WI: Comic Books Die Out in the 50s?

I bought a documentary on the history of DC comics, and watching it, it says that comics had trouble after WW2. During the war, the superheroes had gone to war, and were doing things like fighting the Japanese and delivering rifles and supplies to troops in the European theatre, but after the war, they were so associated with the war and it was hard for the audience to see them fighting criminals and mobsters, and so sale sank. As a result, only Batman and Robin, Superman and Wonder Woman stayed around, with any other heroes that survived being ones that were just in the background of those comics, and those heroes were retooled for the conservative 50s. Strong women like Wonder Woman and Lois Lane became bumbling damsels, with Wonder Woman became worried about her boyfriend instead of being the strong Amazon, and Lois Lane going from tenacious reporter to worried about winning Superman's love and if Clark was Superman, and Superman became a dad. Then came "Seduction of the Innocent" and the witch hunts where comics were said to be destroying the youth of America, which had a devastating effect on the industry and drove parents to keep comics out of their homes and drove out of business all sorts of horror comics and other comics that were viewed as juvenile. In response to that, the Comics Code Authority was created, and there was a self censorship of the industry, and they neutered themselves and self regulated themselves, leading to things like Pat Boone comics about the life of singer Pat Boone, and it just drove away the youth. Just one year after the Comics Code's implementation, comic sales dropped by 75 percent, and it appeared that comics, at least super hero comics, were going to die out very, very soon.

What saved Comics was the Silver age. DC revitalized itself by putting Julius Schawtz in charge of DC's plan to bring back the Flash, which he did. Instead of redoing the old Flash, he did a Flash for the times, who was transformed into a man capable of super speed by science, and who worn not the original Flash's hokey outfit, nor any reimagining of it, but a sleek suit design never before seen. And then Schwartz oversaw a series of reboots where other heroes were brought back with modern, serious, science based origins like Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, and he oversaw the creation of the Justice League, which used the earlier concept of the Justice Society, but gave it the new heroes and a new name as the other one was dated.
The Justice Society lead the president of Marvel to have Stan Lee create the Fantastic Four, which lead to the beginning of Marvel's greatness. So Schwartz and the Silver age basically saved DC as well as Marvel.

But what if that didn't happen? What if for whatever stroke of fate, that revival didn't kick off? Perhaps DC tries in an alternate scenario to reboot the past heroes in a goofy way which doesn't find an audience and none of the revival happens and super hero comics die off; I wouldn't put it past DC since in the 60s, when Marvel was dealing with 2-dimensional characters, DC was till in the 50s and was far behind Marvel in sale. What if comic books died off by the 1960s?

Bear in mind, comic books in the 60s and into the 70s had an impact, and gradually reflected serious things like racism, drugs, political corruption, and all the stuff going on at the time and the seriousness that was of the times. Christ, to college students, their revolutionary heroes were not only Malcolm X and Che Guevara, but also the Hulk and Spiderman. So that's not there. And you don't have comics taking on a sense of seriousness and maturity and self examination.
 
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ha-ha hee-hee

The comic venue itself may have become more dominated by just funny-book stuff, the silly antics of cats, mice, bad-tempered ducks, jokes involving explosions and visual puns. There had been a surprising variety of basically low comedy comics in the 60s, many of them featuring the Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, or independent ones like The Little Monsters.
It depends how tight the crackdown on comics is. If it's mainly scaling back the superheros such as Superman, Batman, then less subversive ones might fill their place, including Harvey Comics with Richie Rich and Casper, or Archie Comics with the goofball antics of the Riverdale kids. Also, this was the era of the great Carl Barks, with his elaborate tales of Donald, his nephews, and Scrooge McDuck. :cool:
This may not be the direction the thread was meant to go, but it does look at filling some of the vacuum.
 
But what if that didn't happen? What if for whatever stroke of fate, that revival didn't kick off? Perhaps DC tries in an alternate scenario to reboot the past heroes in a goofy way which doesn't find an audience and none of the revival happens and super hero comics die off; I wouldn't put it past DC since in the 60s, when Marvel was dealing with 2-dimensional characters, DC was till in the 50s and was far behind Marvel in sale. What if comic books died off by the 1960s?
That's at least two separate questions.
If the superhero revival fizzles it shouldn't really affect all the other genres, so presumably some other genre becomes the most prominent
one, just like what happened when superheroes faded away the first time.
Archie-style teenager hijinx was pretty big in the fifties and the non-Archie comics one didn't disappear until the early seventies or so.

For (American) comic books or the entire US comics industry dying off in
the sixties you need more than superhero comics failing.

Also, what about newspaper comic strips?
(Not to mention the rest of the world - the UK, France-Belgium, Italy, Japan etc., none of which were dependent on superheroes and many times published in a different format than the US.)
 
and meanwhile the european development in comics go mostly as otl.
Maybe they become popular in the us too at a later date?
 
OK, you kill off superheroes. That makes my childhood far less entertaining.:( And you butterfly the great stuff like Sable & Scout & Watchmen:eek::eek: (& early new X-Men:().

You don't impact the detective/true crime, Western, war, SF, (cleaned up) horror, or romance comics at all. Nor do you impact the growth of underground comix, including the Tijuana bible porn comix.

So why wouldn't you get a growth in other fields to fill the niche? Comics were a variation on the pulp magazine; why wouldn't The Spirit, The Shadow, The Phantom, or The Spider get books & be successful? Why would G.I. Combat or Fury & the Howlers or Fighting Sailor fail?

Come to that, why couldn't you get *Iron Man as a straight SF book? Or FF as explorers, with Ben as a rocky alien, in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy or something? (Guardians could actually be more successful TTL.)
 
and meanwhile the european development in comics go mostly as otl.
Maybe they become popular in the us too at a later date?
I think the sixties was when the Franco-Belgians really started to break
through - Asterix began in 1959, the Smurfs first appeared in 1958, Tintin
and Lucky Luke began far earlier but I'm not sure if they spread abroad
before then (they first appeared in Swedish around 1960...).
 

Thande

Donor
I don't think "comics" would have died out in the USA. "Superhero comics", perhaps, but that's not the same thing. And of course the fifties were a golden age for comics elsewhere has been noted above, including in the UK.
 
and meanwhile the european development in comics go mostly as otl.
Maybe they become popular in the us too at a later date?

They could *inspire* US comics publishers desperate to boost their sales. The slightly humorous (without being goofy) adventures of characters like Spirou could be adapted fairly easily.
 
At most this crisis would end super hero comics. In that case for some time comics in America will be almost entirely a childish medium. Later comics for older audiences might return in the style of European, namely French and Belgian adventure comics. Buck Danny for instance is almost perfect for the 50s and early 60s in America.
 
historyfool said:
At most this crisis would end super hero comics.
Agreed. This would be big blow for comics generally, but if the superheroes hadn't crowded out everything else, we might still have other genres being popular.

Something else to consider: suppose the comics publishers respond differently? The horror comics that helped create the backlash were mainly aimed at adults. What happens if the publishers don't adopt the CCA & turn the comics into full-size mags, priced for adults, who were the intended market? (Think Heavy Metal.)

Also, if you do butterfly SA Flash, what happens to all the comics fans who read the GA Bats & Supes & other stories? There were more than a few who became comics pros, themselves. How long will it be before one of them wants to try his hand at the character(s) he loved as a kid? How long before you get a "rebooted" SA Flash or Supes anyhow? Late '60s, instead of '56?

It does seem probable, on reflection, Timely goes under...:eek:
 
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