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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 300
EAN: 9780801874505
ISBN: 0801874505
Label: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 360
Publication Date: September 18, 2003
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Sales Rank: 49783
Studio: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
'Congratulations to Bradford W. Wright for penning one of the most comprehensive and readable accounts of the pervasive effect that comic books have had upon generations of readers throughout America, and indeed—the world.'—Stan Lee
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 Action Comics #1. Selling in the millions each year for the past six decades, comic books have figured prominently in the childhoods of most Americans alive today. In Comic Book Nation, Bradford W. Wright offers an engaging, illuminating, and often provocative history of the comic book industry within the context of twentieth-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 imaginative 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 lively study also focuses on the role 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 (whose 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, a salacious exposé of the medium's violence and sexual content, led to U.S. Senate hearings) 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. For the paperback edition, Wright has written a new postscript that details industry developments in the late 1990s and the response of comic artists to the tragedy of 9/11. Comic Book Nation is at once a serious study of popular culture and an entertaining look at an enduring American art form.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Comic Book Notion
Wright has a brisk style and his story from the origins of Superhero comic books in 1938 to the mid 1990s decline due to an overheated market, is familiar enough. He certainly has read a lot of comics and it shows. As the reviews here suggest this book has become a standard history of comic books and American culture. Since I write on comics myself my comments may seem snippy, but they come from an engagement with Wright's work and the wish he had done just a little more given the good work he has produced. My reservation about the book is that too much of Wright's argument is about the way comic books reflected American culture and too little suggests ways comic books may have shaped American culture. For instance, Wright thinks comic books worthy of study in that they offer "a fun-house mirror of life" (xiv). That statement is true enough, but any product of a society offers some way of understanding that society. With comics (and indeed most goods and services, literature and so on) I think scholars can delve a little deeper and try to understand the ways they might have helped shape societies.
Rating:  - An Outstanding History of the Comics and Their Place in American Cultural History
A scholarly yet extremely readable and enjoyable account of the history of comics and how they fit into and reflect American culture since the 1930's. Mr. Wright's account of Frederic "Seduction of the Innocent" Wertham and his attacks on the comic book industry in the late 1940's and early 1950's is the most thoughtful and even-handed I have ever read. This book belongs alongside Gerard Jones' wonderful Men Of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book as the best overall histories of the comics ever written. It's very informative and highly entertaining, a truly terrific read.
Rating: - Great buy. Great read. SO WORTH IT
If you have a passion for comics or for American culture this is really a great book. It's a lot bigger than I thought. It's also a lot more fun then I thought. It isn't a dry read at all. Engaging and interesting, I would recommend this to anyone.
Rating: - Too Much That is Not Discussed
There is simply too much that is not discussed for this to be a truly effective book, including most of DC and Marvel's non-superhero output, so that their war, western, and romance comics are neglected and the horror boom of the 1970s is largely ignored. The many superhero comics of the 60s that were published by companies other than DC and Marvel are also overlooked. Harvey and Gold Key are barely mentioned and to read this book, you would think that Charlton only printed war comics.
Rating: - An amazing book!
I don't know that I can write this review without injecting it with ample amount of gushing praise, but I will try.
I teach media and communications at the college level and have been studying pop culture and its effect on society for over 20 years.
That said, this book was only on the periphery of my attention for some time. It took me seeing it was used as a text for a course a fellow instructor at Penn State to buy it and read it.
To say "I couldn't put it down" is cliche, but I honestly could NOT resist reading this book. I often read several books at a time, but this book demanded my constant attention.
While it covers the same ground as many histories of comic books do (in particular Men of Tomorrow), and while many comic fans who have studied their favorite medium's past will already be familiar with many of the points Wright brings up in Comic Book Nation, this book is never less than entertaining and enlightening.
What makes it a bit different from other histories is not so much that Wright is a comic lover, but that he lets that love shine through.
He makes no aplogies when comics made him (and probably many of his reader) cringe and also praises creators, creations, and comics where praise is needed.
He also offers the most balanced account of the oft-discussed Seduction of the Innocent era of comic books I have read to date.
This book is a joy.
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