108 COLD WAR
hysteria. Th e conclusion reached by many was that the comics industry was populated
with perverts and communist conspirators, seeking to pollute young minds against
American ideals. Th is sparked Congressional hearings in 1955, presided over by Sena-
tor Estes Kefauver, yet despite later being found innocent of these charges the comics
industry undertook to impose its own code of censorship, the Comics Code, regulated
by the Comics Code Authority (CCA), which was set up by the Comics Magazine
Association of America to guard against further accusations, and to head off the threat
of government imposed censorship. Th e code eff ectively outlawed EC Comics, in what
was partly a shameful attempt by rivals to put a competitor out of business. Th is had
widespread implications for the comics industry, and curtailed the production of stories
that were seen to be damaging to the reader’s moral health. Th is left only the humor
genre untouched. With the eff ective demise of romance, crime, horror, and war com-
ics, the stage was prepared for the return of the superhero genre. In 1956, DC Comics
heralded the birth of a renaissance in superhero comics with the publication of Show-
case #4, which featured a new version of Th e Flash. Th e new wave of superhero comics
that followed in its wake portrayed the Cold War in very strange ways indeed.
In some respects the new superheroes were all products of the Cold War, and most
either expressed paranoia about the threat or communism, or else basked in the glow of
optimism about the new atomic age. Th e comics produced by DC during this period,
especially those edited by Julius Schwartz, were very much examples of the latter. In
some comics the tensions of the Cold War were largely ignored, perhaps because com-
pared with World War II this was a much more nebulous confl ict, and the enemy was
harder to defi ne. Also, as it was a cold war there were no dramatic battles to participate
in, only the ambiguous “police actions” and proxy wars being fought around the globe.
Th e threat of infi ltration and espionage were ever-present, but more suited to spies
like James Bond than superheroes. Following the brinksmanship of the Cuban Missile
Crisis in 1962, the deadly possibility of a nuclear confl ict became all the more promi-
nent in some comics, but some retreated further into innocent fantasies. Indeed, in the
popular consciousness, atomic energy took on magical transformative abilities. In the
early 1960s Marvel Comics published Th e Fantastic Four, featuring a superhero team
for the Sputnik era created by Stan Lee and Kirby. Modeled on DC’s popular series
Justice League of America, Th e Fantastic Four embraced the themes of the Cold War
period, with the heroes being transformed by cosmic radiation into a literal rendition
of “the nuclear family.” Th e Fantastic Four introduced a spirit of youthful optimism and
a brash pop art sensibility that started a revolution in comics and was followed by Th e
Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men, and many more. Whereas DC’s comics dealt in science
fi ction and fantasy, very much product of the aff ected innocence of 1950s and 1960s
Americana, Marvel’s comics aimed to be hip and streetwise (similar to the diff erence
between Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. fi lms in the 1930s and 1940s). Neither
Marvel nor DC dealt particularly realistically with the issues of the Cold War, but its
imagery, infl uence, threats and preoccupations were always in the background of their
comics.
