ABSTRACT
Vietnam was in full swing. Richard Nixon was in the White House. Within four years, Nixon would resign in the wake of the Watergate scandal. A new generation of film-makers, inspired by the neo-realism and auteurism of European cinema, began making their presence known. Dennis Hopper released Easy Rider in 1969. Scorcese was coming with Mean Streets in 1973, and Francis Ford Coppola released The Godfather (written by eventual Superman: The Movie screenwriter Mario Puzo) in 1972. Cinema was growing up, and without a massive change—and soon—comics would forever be doomed to existence not as a medium, but a genre.
