This book is an updated history of the American comic book by an industry insider. You'll follow the development of comics from the first appearance of the comic book format in the Platinum Age of the 1930s to the creation of the superhero genre in the Golden Age, to the current period, where comics flourish as graphic novels and blockbuster movies. Along the way you will meet the hustlers, hucksters, hacks, and visionaries who made the American comic book what it is today. It's an exciting journey, filled with mutants, changelings, atomized scientists, gamma-ray accidents, and supernaturally empowered heroes and villains who challenge the imagination and spark the secret identities lurking within us.
This first full-length scholarly study of comic books as a narrative form attempts to explain why comic books, traditionally considered to be juvenile trash literature, have in the 1980s been used by serious artists to tell realistic stories for adults
Winner of the Popular Culture Association's Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Book in Popular or American Culture In the 1940s and ’50s, comic books were some of the most popular—and most unfiltered—entertainment in the United States. Publishers sold hundreds of millions of copies a year of violent, racist, and luridly sexual comics to Americans of all ages until a 1954 Senate investigation led to a censorship code that nearly destroyed the industry. But this was far from the first time the US government actively involved itself with comics—it was simply the most dramatic manifestation of a long, strange relationship between high-level policy makers and a medium that even artists and writers often dismissed as a creative sewer. In Pulp Empire, Paul S. Hirsch uncovers the gripping untold story of how the US government both attacked and appropriated comic books to help wage World War II and the Cold War, promote official—and clandestine—foreign policy and deflect global critiques of American racism. As Hirsch details, during World War II—and the concurrent golden age of comic books—government agencies worked directly with comic book publishers to stoke hatred for the Axis powers while simultaneously attempting to dispel racial tensions at home. Later, as the Cold War defense industry ballooned—and as comic book sales reached historic heights—the government again turned to the medium, this time trying to win hearts and minds in the decolonizing world through cartoon propaganda. Hirsch’s groundbreaking research weaves together a wealth of previously classified material, including secret wartime records, official legislative documents, and caches of personal papers. His book explores the uneasy contradiction of how comics were both vital expressions of American freedom and unsettling glimpses into the national id—scourged and repressed on the one hand and deployed as official propaganda on the other. Pulp Empire is a riveting illumination of underexplored chapters in the histories of comic books, foreign policy, and race.
For the first time ever, the inspiring, infuriating, and utterly insane story of comics, graphic novels, and manga is presented in comic book form! The award-winning Action Philosophers team of Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey turn their irreverent-but-accurate eye to the stories of Jack Kirby, R. Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Fredric Wertham, Roy Lichtenstein, Art Spiegelman, Herge, Osamu Tezuka - and more! Collects Comic Book Comics #1-6.
A Brief History of Comic Book Movies traces the meteoric rise of the hybrid art form of the comic book film. These films trace their origins back to the early 1940s, when the first Batman and Superman serials were made. The serials, and later television shows in the 1950s and 60s, were for the most part designed for children. But today, with the continuing rise of Comic-Con, they seem to be more a part of the mainstream than ever, appealing to adults as well as younger fans. This book examines comic book movies from the past and present, exploring how these films shaped American culture from the post-World War II era to the present day, and how they adapted to the changing tastes and mores of succeeding generations.
Dr. Wertham was senior psychiatrist for the Department of Hospitals in New York City. This book, thoroughly documented by facts and cases, gives the substance of Dr. Wertham's expert opinion on the effects that comic books have on the minds and behavior of children who come in contact with them. Reprint of the 1954 edition with a new comprehensive Introduction by James E. Reibman, Ph.D.
