1960's: Rebirth and the quest for meaning
1970's: Morality, Diversity, and Overhauling
1980's: "Who Watches the Watchmen?"
"The super hero genre was virtually dead. The fantasies had lost touch with any psychological reality and the writers were content to entertain young children rather than explore new directions that would reach out to an older audience" (Sanderson, 1987).
The 1950's posed the greatest challenge to the existence of the comic book super hero. This was mainly a result of these aspects: Dr. Wertham's book, the Red Scare, and the dissolution of the super-hero in general. The impact of Dr. Wertham's book, Seduction of the Innocent, as previously mentioned, seemingly set comics back a few years in terms of the evolution of the medium. However, this did again make way for the re-birth of the super-hero. Dr. Wertham put the primary focus of his critical outlook of comics toward the Horror and Romance genre comics that came to popularity in the 1950's along with Westerns.
Super-heroes became a little more seasoned because of the 1950's. While heroes such as Superman and Batman continued to have their own titles during this decade, the stories were empty, there was no departure from the form of storytelling set in the 1940's. It was a time in which heroes became dangerous: super-heroes were even worse. All-Star Comics became All-Star Western with issue number 59, April-May,1951. Super-heroes were somewhat forgotten. Stories about mystery-men with secret identifies fighting for American ideals didn't seem in vogue. It was difficult to tell stories in a 1950's context: an age in which paranoia set the stage and doubt about the future prevailed.
Audiences
looked for stories of past days. The only masked crimefighter to make
his way out of the 1950's was the
Lone Ranger: the famous story of a masked Texas Ranger fighting villainy
in the name of justice, set in the wild west days. One must look at the
frame of mind in the 1950's to understand the thought behind the apparent
death of the super-hero. This was the beginning of the atomic age in which
came the Cold War. No one quite knew how to live day to day with the threat
of global annihilation. The Red Menace threat was prevalent and no new
modern day super-heroes came from this decade. Heroes created in a time
of war would have another battle to fight along with simple survival in
a market that found them somewhat passé. The remaining super-heroes
would have to fight communism.
Only one super-hero could truly symbolize all that was America and it was not Superman. An alien being with god-like powers could not properly fight an invisible menace, so Superman was relegated to fighting his standard "rogue gallery" of villains during the 50's and, to cater to the romance comic readers, Superman's relationship to Lois Lane became the prominent story line. Batman, too, found himself pitted against the occasional spy, but the story line was mainly concerned with street crime and villainy on an urban scale in a 1950's Gotham City. No, the super-hero had to be a true American, one that could properly battle the "Commie menace". The heart of the battle would focus on Captain America as the nation's one true representative against this so-called evil.
Each issue of Captain America Comics during the early 50's up to the time of Dr. Wertham's book, carried this header on the cover: "Captain America... Commie Smasher!", yet even Captain America could not fight the war against a market that no longer found consolation in super-heroes. The low sales of super-hero titles forced the then Atlas Comics publishing company, the precursor to today's Marvel Comics, to do away with its line of super-hero comics in favor of suspense, horror, romance, and western genres. Comic book sales were at an all time high during the 50's, yet the super-hero comics took a relative back seat throughout the entire decade. A testament to the confusion and disillusionment of the postwar era. This decade would mark the end of what is today know as "the Golden Age of Comics."