Michael Goodrum and Philip Smith, Printing Terror. American Horror Comics as Cold War Commentary and Critique

In 1944 America, 41 per cent of men and 28 per cent of women read comics, plus 91 per cent of American children. By 1950, 'the comics industry generated an annual profit of almost $41 million dollars and published 50 million comics a month: everyone read comics' (pp 17-18). Resistance to the industry came from groups such as church and parental organisations that assumed children read the texts seriously. 1954 witnessed the adoption of the Comics Code Authority (CCA), a self-regulatory body that prohibited certain content. It dealt a huge blow to the horror genre, although it did not destroy it: it was to see a significant revival in the 1970s when the CCA reviewed their standards.Printing Terror. American Horror Comics as Cold War Commentary and Critique provides a broad history of the comics it addresses, but its key focus is on addressing the horror genre as a cultural force and examining its commentary on the world.