As American as jazz or rock and roll, comic books have been central in the nation's popular culture since Superman's 1938 debut. In this text, Bradford W. Wright offers an often provocative history of the comic book industry within the context of 20th-century American society. From Batman's Depression-era battles against corrupt local politicians and Captain America's one-man war against Nazi Germany to Iron Man's Cold War exploits in Vietnam and Spider-Man's confrontations with student protestors and drug use in the early 1970s, comic books have continually reflected the national mood, as Wright's reading of thousands of titles from the 1930s to the 1980s makes clear. In every genre - superhero, war, romance, crime and horror comic books - Wright finds that writers and illustrators used the medium to address a variety of serious issues, including racism, economic injustice, fascism, the threat of nuclear war, drug abuse and teenage alienation. At the same time, xenophobic wartime series proved that comic books could be as reactionary as any medium.
Wright's study also focuses on the role that comic books played in transforming children and adolescents into consumers; the industry's ingenious efforts to market their products to legions of young but savvy fans; the efforts of parents, politicians, religious organizations, civic groups, and child psychologists like Dr. Fredric Wertham to link juvenile delinquency to comic books and impose censorship on the industry; and the changing economics of comic book publishing over the course of the century. This work is at once a study of popular culture and a look at an enduring American art form.