Before comic books became a billion-dollar industry, before Batman, the Avengers, and the X-Men filled movie screens, there was an era when it all began. This was the Golden Age of Comics, a period from the late 1930s to the early 1950s that largely defined the genres, styles, and images we know today.
Birth of the superhero
Starting point: 1938, when Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, appeared in Action Comics №1. This issue was a true revolution. Before him, detective, adventure, and humor stories had dominated comics. But Superman set a new formula – heroic fiction with a moral message, where the caped hero fights for justice.
Superman became a phenomenon, and dozens of heroes began to appear on its wave:
- Batman (1939, Detective Comics №27), a noir-inspired detective with a tragic past and Zorro;
- Wonder Woman (1941, All Star Comics #8), an Amazon, a symbol of the feminist ideas of her time;
- Captain America (1941, Timely Comics) – a war hero with a fist pointed at Hitler’s jaw.
World War II and the rise in popularity
The war years were the heyday of comic books. Heroes fought Nazis, Japanese soldiers and spies. Comic book sales reached millions of copies per month. Timely Comics (future Marvel), National Allied Publications (future DC Comics), and Fawcett Comics, where Captain Marvel (now known as Shazam) was born, were especially popular.
Comics at this time served not only as entertainment, but also as propaganda, a morale booster, and a tool of patriotism.
Genre diversity
Although superheroes were the face of the Golden Age, comic books were much broader back then:
- Detectives and crime dramas;
- Stories about cowboys and the Wild West;
- Love comics;
- Horror and science fiction.
There was a story for every reader, from schoolchildren to housewives, at 10 to 12 cents an issue.
The decline of an era
After the war, interest in superheroes began to wane. In the 1950s, people were increasingly drawn to television, and comic books faced a wave of public condemnation.
This culminated in a book by psychiatrist Frederick Wertham, The Seduction of the Innocent (1954), which accused comic books of corrupting young people. This led to the creation of the Comics Code, a censorious set of rules that restricted subject matter and visual style.
The Golden Age was over, but the archetypes, characters and genres that had been established then continued to live on, evolve and return in new forms through the Silver Age and beyond.
