Vasili Kaliman

Fantastic documentary about the history of comic book culture.

In 1954 the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency conducted an investigation into how the comic book industry was supposedly contributing to the moral decay of a nation’s youth. The investigations were spurred on by a number of articles that blamed comics for the rise in juvenile delinquency in post-war America. Chief among the critics was Doctor Frederic Wertham, whose book, “Seduction of The Innocent” has been blamed for nearly single-handedly crippling the entire comics industry. 

In 1955, the comic book publishers formed the self-regulating organization, The Comics Code Authority, which great impacted on how comic books were perceived by the public and what kind of stories were told in the comics for decades.