The world had never seen the like of the American comic book. The best of the comics attracted superb artists who could create characters and tell stories as memorable as those in any movie or popular novel. There were superheroes with bulging biceps and superheroines with buxom bosoms, funny men and funny animals, war comics, comics that retold the classics and comics that revelled in crime, horror, the supernatural and sex - eventually attracting the censorious eye of the social reformers. Taking us from the 1930s right through to the 1950s, in The Classic Era of American Comics Nicky Wright tells the fascinating story of the publishers, the artists and the industry itself. He describes its successes and its disasters, its worth as an art form, and the decline that set in once Congress and the churches began to impose censorship.