Comics evolution and reception
Defining comics is rather complicated, once one starts to study the taxonomy diachronically and to distinguish between particular languages and traditions. Nevertheless, according to Peterson and Gerstein (889): ‘as an aspect of popular culture, comic books have always reflected the historical time period in which they were produced’. Comic books often represent either conventional or unconventional content, based on the status of accepting authoritarianism at the time. In their debut time, more or less, they suffered the stigma of light, not to say inconsiderable, pop culture, tangible in C.S. Lewis’ statement: ‘a taste of comics is excusable only by extreme youth because it involves acquiescence in hideous draughtsmanship
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Fredric Wertham published his anti-comics crusade on the social effects of comics ‘Seduction of the innocent’ concluding that comic books caused even delinquency (Sabin, 158/ Beaty, 155). The battle against objectionable comic books shared many of the popular aversions and tactics of the anti Communist purges. ‘Both McCarthyism and the anti-comic book hysteria were only parts of a larger, more encompassing crusade against domestic subversion in all its varieties’ (Mitchell, 66).
All these concerns about moral weakening led publishers enforce the restrictive self-censoring Comic Code Authority (CCA), which resulted in the mainstream juvenilization of the medium and hindered experimentation in the medium’s aesthetics and content, leading to a major decline in the market (Wright).
In the 1970s when the CCA was practically abolished, adult content again returned to comics’ pages. The most significant innovation of the 1970s was underground comics (Sabin, 94-5, 103-7, 124-6) (or ‘comix’), first flourished in USA, that witnessed a freedom to experiment with new contents, including pornography (Hunt, 388). In any case, no one had ever suggested that adult readers required protection from comic books, just like the children did. European underground comics followed USA