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Abstract
The 1954 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings in response to a moral panic about comic books and the subsequent creation of the Comics Code Authority as the self-censorship organ of the American comic book industry drastically contracted the comic book market and put several publishers out of business. Within thirty years, however, the comic book industry radically rebounded and experienced an outpouring of genius that, in hindsight, seems unlikely given the strict guidelines of the Comics Code and the culturally conservative 1980s.
This dissertation examines the secret origins of the modern American comic book industry, arguing that changes in the comic book market resulted from systemic changes over time rather than individual flashpoints that merely reflect confluences of trends occurring both in the comic book industry and in the American cultural landscape. The comic book industry created an industry-wide, self-regulating Code in order to conform to Cold War social authorities, promising to publish content that promoted normative culture as defined and propagated by dominant American groups, thereby reinforcing social authority. In making this political compromise, however, they also excluded many of the elements that make art meaningful, such as introspection or meditations on deeper themes of spirituality and human nature. The requirement that comic book evangelists work with, through, and/or around the Comics Code Authority both in their work and in the Code’s impact on the comic book market made possible the comic book renaissance of the 1980s. Further, comic book evangelists who sought to challenge the constraints of the Code found some of their power in having something normative to rebel against.
This dissertation combines original research that tells new parts of the history of the Comics Code while also bringing the disparate elements of this history together for the first time in one study. It examines the nature of censorship and how artists and writers can both work with and resist it. It further explores the manner in which cultural authorities in America have circumscribed media since World War II, determining its perceived value based on its audience and regulating it accordingly. Finally, this dissertation explores the nature of popular culture, market forces, and what helped elevate comic books from a relatively small fraction of the publishing industry to one of the dominant forces in the entertainment world.
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