Illustrated, Incitive, and Indecent: Comic Censorship and the Effort to Stem Youth Corruption

Abstract

Today, one would be hard-pressed to find a child, teen, or adult in the United States who has not been exposed to comic culture in some sense—a cultural element we share with those Americans from almost a century ago. Comic magazines (hereby referred to as comics) were a staple of American youth culture from the late-1930s to the mid-1950s. According to Paul Lopes, a 1944 study found that nearly every American between six and seven years old read comics, and Shawna Kidman estimates that prior to the comic book crash beginning in 1954, there were around 70 million American comic readers—a number which not only exceeded the US Census Bureau’s estimate of nearly 60 million Americans under age 20, but made up roughly 40% of the American population.1 In other words, around two in five Americans were comic readers at the time. In fact, comics were so popular that to promote literacy among soldiers, the US military even used specialized editions of popular comics, such as Action Comics’ Superman stories, which contained simplified language and quizzes titled “How well did you read?”2 It is clear that the medium was recognized to have engaged readers in all different parts of life, but if comics were so well read among Americans youths and adults alike, why did their popularity decline?