May 2013
Intermediate to advanced
352 pages
8h 31m
English
After Frederic Wertham and his ilk nearly destroyed the comics industry and, bowing to the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, became a survival necessity, comics were in a bad way. Distribution was drying up (by 1958, even Timely—now Atlas—publisher Martin Goodman was turning to DC/National for a distribution vehicle),1 sales had plummeted, and publishers were disappearing. News-stands were becoming a thing of the past, a nostalgic memory absorbed into the supermarket as cities gave rise to the domesticity of the suburbs. Comics were losing their primary vehicle for sales and facing new competition for attention thanks to the overwhelming popularity of television and the newly “busy” lifestyle ...