Anti-Communism Within Comic Books In The 1950s

Anti-Communism within Comic Books in the Mid-1950s

Superhero comic books post World War Two began to rapidly decline because the enemy within all of the storylines were Nazis and with the Nazi defeat, there was no enemy left. This left a void to be filled with many superhero comic books in the late 1940s and early 1950s moving towards anti-communism and the defeating of the Soviet Union. However, they had marginal success in this period, since the youth of America understood the soviets had gained the nuclear bomb, which meant the Soviets could not be defeated in one swoop, securing their survival. By the early 1950s, however, the Cold War was warming up, with China becoming Red, and war in Korea. Politicians, like Joseph McCarthy, used anti-communist

David Park argues, the Senate Sub-Committee used expert witnesses like Wertham, as a way of legitimising the Sub-Committee. This resulted in a generalisation of all comic books and as a result, comic books were demonized globally even in the UK, which subsequently affected the industry substantially in sales, this resulted in 18 publishers over the next two years leaving the industry and no new ones joining. The Sub-Committee backfired on the publishers badly, which led the remaining publishers to unite together and to stop government intervention and created the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA) which allowed for self-regulation with The Comic Codes. The publishers had to promise self-regulation within the Comic Codes to be allowed to carry on printing. However, many comic book writers, tried to combat the outcomes of the Sub-Committee, and somewhat make a mockery of McCarthyism, with one comic book strip writing boldly, “there are some people in America who would like to censor… the group most anxious to destroy comics are the communist” . Doing this showed how pointless the Sub-Committee was, by using their own strategies of red-baiting against them by commenting that only communist would allow censorship within their

The insurrection of the Sub-Committee and subsequent Comic Codes gave many comic book producers the opportunity to reinvent their previously successful wartime superhero comics. Even with the Comic Codes they had the opportunity to reinvent the classic hero vs villain fight, as long as there was no blood. This is clearly evident with these comics, which shows that even though Codes were not in full effect, the superhero genre could still followed the Codes rhetoric before their implication. Rodger Sabin comments ‘it was a genre which stayed within the codes’. They did this to somewhat appease the Sub-Committee and the American public; since they feared what they could and could not put in the storylines. The Human Torch in his insert in Captain America #78 show him dominating communism, not only with his whit, but his strength, with him wiping out an army of communist, whilst also comically bending the Tanks cannon the reverse way. Comic writers used these superhero comics to show the American public, the industry was socially responsible, and concerned about American values. Not only this, they