Comics for Film, Games, and Animation

CHAPTER 11

Seduction of the Innocent

Comics Under Siege, 1945–1954

Since 1929, America had had defined enemies who left in their wake economic or physical decimation that fostered a desire in the populace to rise up and overcome those forces. During the Great Depression, it was the corporate “fat cats” whose carelessness and greed plunged the country into an economic spiral, leaving countless out of work and destitute. From those ashes arose an American fighting spirit, a desire to return to the prosperity that they had once enjoyed. It was in that fighting spirit that the comic book superheroes staked their claim on the collective consciousness of the youth (and young-at-heart) of America, and a new pop-culture sensation was born.

World War ...