Action and adventure
Action and adventure |
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Page 29 of 42  More Fantastic Four Script: Stan Lee/Jack Kirby. Art: Jack Kirby. The character 'The Thing' was the most innovative of the 'Four': a young man trapped in the body of a craggy monster, he was notable for his stoic sense of humour about his plight. This was a turning point for the American industry. Sales slumped almost immediately as lines of comics were cancelled. Whole genres were virtually destroyed: horror and crime were especially badly hit, but war, westerns, romance and even superhero titles also suffered. EC very nearly went under (and would have, had it not been for the success of Mad), while other publishers were not so lucky. It all added up to disaster. For parents and educators, the Code meant peace of mind, but for kids it signified little except insipidly 'safe' entertainment. The comics world post-1955 looked very different to that before. The Code certainly marked the end of a phase in American comics development. It was not, however, the end per se. Although many publishers suffered, others were adaptable, and worked round it. They proved that comics could still command viable sales while staying within its boundaries. (The name of the game was now implication rather than explicitness, suspense rather than gore.) In this way, the industry managed to stay alive, though in overall terms sales continued in a downward trend due, arguably, to the rise of television.  Page from Fantastic Four (Marvel Comics, 1968). Script: Stan Lee/ Jack Kirby. Art: Jack Kirby. Kirby is undoubtedly the key artist in American mainstream comics history: the king of dynamic rendering, as this example shows. |