The most famous example is perhaps the book The Seduction of the Innocent, which was the first to imply a homosexual relationship between the reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne (Batman) and the innocent little orphan Dick Grayson (Robin) who live with him. Sure, the self-appointed censors came down harder on crime or horror comics (to the point where they effectively killed the genre), but the superheroes took the hits as well. A whole range of iconic characters from the period faded from view (Plastic Man, Captain Marvel) and the big three were lucky to remain in publication.Īt the same time, moral guardians launched a witch-hunt against comic books, claiming that they were corrupting our youth – in the same way that many claim videogames or movies do these days. In the real world, it seems that the audience lost interest in heroes, for whatever reason – be it the high cost of victory in Europe and Japan, or the repression of the fifties, or the fear of the atomic age. It’s a fancy-sounding term for the gap between the original superhero boom (which gave us icons like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) and the reinvigorating of the genre in the fifties and sixties (giving us the modern iterations of the Flash and the Green Lantern). The story is essentially set in what comic book historians call “the Interregnum”.
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