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3 CHAPTER ONE How the Graphic Novel Changed American Comics —STEPHEN WEINER The American comic book landscape changed dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s primarily because of two factors: first, the creation of the “direct market,” a system where publishers sold comic books directly to specialty comics stores, and second, challenges to the Comics Code Authority that regulated the newsstand comic book industry. This chapter will argue that these economic and institutional factors indirectly led to the creation of the graphic novel. In turn, after a series of unstable economic and material conditions, the graphic novel has become a fixture on library and bookshop shelves independent of the comics shops and newsstands. What was the Comics Code Authority, and how did it work in tandem with the production, distribution, and reception of U.S. comics? The history surrounding the industry self-regulation that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority is contested by historians and creators alike. In the barest terms: following allegations the comic book industry caused juvenile delinquency , several major comics publishers formed the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA) in 1954, an industry body established to govern the content of comic books. The majority of U.S. comics publishers agreed to submit proof copies of their titles to the CMAA, whose reviewers would recommend any changes in line with the CMAA code of acceptability. Once those changes were made and the comic met the CMAA’s standards, it received the Comics Code Authority seal and was thus deemed fit to be distributed and sold on America’s newsstands (Wright 2003, 172–73; Nyberg 1998). An alternative comics sales model was exploited by “underground” comix beginning in the late 1960s, a movement explored thoroughly in Patrick 4 STEPHEN WEINER Rosenkranz’s 2002 book Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution: 1963–1975 (see also Skinn 2004). Associated with creators such as Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Spain Rodriguez, underground comix offered political, sexual, and autobiographical narratives exploring countercultural themes including illegal drug-taking and “free love.” They were not sold via the formal channels of distribution and retail the major publishers used at the time. Published by smaller presses such as Krupp Comic Works (later Kitchen Sink), The Print Mint, Last Gasp, and Rip Off Press, these comics would be exchanged for other comics and sold via mail order and from the “head shops” supplying a range of countercultural products: drug paraphernalia , psychedelic posters, and incense sticks, to name a handful. In bypassing the newsstands, underground comix could—and did—ignore the Comics Code Authority restrictions, and their contents were deliberately more controversial than the innocuous fare of traditional comics (Sabin 1996, 107). Until the 1970s, the majority of comics were sold to newsstands and newsagents in bundles of mixed titles on the basis of sale-or-return: publishers agreed to buy back any unsold comics, a commercial system relatively successful during the boom sales years in the 1940s and 1950s when popular titles sold over 70 percent of their print run, but less so in the 1960s and 1970s when break-even sales of 30-40 percent were accepted. Bradford W. Wright estimates that three copies were being printed for every comic sold. Not only was this inefficient, but as a business model it was increasingly fragile when printing costs substantially inflated comic prices during the 1970s (Wright 2003, 258, 261). During the 1960s and 1970s, commercial opportunities had opened up by the sporadic avenues through which fans sold back issues of comic books to fellow fans. Certain comics became sought after because they contained popular characters or because they represented the work of desirable artists, and they began to be sold secondhand through comic “marts,” conventions, and mail-order businesses (Sabin 1996, 157). The direct market—selling comics to specialty comics stores at a greater discount than that offered to the newsstands on the proviso they could not be returned—was a financial solution to this distribution issue. The steady growth of stores specializing in selling comics (often in addition to action figures, T-shirts, posters, and other comics-related merchandise) from the late 1970s to the early 1990s was closely related to the rise of the direct market, and the two phenomena sustained each other symbiotically. By the mid-1980s, the direct market was the dominant mode of comics distribution and approximately 2,000 comics stores existed in the U.S. (Sabin 1993, 68). Retailers could order a speci...

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