Study Of American Comic Industry's Self-Regulation

The period from the late 1930s to early 1950s is considered the golden age of American comics.During this time,many outstanding comic artists and comic books appeared.In the 1950s,the sales of comic books were booming,bringing great revenue to publishers.But the prosperity was accompanied by crisis,some publishers frantically pursued profits and constantly published comics which contained vulgar,violent and bloody content.Crime and horror comic books once became the mainstream.The social impact of comic books had caught public attention.A lot of attempts had been made to eliminate the offensive content of comic books,among which the most effective and influential was the industry self-regulation conducted by the Comic Magazine Association of America.This paper mainly studies the self-regulation system of the American comic industry established in 1954,using the historical analytic method and literature analytic method.The main body of this paper contains four parts.Chapter 2 demonstrates the background of the establishment of the self-regulation system through introducing the development of American comics,publishers and publishing process of American comic books from the 1930s to 1950s.Chapter 3 analyzes the two factors driving the comic industry to implement self-regulation,namely the public's skepticism and resistance of comic books and the administrative pressure imposed on comic industry by Congress.Chapter 4 introduces the establishment of the Comic Magazine Association of America,the promulgation,implementation and revision of the industry self-regulation code.Chapter 5 appraises the self-regulation of American comic industry.It's of great significance in regulating the operation of the comic book industry and contributing a lot to the social control in a special historical period,but this system also has disadvantages such as the deficiency of long-term effectiveness and so on.Last but not least,we analyze the governance logic of the United States government on comic industry from the perspective of American political tradition and legal system.We think that the self-regulation of American comic industry is the result of judicial review restricting legislation and the product of conservatism.Through the self-regulation of the comic industry,the United States government reconciled the interests of different parties while preserving the access to freedom of expression.