ABSTRACT
After Frederic Wertham and his ilk nearly destroyed the comics industry and, bowing to the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, became a survival necessity, comics were in a bad way. Distribution was drying up (by 1958, even Timely—now Atlas—publisher Martin Goodman was turning to DC/National for a distribution vehicle), 1 sales had plummeted, and publishers were disappearing. News-stands were becoming a thing of the past, a nostalgic memory absorbed into the supermarket as cities gave rise to the domesticity of the suburbs. Comics were losing their primary vehicle for sales and facing new competition for attention thanks to the overwhelming popularity of television and the newly “busy” lifestyle of their primary demographic—kids. In a desperate attempt to maintain sales and create some form of economic security, the once titanic 64-page comic books were halved—half the content for the same dime. The industry was a ghost town, the once-unbridled creativity and boundary-demolishing kicked out of the saloon doors.
