Y, which is why Z happens”. Generally items filling in X are popular culture such as books, movies, TV and video games, and Y is always either children or mentally disturbed people. Z rarely has any real link to X or Y beyond an imagined one. As it always happens when people see something they don’t like or can’t explain those who know better than all of us ignorant sheep want to be allowed to tell us what to do, read, think or believe. Unfortunately for comics, this time it worked.
Wertham testified at hearings on Capitol Hill that, along with his book Seduction of the Innocent, resulted in the comics industry creating a self-censoring body called the Comics Code Authority. The CCA’s new rules caused virtually all crime, horror and dark fantasy comics to either cease publication or become so sanitized as to be unreadable. Many publishers (Ace, Avon, Fiction House and Mainline) simply closed their doors as a result of the new restrictions. EC Comics survived only by converting the comic book MAD into a magazine size format, which was exempted from the CCA. Under the new rules any comic that was even remotely controversial suffered and became like an episode of Ozzie and Harriet. This sanitization of the product only made the decline in sales worse.
Wertham testified at hearings on Capitol Hill that, along with his book Seduction of the Innocent, resulted in the comics industry creating a self-censoring body called the Comics Code Authority. The CCA’s new rules caused virtually all crime, horror and dark fantasy comics to either cease publication or become so sanitized as to be unreadable. Many publishers (Ace, Avon, Fiction House and Mainline) simply closed their doors as a result of the new restrictions. EC Comics survived only by converting the comic book MAD into a magazine size format, which was exempted from the CCA. Under the new rules any comic that was even remotely controversial suffered and became like an episode of Ozzie and Harriet. This sanitization of the product only made the decline in sales worse.
