Have you actually read "Seduction of the innocent"?

[ctc]

>it occurs to me that he wasn't the first Pop Psychologist to attack comics in the press.

Even Hogarth's works.... way back when.... were criticized by the press.

>and offered Wertham the opportunity to write his own brand of wholesome comics

Hmmmm.... the mind reels. I kinda picture Wertham becoming the original Crumb. (Not sure why, but it makes sense to me.)

Don C.

[thunderbolt]

http://blog.newsarama.com/2010/05/12/your-manga-minute-trying-to-find-the-silver-lining/

looks like Manga is finally falling in sales, Viz is laying off 40 % of its staff.

[samurainoir]

http://blog.newsarama.com/2010/05/12...silver-lining/
looks like Manga is finally falling in sales, Viz is laying off 40 % of its staff.

Yeah, Don and I were talking about that earlier in the thread. I was hoping it was a natural adjustment in the initial ten year growth bubble and the general economic situation, but I think Don is right. We'll see where it goes in the next year or so.

With that said, it's still interesting to see the side by side comparisons over at Icv2 between manga and North American content graphic novels.
ICv2 - Comics and Graphic Novel Sales Down in 2009

[samurainoir]

>it occurs to me that he wasn't the first Pop Psychologist to attack comics in the press.

Even Hogarth's works.... way back when.... were criticized by the press.

Burne Hogarth? For what? Tarzan?

>and offered Wertham the opportunity to write his own brand of wholesome comics

Hmmmm.... the mind reels. I kinda picture Wertham becoming the original Crumb. (Not sure why, but it makes sense to me.)

Given Wertham's crusade for social justice and racial equality in the cities, one would think that he and Bill Gaines might have found some common ground.

Wertham's work in passing legislation restricting the sale of Adult-themed comics to minors in New York was overturned by Gov. Thomas Dewey twice on first ammendment grounds, which is why he went the public route with parent's groups and Seduction of the Innocent. Under this scenario, at least EC would have stood a chance at keeping their line of comics and cultivating the existing adult adience for this horror and crime material under the banner that it was aimed for a mature readership.

Instead Gaines' last ditch attempt to fight back with the formation of the Comics Magazine Association of America backfired when Archie and DC used it as an opportunity to essentially run EC out of business with the formation of the code.

Ultimately this wasn't really what Wertham had intended since he HATED what the comics code represented, which he felt was hypocritical. Wertham pointed out that what the code essentially did was eliminate the consquences of crime and violence and creating an even more distorted view than the pre-code material.

Meanwhile, the comics that were aimed at children thrived under these conditions, and we also had the rise of Romance Comics, which ultimately cultivated an adult female readership during the fifties and sixties before (arguably) Gloria Steinem era feminism entered the status quo.

[ctc]

>Burne Hogarth? For what? Tarzan?

Had to look that one up.... I meant Topffer, Dunno why I said Hogarth. Maybe he’s thinking of me....

>I was hoping it was a natural adjustment in the initial ten year growth bubble

That’s okay; it’s cyclic too. Give it another 10, 15 years. I’m wondering if what we got was the Japanese cycle: they tied a lot of the comics in with the cartoons when they brought them over, and the cartoons are expensive. So they started concentrating on what sold; which narrows the variety, which narrows the audience, which perpetuates the downward spiral.

>at least EC would have stood a chance at keeping their line of comics and cultivating the existing adult adience for this horror and crime material under the banner that it was aimed for a mature readership.

Yeah. It’s a tough call though; since any instances of comic censorship were from within. I gotta wonder how much EC was dinged by the perception of the public that comics were a kids’ media, as opposed to any sort of organized censorship. They made Mad an oversize magazine so’s to distance it from the comics. On the racks officially, but I gotta wonder if it was to distance it in the minds of the public too.

>we also had the rise of Romance Comics, which ultimately cultivated an adult female readership during the fifties and sixties before (arguably) Gloria Steinem era feminism entered the status quo.

Interesting point. I wonder what the age range on those books was though. I’d suspect it wasn’t adults; but preteens and maybe teens. I wonder, ‘cos so many of them became generic girls’ magazines by the late 50's.

Don C.

[ctc]

>Dunno why I said Hogarth. Maybe he’s thinking of me....

Maybe I was thinking of William Hogarth. Still not right, but I AM getting old.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

That’s okay; it’s cyclic too. Give it another 10, 15 years. I’m wondering if what we got was the Japanese cycle: they tied a lot of the comics in with the cartoons when they brought them over, and the cartoons are expensive. So they started concentrating on what sold; which narrows the variety, which narrows the audience, which perpetuates the downward spiral.

That's exactly what I think is happening. Looking at the stats, the top sellers which are generally the anime and toy tie-ins (Deathnote, Bakugan, Bleach, Naruto, One-Piece etc), are still doing quite well, but it's the mid-list and bottom titles that are the ones suffering.

However in all fairness, in conversation with friends in the Book Retail and Publishing, it's not just manga/graphic novels that have been hit hard in the past few years. This trend is all across the board in the print field. It looks like the future trend in print publishing is going to be the top publishers focusing on their top tier "name" authors like Stephen King, Tom Clancy etc. and quickly dropping everyone on the mid-list and bellow. However, the silver lining to this one might be that these cult-authors such as your Spider Robinsons, go the direct-to-audience itunes route (and perhaps depending on the future of "print to order" services as well).

Interesting point. I wonder what the age range on those books was though. I’d suspect it wasn’t adults; but preteens and maybe teens. I wonder, ‘cos so many of them became generic girls’ magazines by the late 50's.

I've actually got the stats around here somewhere! The percentage for male adult readers at the was fairly substantial, but surprisingly, so was the female readership. Let me see if I can dig them out.

Keeping in mind this was the pre-Television era, where other than arguably Radio, Print still ruled as the dominant media. Off the top of my head, I believe the number stat commonly used to refute Wertham is the fact that 92% of ALL male children read comics.

I think these numbers were fairly significant in eventually CLEARING Comics as a medium, by the Senate committee, but by then the war had already been "lost" in the media and the industry's self-serving (for Archie and DC) comics code instigation.

[samurainoir]

Here was the comic book readership breakdown in 1947, according to a industry studies, from the book "The Comic Book in America: An Illustrated History."

95% of all boys age 6-11
91% of all girls age 6-11
87% teen males
81% teen women
41% men age 18-30
28% women age 18-30

In 1947 the Superhero "fad" had worn out except for top titles like Superman, and Young Romance #1 debuted. Hard to believe the original Golden age of Superheroes was less than a decade!

[ctc]

>This trend is all across the board in the print field.

Yeah. On the UP side it doens't affect the proliferation of "small press" type stuff. Thanks to print on demand places lots of stuff gets published. And thanks to the online thing, it's readily available to anyone searching it out. The digital vs print thing gets a lot of play; but it's not as huge an issue as the big companies make it out to be. Production-wise, anyhoo. (Marketing is a different animal altogether.) Best example: newspaper comic strips are dying off, as newspaper strips. But look how many online comics follow the format.

>Hard to believe the original Golden age of Superheroes was less than a decade!

Not really. Well; for me, anyhoo. If you look over their history there’s always been ups and downs. A lot of us were inundated with the mid 80's comic shop boom; which cemented the idea that “comics = superhero” in the minds of a generation. By the late 90's you had a generation for whom “comic = Naruto.”

Don C.