Historial Myths

One of the keys to forming an alternate history is to understand actual history rather then the historical myths that have formed.
==Cartoons are for Kids==
This myth came out of the rise of Saturday Morning Cartoons in the late 1960s. 
In reality, the very early cartoons, such as Betty Boop, were clearly aimed at an adult audience. Similarly, TV cartoons of the late 1950s to mid 1960s were aimed as much for adults as they were for kids. Look at how many originally ran in prime time:
*The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show (1959-1964)
*The Flintstones (1960-1966) - little more than an animated version of the Honeymooners and that sure wasn't aimed at kids.
*Top Cat (1961-1962) - came from "The East Side Kids" which had been aimed more for the teenage audience of WWII.
*The Jetsons (1962–1963) - a typical situational comedy of the time
*Jonny Quest (1963-1964) - canceled not because of any moral outcry but because it was so expensive.
==The 1950's comic book moral panic==
Much of the demise of comics in the laid at the foot of Fredric Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent but the reality is far more complex.
The United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency wasn't even formed until 1953 and the public meetings didn't happen until April 1954. The last issues of Weird Fantasy and Weird Science were November–December 1953 ie before the infamous comic book hearings even started.
===Leader News Co goes Under (1956)===
Leader News Co was one of the smallest national distribution companies and so it didn't exactly come as a surprise though it did leave EC comics without a distributor.
===American News Company declared a monopoly (1957)===
The demise of what had been the main distributor not only took a lot of comics and magazine down with it but nearly prevented a new company from forming. Martin Goodman had shut down the in house Atlas News Company and went with American News Company in 1956. Not only did this move anger a lot of wholesalers but resulted in the production dropping from 40, 50, or even 60 books a month to 8 or if they were lucky 12 books a month. There is even a stories that Goodman was considering ending the comic division entirely.
===Everybody used The Code===
Western Publishing was the one publisher, thanks to their reputation, of comics that could (and effectively did) tell the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers what to do with their seal (likely something involving phrases that amounted to something about shoving and sun don't shine). 
This is why neither of its comic book lines, Gold Key or Whitman, ever carried the seal.
At the height of it power, it had only 15% the titles of published but controlled nearly a third (33%) of the market.
==Additional Material==
*GURPS WWII
*Classic: Atomic Horror
Category:Setting Concepts
Category:Historical Periods