The Great Comics Scare happened when it did for several reasons.
At the same time as the McCarthyist Red Scare, religious authorities, police, government, and self-styled moral guardians-right and left-with the consent/cooperation of comic book industry associations formed an unholy alliance that eviscerated the industry and helped to put Superman, Batman, and the rest on top. But the transformation of the industry led to the domination of “long underwear characters,” a bias that continues to today. Genres as diverse as war, horror, crime, and romance had regularly appeared on shelves and in the hands of readers, the same genre variations as other popular media such as film and television. It is also a story of how the organized left, both in the United States and abroad, joined forces with political, religious, and cultural authorities to stamp out a burgeoning critical medium. What happened in the interim is a telling story of how a uniquely American art form was artificially stunted and constrained in a way that combined moral panic with McCarthyist witch-hunting. By 1956, the industry had shrunk to six publishers and two hundred fifty titles employing two hundred people. In 1952 there existed twenty comic book publishers, publishing six hundred fifty titles a month, and employing one thousand workers.
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