Created in the mid-'30s as
a means to re-package newspaper funnies for promotional purposes, the comic
book quickly developed a life beyond its creators' wildest dreams. The brightly
colored stories of violence and costumed heroics grabbed the minds of children
across the country by providing a level of entertainment which, for all its
clumsy inexperience, was unlike anything else. Artists and writers responded by
flocking to an art form with no expectations—so long as the pages hit the
printers on time, there were no guidelines to follow, and more importantly, no
social strictures on who could do what. But that freedom couldn't last forever,
and in the early '50s, a nation obsessed with solving exaggerated social
problems found the perfect scapegoat at the local newsstand.
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