In March 1938, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster signed a contract transferring the rights of their character Superman to Detective Comics, Inc. In return, they received $130 - split between them, so $65 each.

Superman went on to become one of the most lucrative fictional characters in history, and Siegel, by the mid-1970s, was working as a typist in the mailroom of the Los Angeles Public Utilities Commission and living in a 1-room flat.

This is not an edge case. This is a foundational story of how American comics worked for the first four decades of its existence.. and, in some cases, considerably longer than that.

Last week we established that 2000AD was one of the most important talent factories in comics history. This week we need to talk about what happened after the talent left.

The short version: the 1990s were rough, a Sylvester Stallone film did not help, and the comic spent a decade trying to figure out who it was without the generation of writers who had defined it.

The longer version is more interesting - because the longer version ends with 2000AD in 2026     being, by any reasonable measure, genuinely excellent.

Today we look at the greatest talent factory the world has ever seen, and the strange fact that most American comics fans haven't ever read it...

We've covered the rules. We've met the people who broke them. For the last in this series on the CCA, let’s look at how we got here in the first place. The origin story of the Comics Code is equal parts farce and tragedy — a moral panic stoked by a deeply questionable book, amplified by a Senate subcommittee looking for headlines, and resolved in the worst possible way for everyone except Archie Comics.

If you’d like to get the Dispatch sent straight to you, please visit us at https://www.macroverse.media/join which tells you a little more about all the fun things wer’re up to.

Last week we met the Comics Code - 41 rules designed to sanitize an entire medium. This week: the people who looked at those rules and decided they were more of a suggestion. Across every genre - romance, sci-fi, superheroes, crime - the Code tried to flatten comics into something safe… It did not succeed.

As a thank-you for sticking with me, please follow the link below to claim your FREE digital copy of Suspense Comics #8 from 1945, which was a classic Pre-Code Title.

https://www.macroverse.com/agamotto/B8VI-EACC-BHIU-MJBB

There's a real document — printed, stamped, and enforced — that once banned the word "horror" from comic book covers. Literally the word. If you think that sounds like the work of people who had lost the plot, you're not wrong… Welcome to the world of the Comics Code Authority, the most spectacularly overcorrected act of self-censorship in American pop culture history. 

Seeing as we're talking about the Comics Code, it only seems fair to give you something from that era. Follow the link below to claim your free digital copy of Suspense Comics #8 from 1945, revel in a little pre-code insanity and try to forgive some of the... dubious?... stereotypes it indulges in.

https://www.macroverse.com/agamotto/B8VI-EACC-BHIU-MJBB