I haven't read the book being reviewed, so I can't really comment on it. However, I doubt that it is the most important book ever to be written on comic books, since the reviewer made it sound like the book focused on Stan Lee, who did not invent comics. Marvel also did not invent the artist credit, as indicated by other posts. Marvel didn't exist in the beginning of comics, although some of the companies that did merge to become Marvel did. As much as I admire Stan Lee, there were many others that I'm sure he would acknowledge broke bigger ground than he, such as Bill Gaines of EC.
In 1954, 150,000,000 copies of comic books were published per month, on average. Now, knowing the statistics that are easily gathered from the U.S. Census site, that represents more than the demographic of both pimply and non-pimply teenagers. Surveys show that a large portion of the adult population read comic books as well, so the question then becomes, "What happened?"
Dr. Fredric Wertham. That's what happened. He was an overzealous psychiatrist that made the inference that since the majority of his inmates at Bellevue Mental Hospital read comic books, those comic books must be part of the reason his inmates became criminally insane. He published a book, entitled, "Seduction of the Innocent," in 1954 and testified before a Senate Subcommittee. Brought to focus were specific books printed by EC (Tales from the Crypt, etc.) and Fox (Blue Beetle, Phantom Lady, etc.). The message received after the hearings was "Clean up and regulate yourselves, comic publishers, or we will do it for you." It was at that time that the content became watered down and it took until the 1970s before major publishers had the guts to print anything that didn't have the approval of the Comics Code Authority. Twenty years of Disney-fied comic books are enough to place a stigma upon them that has been impossible to remove.
If you want a truly informative book on the history of comic books, let me instead suggest that you eBay for a copy of "The Comic Book In America: An Illustrated History" by Mike Benton. It's out of print, so the used vendor route is the only way to find one, but as an avid collector of Golden Age books I consider it to be *the* definitive authority. My quoted statistics come from that book, which is organized by year, so that you can see how the industry changed over time. I do have other books that are similar and cover other information, but overall this is the best. You can also typically find copies of "Seduction of the Innocent" on eBay, as well, if you're curious about just what it was that set everything into motion.
Before thinking that the US market could one day achieve what the Japanese market has today, take a look at history.
Here are some interesting statistics for you that should have been included in the article.
In 1946, 9 out of 10 children between 8-15 read comic books regularly. Famous Funnies (the first newstand comic book) circulated 6,000,000 copies every month.
In 1950, a study was conducted in Dayton, Ohio and revealed the following:
Nearly forty percent of everyone over the age of 8 had read a comic book in the past 4 months
Almost 35% of the entire population had read a comic book in the past 30 days
54% of all comic book readers were adults over 20 years of age, a slight increase from the survey results of 2 years before
Every comic book was read by 3-4 readers
The average number of comic books read by each person during the previous month was 15, with adults averaging 11 each month
Adult comic-book readers varied little according to education and occupation, but white-collar workers read more comics than any other group
Readership was 52% male, 48% female
50,000,000 comic books were published each month in 1950. They weren't all "funny animal" or super hero, there was a large representation of westerns, science-fiction, horror, adventure, romance and movie/tv adaptations which appealed to all age groups and backgrounds.
In 1954, the hammer dropped. Dr. Frederic Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent and went before a Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in the United States. They told the industry to either clean up their act of be regulated, so they created the Comics Code Authority. It took until the 1980s to finally ignore the CCA and start publishing with grit, but by that time comic books were a niche following, heavily skewed towards males.
1954 was the absolute heyday of comic books, there were 150,000,000 issues printed every month and the industry made $90,000,000 annually from a product that sold for $0.10 each. I wish the article had figures on how many copies of Manga are printed each month because I would love to compare.
All of these figures are taken from The Comic Book In America by Mike Benton, by the way.
ADSL and SDSL can go up to 18 kilofeet, true, but only if there isn't an SLC (secondary location cabinet) between you and the CO. I do know of people that live 5,000 feet from the CO but that go through an SLC to get there. There are two solutions to this issue: 1. SBC is basically placing DSLMs in the SLCs for high density areas, since once you leave the SLC, you're running on good old copper again. Some ISPs also experimented with this in Atlanta but I'm not sure of the current status. 2. Implement IDSL, which does work a lot like ISDN, but doesn't require a working ISDN line to use since you don't dial anywhere. The nice thing is that distance from the CO becomes a non-factor. However, IDSL is still quite unstable and truly for those completely desparate to try it out. The state of IDSL is about like ISDN was five years ago - hardly anybody has the answers to exactly how to configure it. YET.
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I haven't read the book being reviewed, so I can't really comment on it. However, I doubt that it is the most important book ever to be written on comic books, since the reviewer made it sound like the book focused on Stan Lee, who did not invent comics. Marvel also did not invent the artist credit, as indicated by other posts. Marvel didn't exist in the beginning of comics, although some of the companies that did merge to become Marvel did. As much as I admire Stan Lee, there were many others that I'm sure he would acknowledge broke bigger ground than he, such as Bill Gaines of EC.
In 1954, 150,000,000 copies of comic books were published per month, on average. Now, knowing the statistics that are easily gathered from the U.S. Census site, that represents more than the demographic of both pimply and non-pimply teenagers. Surveys show that a large portion of the adult population read comic books as well, so the question then becomes, "What happened?"
Dr. Fredric Wertham. That's what happened. He was an overzealous psychiatrist that made the inference that since the majority of his inmates at Bellevue Mental Hospital read comic books, those comic books must be part of the reason his inmates became criminally insane. He published a book, entitled, "Seduction of the Innocent," in 1954 and testified before a Senate Subcommittee. Brought to focus were specific books printed by EC (Tales from the Crypt, etc.) and Fox (Blue Beetle, Phantom Lady, etc.). The message received after the hearings was "Clean up and regulate yourselves, comic publishers, or we will do it for you." It was at that time that the content became watered down and it took until the 1970s before major publishers had the guts to print anything that didn't have the approval of the Comics Code Authority. Twenty years of Disney-fied comic books are enough to place a stigma upon them that has been impossible to remove.
If you want a truly informative book on the history of comic books, let me instead suggest that you eBay for a copy of "The Comic Book In America: An Illustrated History" by Mike Benton. It's out of print, so the used vendor route is the only way to find one, but as an avid collector of Golden Age books I consider it to be *the* definitive authority. My quoted statistics come from that book, which is organized by year, so that you can see how the industry changed over time. I do have other books that are similar and cover other information, but overall this is the best. You can also typically find copies of "Seduction of the Innocent" on eBay, as well, if you're curious about just what it was that set everything into motion.
Here are some interesting statistics for you that should have been included in the article.
In 1946, 9 out of 10 children between 8-15 read comic books regularly. Famous Funnies (the first newstand comic book) circulated 6,000,000 copies every month.
In 1950, a study was conducted in Dayton, Ohio and revealed the following:
50,000,000 comic books were published each month in 1950. They weren't all "funny animal" or super hero, there was a large representation of westerns, science-fiction, horror, adventure, romance and movie/tv adaptations which appealed to all age groups and backgrounds.
In 1954, the hammer dropped. Dr. Frederic Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent and went before a Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in the United States. They told the industry to either clean up their act of be regulated, so they created the Comics Code Authority. It took until the 1980s to finally ignore the CCA and start publishing with grit, but by that time comic books were a niche following, heavily skewed towards males.
1954 was the absolute heyday of comic books, there were 150,000,000 issues printed every month and the industry made $90,000,000 annually from a product that sold for $0.10 each. I wish the article had figures on how many copies of Manga are printed each month because I would love to compare.
All of these figures are taken from The Comic Book In America by Mike Benton, by the way.
ADSL and SDSL can go up to 18 kilofeet, true, but only if there isn't an SLC (secondary location cabinet) between you and the CO. I do know of people that live 5,000 feet from the CO but that go through an SLC to get there. There are two solutions to this issue: 1. SBC is basically placing DSLMs in the SLCs for high density areas, since once you leave the SLC, you're running on good old copper again. Some ISPs also experimented with this in Atlanta but I'm not sure of the current status. 2. Implement IDSL, which does work a lot like ISDN, but doesn't require a working ISDN line to use since you don't dial anywhere. The nice thing is that distance from the CO becomes a non-factor. However, IDSL is still quite unstable and truly for those completely desparate to try it out. The state of IDSL is about like ISDN was five years ago - hardly anybody has the answers to exactly how to configure it. YET.