In the 1940s and '50s, comic books were some of the most
popular-and most unfiltered-entertainment in the United States.
Publishers sold hundreds of millions of copies a year of violent,
racist, and luridly sexual comics to Americans of all ages, until a
1954 Senate investigation led to a censorship code that nearly
destroyed the industry. But this was far from the first time the US
government actively involved itself with comics-it was simply the
most dramatic manifestation of a long, strange relationship between
high-level policy makers and a medium that even artists and writers
often dismissed as a creative sewer. In Pulp Empire, Paul S. Hirsch
uncovers the gripping untold story of how the US government both
attacked and appropriated comic books to help wage World War II and
the Cold War, promote official-and clandestine-foreign policy, and
deflect global critiques of American racism. As Hirsch details,
during World War II-and the concurrent golden age of comic
books-government agencies worked directly with comic book
publishers to stoke hatred for the Axis powers while simultaneously
attempting to dispel racial tensions at home. Later, as the Cold
War defense industry ballooned-and as comic book sales reached
historic heights-the government again turned to the medium, this
time trying to win hearts and minds in the decolonizing world
through cartoon propaganda. Hirsch's groundbreaking research weaves
together a wealth of previously classified material, including
secret wartime records, official legislative documents, and caches
of personal papers. His book explores the uneasy contradiction of
how comics were both vital expressions of American freedom and
unsettling glimpses into the national id-scourged and repressed on
the one hand and deployed as official propaganda on the other. Pulp
Empire is a riveting illumination of underexplored chapters in the
histories of comic books, foreign policy, and race.
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