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many, notably Johnny Hodges, had used it over the years since Sidney
Bechet had mastered it, no other major jazz exponent had really
turned it into a popular jazz instrument on a regular basis. Trane
openly acknowledged Bechet’s influence on his soprano work. The
instrument, he said, allowed him to play in the higher registers in
which he heard music in his head. It also made his modal playing
accessible to a larger audience. My Favorite Things made the top 40
charts and began Coltrane’s career as a show business figure, com-
manding healthy fees and continuing to release soprano hits such
as ‘‘Greensleeves.’’
Meanwhile he grew interested in Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz
movement and released ‘‘The Invisible’’ with Don Cherry and Billy
Higgins and ‘‘India’’ in 1961. This movement into free jazz, predict-
ably, did not entail an abandonment of earlier styles. A Love Supreme
(1964) is a modal album and sold 250,000 copies. Such sales resulted
from the popular upsurge of interest in Eastern religions and mysti-
cism during the 1960s, and the album was bought by many who had
no idea of jazz but were attracted by the music’s connections with
mysticism. Even in the midst of his freest experiments, ‘‘Ascension’’
and ‘‘Expressions,’’ when he recorded with Freddie Hubbard, Archie
Shepp, Eric Dolphy, Pharoah Sanders, and Rashid Ali, Coltrane never
totally abandoned his love of harmony and melody. He once per-
formed with Thelonious Monk near the end of his life. When it was
over, Monk asked Trane when he was going to come back to playing
real music such as he had performed that day. Reputedly, Trane
responded that he had gone about as far as he could with experimental
music and missed harmonic jazz. He promised Monk that he would
return to the mainstream.
Whether he was comforting an old friend or speaking his heart,
nobody knows, but Expressions (1967) was his last recording and
included elements from all his periods. Coltrane died at the top of his
form when he passed away in 1967 at the age of 40. Though doctors
said he died of liver cancer, his friends claimed that he had simply
worn himself out. His creative flow had not dried up and it is
reasonable to assume that, had he lived, he would have continued to
explore new styles and techniques. As it was, he left a body of music
that defined and shaped the shifting jazz styles of the period, as well as
a reputation for difficult music and a dissipated lifestyle that con-
firmed the non-jazz lover’s worst—and inaccurate—fears about the
music and its decadent influence on American culture.
—Frank A. Salamone
F
URTHER READING:
Cole, Bill. John Coltrane. New York, Da Capo, 1993.
Kofsky, Frank. John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s.
New York, Pathfinder Press, 1998.
Nisenson, Eric. Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. New York,
St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Porter, Lewis. John Coltrane: His Life and Music. Ann Arbor,
University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Simpkins, Cuthbert Ormond. Coltrane: A Biography. New York,
Black Classic Press, 1988.
Strickland, Edward. ‘‘What Coltrane Wanted.’’ Atlantic Monthly.
December 1987, 100-102.
Thomas, J. C. Chasin’ the Train: The Music and Mystique of John
Coltrane. New York, Da Capo Press, 1988.
Woodleck, Carl, editor. The John Coltrane Companion: Four Dec-
ades of Commentary. New York, Schrimmer Books, 1998.
Columbo
Lieutenant Columbo, played by Peter Falk, remains the most
original, best-written detective in television history. Other shows
featuring private detectives (The Rockford Files) or policemen (Hill
Street Blues) may contain more tongue-in-cheek humor or exciting
action sequences, but when it comes to pure detection, brilliant
plotting, and intricate clues, Columbo remains unsurpassed. Its unique-
ness stems from the fact that it is one of the few ‘‘inverted’’ mysteries
in television history. While other mysteries like Murder, She Wrote
were whodunits, Columbo was a ‘‘how’s-he-gonna-get-caught?’’
Whodunit was obvious because the audience witnessed the murder
firsthand at the start of each episode—also making the show unique in
that the star, Falk, was completely missing for the first quarter hour of
most episodes. This inversion produced a more morally balanced
universe; while the murderer in another show might spend 90 percent
of its running time enjoying his freedom, only to be nabbed in the last
few scenes, in Columbo the murderer’s carefree lifestyle was short-
lived, being replaced by a sick, sweaty angst as the rumpled detective
moved closer and closer to the truth. The climatic twist at the end was
merely the final nail in the coffin. The show was consistently riveting
with no gunplay, no chase sequences, and virtually all dialogue. The
inverted mystery is not new, having been devised by R. Austin
Freeman for such books as The Singing Bone, but never has the form
been better utilized.
Columbo sprang from the fertile minds of Richard Levinson and
William Link, who met in junior high school and began writing
mysteries together. They finally sold some to magazines, then to
television, adapting one story they’d sold to Alfred Hitchcock’s
Mystery Magazine for television’s The Chevy Mystery Show. When
Bert Freed was selected to play the part of the detective in this
mystery, called ‘‘Enough Rope,’’ he became the first actor to play
Lieutenant Columbo. Levinson later said the detective’s fawning
manner came from Petrovich in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punish-
ment, and his humbleness came from G. K. Chesterton’s Father
Brown. Deciding to dabble in theater, Levinson and Link adapted this
story into the play Prescription: Murder, which opened in San
Francisco starring Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead, and Thomas
Mitchell as Columbo. When made-for-TV movies became a popular
form, the writers opened up their stagebound story to make it more
cinematic, but they needed to cast a new actor as the detective because
Mitchell had died since the play’s closing. The authors wanted an
older actor, suggesting Lee J. Cobb and Bing Crosby, but they were
happy with Falk as the final choice once they saw his performance.
The film aired in 1968 with Gene Barry as the murderer, and the show
received excellent ratings and reviews. Three years later, when NBC
was developing the NBC Mystery Movie, which was designed to have
such series as McCloud and McMillan and Wife in rotation, the
network asked Levinson and Link for a Columbo pilot. The writers
thought that Prescription: Murder made a fine pilot, but the network
wanted another—perhaps to make sure this ‘‘inverted’’ form was
repeatable and sustainable—so ‘‘Ransom for a Dead Man’’ with Lee
Grant as the murderer became the official pilot for the series. These
two made-for-TV movies do not appear in syndication with the
COLUMBO ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
560
series’ other forty-three episodes, though they frequently appear on
local stations.
NBC Mystery Movie premiered in September 1971, and the
talent the show attracted was phenomenal. That very first episode,
‘‘Murder by the Book,’’ was written by Steven Bochco (Hill Street
Blues, NYPD Blue) and was directed by Steven Spielberg. The series
also employed the directorial talents of Jonathan Demme, Ben
Gazzara, Norman Lloyd, Hy Averback, Boris Sagal, and Falk him-
self, among others. Acting talents such as Ray Milland, Patrick
McGoohan, John Cassavetes, Roddy McDowell, Laurence Harvey,
Martin Landau, Ida Lupino, Martin Sheen, and Janet Leigh contribut-
ed greatly to the series, though what made it a true classic was Falk’s
Emmy-winning portrayal of the rumpled detective. The raincoat, the
unseen wife, the dog named Dog, the ragtop Peugeot, the forgetful-
ness—much of this was in the writing, but Falk added a great deal and
made it all distinctly his own. Levinson said, ‘‘We put in a servile
quality, but Peter added the enormous politeness. He stuck in sirs and
ma’ams all over the place.’’ He said another of the lieutenant’s quirks
evolved from laziness on the writers’ part. When writing the play
Prescription: Murder, there was a scene that was too short, and
Columbo had already made his exit. ‘‘We were too lazy to retype the
scene, so we had him come back and say, ‘‘Oh, just one more thing.’’
On the show, the disheveled, disorganized quality invariably put the
murderers off their guard, and once their defenses were lowered,
Columbo moved in for the kill. Much of the fun came from the show’s
subtle subversive attack on the American class system, with a
working-class hero, totally out of his element, triumphing over the
conceited, effete, wealthy murderer finally done in by his or her
own hubris.
The final NBC episode aired in May 1978, when Falk tired of the
series. Ten years later, Falk returned to the role when ABC revived
Columbo, first in rotation and then as a series of specials, with at least
twenty new episodes airing throughout the 1990s. Levinson and Link
wrote other projects, and Falk played other roles, but as Levinson
once said, referring to himself and Link, ‘‘If we’re remembered for
anything, it may say Columbo on our gravestones.’’
—Bob Sullivan
F
URTHER READING:
Conquest, John. Trouble Is Their Business: Private Eyes in Fiction,
Film, and Television, 1927-1988. New York, Garland Publish-
ing, 1990.
Dawidziak, Mark. The Columbo Phile: A Casebook. New York, The
Mysterious Press, 1989.
De Andrea, William L. Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. New York, Pren-
tice Hall General Reference, 1994.
Levinson, Richard, and William Link. Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at
the Making of Prime-Time Television. New York, St. Martin’s
Press, 1981.
Columbo, Russ (1908-1934)
Russ Columbo was a popular romantic crooner of the 1920s and
early 1930s. Often referred to as ‘‘Radio’s Valentino,’’ Columbo was
so popular he was immortalized in a song of the day, ‘‘Crosby,
Columbo, and Vallee.’’ Born Ruggerio de Rudolpho Columbo, he
became a concert violinist, vocalist, songwriter, and bandleader. He
wrote many popular songs, mainly with partner Con Conrad. One of
his biggest hits also became his theme song, ‘‘You Call It Madness
(But I Call it Love).’’
Columbo appeared in a few films and had just signed with
Universal Pictures for a series of musicals when he was tragically
killed. While looking at the gun collection of friend Lansing Brown,
one of the guns discharged, hitting Columbo in the eye. He died a
short time later.
—Jill Gregg
F
URTHER READING:
Hemming, Roy, and David Hajdu. Discovering Great Singers of
Classic Pop. New York, Newmarket Press, 1991.
Parish, James Robert, and Michael R. Pitts. Hollywood Songsters: A
Biographical Dictionary. New York, Garland Publishing, 1991.
Comic Books
Comic books are an essential representation of twentieth-centu-
ry American popular culture. They have entertained readers since the
time of the Great Depression, indulging their audience in imaginary
worlds born of childhood fantasies. Their function within American
culture has been therapeutic, explanatory, and commercial. By ap-
pealing to the tastes of adolescents and incorporating real-world
concerns into fantasy narratives, comic books have offered their
impressionable readers a means for developing self-identification
within the context of American popular culture. In the process, they
have worked ultimately to integrate young people into an expanding
consumer society, wherein fantasy and reality seem increasingly linked.
With their consistent presence on the fringes of the immense
American entertainment industry, comic books have historically been
a filter and repository for values communicated to and from below.
Fashioned for a mostly adolescent audience by individuals often little
older than their readers, comic books have not been obliged to meet
the critical and aesthetic criteria of respectability reserved for works
aimed at older consumers (including newspaper comic strips). Nei-
ther have comic books generally been subject to the sort of intrinsic
censorship affecting the production of expensive advertising and
investment-driven entertainment projects. Consequently, comic books
have often indulged in outrageous situations and images more fantas-
tic, grotesque, and absurd than those found elsewhere in American
mass culture. These delightfully twisted qualities have always been
central to the comic book’s appeal.
Comic books first emerged as a discrete entertainment medium
in 1933, when two sales employees at the Eastern Color Printing
Company, Max C. Gaines and Harry I. Wildenberg, launched an
entrepreneurial venture whereby they packaged, reduced and reprint-
ed newspaper comic strips into tabloid-sized magazines to be sold to
manufacturers who could use them as advertising premiums and
giveaways. These proved so successful that Gaines decided to put a
ten-cent price tag on the comic magazines and distribute them directly
to newsstands. The first of these was Famous Funnies, printed by
Eastern Color and distributed by Dell Publications. Other publishers
soon entered the emerging comic-book field with similar products. In
1935 a pulp-magazine writer named Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson
began publishing the first comic books to feature original material. A
COMIC BOOKSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
561
few years later, his company was bought out by executives of the
Independent News Company who expanded the operation’s line and
circulation. In 1937 they launched Detective Comics, the first comic
book to feature adventure stories derived more from pulp magazines
and ‘‘B’’ movies than from newspaper ‘‘funnies.’’ The company later
became known by the logo DC—the initials of its flagship title.
By 1938 an embryonic comic-book industry existed, comprising
a half-dozen or so publishers supplied by several comic-art studios all
based in the New York City area. That same year, the industry found
its first original comic-book ‘‘star’’ in Superman. The creation of two
teenagers named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman’s adven-
tures pointed to the fantastic potential of comic books. Because their
content was limited only by the imagination and skill of the writers
and artists who crafted them, comic books could deal in flights of
fantasy unworkable in other visual entertainment media. As an instant
commercial success, Superman prompted a succession of costumed
superhero competitors who vied for the nickels and dimes of not-too-
discerning young consumers. Comic-book characters like DC’s Batman,
Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern; Marvel Comics’ Captain America,
and Fawcett Publications’ Captain Marvel all defined what comic-
book historians and collectors term the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of comic
books. Although comic books would later embrace a variety of
genres, including war, western, romance, crime, horror, and humor,
they have always been most closely identified with the costumed
superheroes who made the medium a viable entertainment industry.
Creating most of these early comic books was a coterie that was
overwhelmingly urban, under-thirty, lower middle class, and male.
They initially conceived Depression-era stories that aligned superheroes
on the side of the poor and the powerless against a conspiracy of
corrupt political bosses, greedy stockbrokers, and foreign tyrants. As
the nation drifted towards World War II, comic books became
increasingly preoccupied with the threat posed by the Axis powers.
Some pointed to the danger as early as 1939—well ahead of the rest of
the nation. Throughout the war, comic books generally urged a united
national front and endorsed patriotic slogans derived from official
U.S. war objectives. Many eviscerated the enemy in malicious and
often, in the case of the Japanese, racist stereotypes that played to the
emotions and fears of their wartime audience, which included serv-
icemen as well as children. At least a few publishers, most notably DC
Comics, also used the occasion of the war against fascism to call for
racial and ethnic tolerance on the American home front.
The war years were a boom time for the comic-book industry. It
was not uncommon for a single monthly issue to sell in excess of
500,000 copies. The most popular comic books featuring Superman,
Batman, Captain Marvel, and the Walt Disney cartoon characters
often sold over one million copies per issue. When the war ended,
however, sales of most superhero comic books plummeted and the
industry lost its unity of purpose. Some publishers, like Archie
Comics, carved out a niche for themselves with innocuous humor
titles that enjoyed a certain timeless appeal for young children. But as
other publishers scrambled for new ways to recapture the interest of
adolescent and adult readers, some turned to formulas of an increas-
ingly controversial nature. Many began to indulge their audience in a
seedy underworld of sex, crime, and violence of a sort rarely seen in
other visual entertainment. These comic books earned the industry
legions of new readers and critics alike. Young consumers seemed to
have a disturbing taste for comic books like Crime Does Not Pay that
dramatized—or, as many would charge, glorified—in graphic detail
the violent lives of criminals and the degradation of the American
dream. Parents, educators, professionals, and politicians reacted to
these comic books with remarkable outrage. Police organizations,
civic groups, and women’s clubs launched a grassroots campaign at
the local and state levels to curb or ban the sale and distribution of
objectionable comic books. Only a few years after the end of its
participation in a world war, the comic-book industry found itself
engaged in a new conflict—a cultural war for the hearts and minds of
the postwar generation.
As the Cold War intensified, comic-book makers responded by
addressing national concerns at home and abroad, while hoping to
improve their public image in the process. Romance comic books
instructed young females on the vital qualities of domesticity and
became, for a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the industry’s
top-selling genre. War comic books produced during the Korean War
underscored the domestic and global threat of Communism. But, as
part of the industry’s trend toward more realistic stories, many of
these also illustrated the ambivalence and frustration of confronting
an elusive enemy in a war waged for lofty ideals with limited means.
Neither the subject matter of romance nor war could, in any case,
deflect the mounting public criticism directed at comic books. Through-
out the postwar decade comic-book makers found themselves con-
fronted by a curious alliance of liberals and conservatives who feared
that forms of mass culture were undermining—even replacing—
parents, teachers, and religious leaders as the source of moral authori-
ty in children’s lives. As young people acquired an unprecedented
degree of purchasing power in the booming economy, they had more
money to spend on comic books. This in turn led to more comic book
publishers trying to attract young consumers with increasingly sensa-
tional material. Thus, in an irony of postwar culture, the national
affluence so celebrated by the defenders of American ideals became
perhaps the most important factor accounting for the existence and
character of the most controversial comic books.
The most outrageous consequence of the keen competition
among publishers was the proliferation of horror comic books.
Popular and widely imitated titles like EC Comics’ Tales From the
Crypt celebrated murder, gore, and the disintegration of the American
family with a willful abandon that raised serious questions about the
increasing freedom and power of mass culture. At the vanguard of the
rejuvenated forces aligned against comic books was a psychiatrist and
self-proclaimed expert on child behavior named Dr. Fredric Wertham.
His 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent set forth a litany of charges
against comic books, the most shocking and controversial being that
they contributed to juvenile delinquency. Such allegations led to a
1954 U.S. Senate investigation into the comic-book industry. Comic-
book publishers surrendered to the criticism by publicly adopting an
extremely restrictive self-censoring code of standards enforced by an
office called the Comics Code Authority. By forbidding much of what
had made comic books appealing to adolescents and young adults, the
Comics Code effectively placed comic books on a childlike level. At a
time when publishers faced stiff competition from television, and
rock’n’roll emerged as the new preeminent expression of rebellious
youth culture, the Code-approved comic books lost readers by the score.
By the start of the 1960s the industry showed signs of recovery.
DC Comics led the resurgence by reviving and revamping some of its
popular superheroes from the 1940s including the Flash, the Green
Lantern, and the Justice League of America. These characters marked
the industry’s return to the superhero characters that had made it so
successful in the beginning. But the pristine, controlled, and rather
stiff DC superheroes proved vulnerable to the challenge posed by
Marvel Comics. Under the editorial direction of Stan Lee, in collabo-
ration with artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Marvel launched a
COMICS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
562
series of new titles featuring superheroes ‘‘flawed’’ with undesirable
but endearing human foibles like confusion, insecurity, and aliena-
tion. Marvel superheroes like the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk,
Spider-Man, the Silver Surfer, and the X-Men found a large and loyal
audience among children, adolescents, and even adults drawn to the
anti-establishment and clever mythical qualities of the Marvel
comic books.
During the late 1960s a new wave of ‘‘underground’’ comic
books, sometimes called ‘‘comix,’’ emerged as an alternative to the
mainstream epitomized by DC and Marvel. These underground
comics flourished despite severely limited exposure, and were usual-
ly confined to counterculture audiences. With unrestrained subject
matter that celebrated drugs, violence, and especially sex, these
publications shared more in common with the avant-garde movement
and adult magazines than they did with most people’s conception of
comic books. Artists like Robert Crumb, Rick Griffin, and Art
Spiegelman later found some mainstream success and fame (with
Fritz the Cat, Zippy the Pinhead, and Maus, respectively) after getting
their start in underground comix. And independent comic books
inspired by the underground comix movement continue to enjoy some
popularity and sales through comic-book stores throughout the 1980s
and 1990s.
Since the 1960s, however, the comic-book industry has been
dominated by the superheroes of publishing giants Marvel and DC.
Successive generations of comic-book creators have come to the
industry as fans, evincing a genuine affection and respect for comic
books that was uncommon among their predecessors, most of whom
aspired to write or illustrate for other media. During the late 1960s and
early 1970s these creators used comic books to comment upon the
most pressing concerns of their generation. Consequently, a number
of comic books like The Amazing Spider-Man, The Green Lantern,
and Captain America posed a moderate challenge to the ‘‘Establish-
ment’’ and took up such liberal political causes as the civil rights
movement, feminism, and opposition to the Vietnam War.
Aware of the country’s changing political mood, publishers in
1971 liberalized the Comics Code, making it easier for comic books
to reflect contemporary society. Comic-book makers initially took
advantage of this new creative latitude to launch a number of
ambitious and often self-indulgent efforts to advance mainstream
comic books as a literary art form. While many of these new 1970s
comic books were quite innovative, nearly all of them failed commer-
cially. Nevertheless, they indicated the increasing willingness of the
major publishers to encourage writers and artists to experiment with
new ideas and concepts.
As the 1970s drew to a close, the comic-book industry faced
some serious distribution problems. Traditional retail outlets like
newsstands and ‘‘mom-and-pop’’ stores either disappeared or refused
to stock comic books because of their low profit potential. Since the
early 1980s, however, comic books have been distributed and sold
increasingly through specialty comic-book stores. Publishers earned
greater profits than ever before by raising the cost of their comic
books, distributing them to these outlets on a non-returnable basis,
and targeting the loyal fan audience over casual mainstream readers.
The most popular comic books of the past few decades indicate
the extent to which alienation has become the preeminent theme in
this medium of youth culture. In the early 1980s, a young writer-artist
named Frank Miller brought his highly individualistic style to Mar-
vel’s Daredevil, the Man without Fear and converted it from a
second-tier title to one of the most innovative and popular in the field.
Miller’s explorations of the darker qualities that make a superhero
inspired others to delve into the disturbing psychological motivations
of the costumed vigilantes who had populated comic books since the
beginning. Miller’s most celebrated revisionism in this vein came in
the 1986 ‘‘graphic novel’’ Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Such
revisionism in fact became the most common formula of recent comic
books. Besides such stalwarts as Spider-Man and Batman, the best-
selling superheroes of the 1980s and 1990s included the X-Men, the
Punisher, the Ghost Rider, and Spawn. All featured brooding, obses-
sive, alienated antiheroes prone to outbursts of terrifying violence.
This blurring of the lines between what makes a hero and a villain in
comic books testifies to the cynicism about heroes generally in
contemporary popular culture and to the eagerness of comic-book
publishers to tap into the adolescent disorientation and anxieties that
have, to some degree, always determined the appeal of comic-
book fantasies.
Although comic books remained popular and profitable throughout
the 1990s, the major publishers faced some formidable crises. The
most obvious of these was the shrinking audience for their product.
Comic-book sales peaked in the early 1990s before falling sharply in
the middle years of the decade. Declining fan interest was, in part, a
backlash against the major publishers’ increasing tendency to issue
drawn-out ‘‘cross-over’’ series that compelled readers to buy multi-
ple issues of different titles in order to make sense of convoluted plots.
Many other jaded buyers were undoubtedly priced out of the comic-
book market by cover prices commonly over $2.50. Special ‘‘collec-
tor’s editions’’ and graphic novels frequently sold at prices over
$5.00. Most troubling for comic-book makers, however, is the threat
that their product may become irrelevant in an increasingly crowded
entertainment industry encompassing cable TV, video games, and
internet pastimes aimed directly at the youth market. Retaining and
building their audience in this context is a serious challenge that will
preoccupy creators and publishers as the comic-book industry enters
the twenty-first century.
—Bradford W. Wright
F
URTHER READING:
Benton, Mike. The Comic Book in America: An Illustrated History.
Dallas, Taylor Publishing, 1993.
Daniels, Les. DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic
Book Heroes. Boston, Little, Brown, 1995.
———. Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest
Comics. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1991.
Goulart, Ron. Over Fifty Years of American Comic Books.
Lincolnwood, Illinois, Mallard Press, 1991.
Harvey, Robert C. The Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History.
Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
Jacobs, Will, and Gerard Jones. The Comic Book Heroes. Rocklin,
California, Prima Publishing, 1998.
Savage, William W., Jr. Comic Books and America, 1945-1954.
Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
Comics
Comic strips and comic books have been two mainstays of
American culture during the entire twentieth century. Comic strips
COMICSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
563
rapidly became a defining feature of modern American culture after
their introduction to newspapers across the nation in the first ten years
of the twentieth century. Likewise comic books captured the imagina-
tion of many Americans in the late 1930s and early 1940s, particularly
after the appearance of costumed heroes such as Superman, Batman,
and Captain Marvel. From the beginning, comics produced distinct,
easily recognized characters whose images could be licensed for other
uses. Comic characters united entertainment and commerce in ways
that became ubiquitous in American culture.
Although the origin of comic strips is generally traced to the first
appearance of the Yellow Kid—so named because the printers chose
his nightshirt to experiment with yellow ink—in the New York World
in 1895, the antecedents of comics are somewhat more complex.
When the World began a Sunday humor supplement in 1889, it did so
to attract the audience of American illustrated humor magazines such
as Puck, Judge, and Life. These magazines had drawn on European
traditions of broadsheets, satirical prints, comic albums, and journals
such as Fliegende Blätter, Charivari, and Punch to create a sharp-
edged American style of satirical visual humor. The appearance of the
Yellow Kid—in the Hogan’s Alley series—was not a particularly
startling moment but rather grew out of an international and local
tradition of illustrated humor. What set the Yellow Kid apart from
previous versions of the city urchin genre of illustrated humor were
his distinct features and regular appearance in large-scale comic panels.
In October 1896 William Randolph Hearst launched a humor
supplement to the Sunday edition of his New York Journal and
contracted the services of Richard Outcault, the Yellow Kid’s creator.
In addition, the Journal employed Rudolph Dirks and Frederick
Opper. Although the Yellow Kid established the importance in comic
art of a regularly appearing, distinctive character, Outcault did not use
with any regularity two other important features of modern comics—
sequential panels and word balloons, both of which had been used for
centuries in European and American graphic art. Dirks and Opper
introduced and developed these features in the pages of the Journal.
Between December 1897 and March 1901 Dirks’s Katzenjammer
Kids and Opper’s Happy Hooligan brought together the essential
features of modern comics: a regular, distinctive character or cast of
characters appearing in a mass medium, the use of sequential panels
to establish narrative, and the use of word balloons to convey
dialogue. More often than not Dirks’s and Opper’s strips used twelve
panels on a broadsheet page to deliver a gag.
Between 1900-03 newspaper owners and syndicates licensed
comic strips and supplements to newspapers across the country. This
expansion was tied to broader developments in American culture
including the establishment of national markets and ongoing develop-
ments in communication and transportation. Comic supplements
were circulation builders for newspapers, and by 1908 some 75
percent of newspapers with Sunday editions had a comics supple-
ment. For most newspapers the introduction of a comic supplement
saw a rise in sales. The development of daily comic strips, which
started with Bud Fischer’s Mutt and Jeff, first published in November
1907 in the San Francisco Chronicle, added another dimension to the
medium. In 1908 only five papers ran daily comic strips; five years
later at least ninety-four papers across the country ran daily strips. By
1913 newspapers had also begun to group their daily strips on a single
page. In a relatively short space of time comic strips moved from
being something new to being a cultural artifact. Comic Strips and
Consumer Culture, 1890-1945 quotes surveys showing that by 1924
at least 55 percent and as high as 82 percent of all children regularly
read comic strips. Likewise it showed that surveys by George Gallup
and others in the 1930s revealed that the mean average adult readership
of comic strips was 75 percent.
The daily comic strip’s four or five panels and black-and-white
format as opposed to the Sunday comics’ twelve color panels was the
first of many thematic and aesthetic innovations that fed the populari-
ty of strips. An important development in this process was the
blossoming of the continuity strip. Comics historian Robert Harvey
has argued that Joseph Patterson, the proprietor of the Chicago
Tribune and the New York Daily News, was instrumental in establish-
ing continuing story lines in comic strips through his development
and promotion of Sidney Smith’s The Gumps, a comic strip equiva-
lent of a soap opera with more than a hint of satire. The continuity
strip gave rise to adventure strips such as Wash Tubbs and Little
Orphan Annie, which in turn led to the emergence of science fiction
strips like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Even gag strips such as the
working girl strip Winnie Winkle adopted continuous story lines for
extended periods. The continuity strips led to comic art styles less
caricatured in appearance, which for want of a better expression
might be dubbed realistic strips, although the story content remained
fanciful. No one style of strip ever came to dominate the comics
pages, where gags strips, adventure strips, and realistic strips still
appear side by side.
From the start, the existence of distinctive characters in comics
had offered commercial possibilities beyond the pages of newspa-
pers. The image of the Yellow Kid was used to sell cigars, crackers,
and ladies’ fans, to name but a few of his appearances. Theater
producer Gus Hill staged a musical around the Kid in 1898 and
continued to produce comic-strip-themed musicals into the 1920s.
Doll manufacturers likewise produced comic strip character dolls.
Buster Brown gave his name to shoes, clothing, and a host of other
products including pianos and bread. The Yellow Kid’s adventures
had been reprinted in book form as early as 1897, and throughout the
first two decades of the twentieth century publishers such as Cupples
and Leon, and F. A. Stokes issued book compilations of popular
comic strips. In the early 1930s the commercial dimensions of comic
strips were expanded further when advertising executives realized
that the mass readership of strips meant that the art form could be used
in advertising to draw consumers to a product through entertainment.
In 1933, following this strategy, the Eastern Color Printing Company
sold a number of companies on the idea of reprinting comic strips in
‘‘books’’ and giving them away as advertising premiums.
After producing several of these advertising premium comic
books, Eastern published Famous Funnies in 1934, a sixty-four-page
comic book of reprinted strips priced at ten cents. Although the
company lost money on the first issue, it soon showed a profit by
selling advertising space in the comic book. Pulp writer Major
Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson saw an opportunity and joined the
fledgling industry with his all-original New Fun comic book in
February 1935. Wheeler-Nicholson’s limited financial resources ne-
cessitated a partnership with his distributor, the Independent News
Company, run by Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, and the three
formed a partnership to launch Detective Comics in 1937. By 1938
Donenfeld and Liebowitz had eased Wheeler-Nicholson out of the
company. Shortly thereafter the two decided to publish a new title,
Action Comics, and obtained a strip for the first issue that M. C.
Gaines at the McClure Syndicate had rejected. Superman by Jerry
Siegel and Joe Shuster appeared on the cover of the first issue dated
June 1938. The initial print run was two hundred thousand copies. By
1941, Action Comics sold on average nine hundred thousand copies.
COMICS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
564
The company followed this success with the first appearance of
Batman in Detective Comics in May 1939.
The success of Superman and DC Comics, as the company was
now known, led other comic book companies to introduce costumed
heroes in the late 1930s and early 1940s including All American’s
(DC’s sister company) Wonder Woman and The Flash; Timely’s
(later Marvel) Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Submari-
ner; and Fawcett’s Captain Marvel. Comic book sales increased
dramatically and, according to Coulton Waugh, by 1942 12.5 million
were sold monthly. Historians such as Ron Goulart have attributed the
boom in superhero comic books to Depression-era searches for strong
leadership and quick solutions, and the cultural and social disruption
brought on by World War II. Moreover, comic books often served as a
symbol of America for servicemen overseas who read and amassed
them in large numbers.
America’s entry into the war also derailed a campaign against
comics begun by Sterling North, the literary editor of the Chicago
Daily News. In 1947 the sales of comic books reached sixty million a
month, and they seemed beyond attempts at censorship and curtailing
their spread. But in 1948 a New York psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham,
began a campaign that led eventually to a Senate investigation on the
nature of comic books and the industry’s establishing a Comics Code
in a successful attempt to avoid formal regulation through self-
censorship. Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent was the
culmination of his attempts to mobilize public sentiment against the
danger that he believed comic books posed to children’s mental
health. Wertham’s ideas were picked up by the Senate Subcommittee
on Juvenile Delinquency and its prime mover Senator Estes Kefauver. A
prime target of the subcommittee’s hearings was William M. Gaines,
the publisher of EC Comics, which had begun a line of horror comics
in 1950. Wertham’s attack and the introduction of the Comics Code
are often blamed for the demise of a ‘‘Golden Age’’ of comics, but
historian Amy Nyberg argues that only EC suffered directly, and
other factors such as changes in distribution and the impact of
television account for the downturn in comic book publishing.
Whatever the impact of Wertham, the comic book industry
shrugged it off relatively quickly. In 1956 DC relaunched its character
The Flash, which began a resurrection of superhero comic books. In
1960 DC published the Justice League of America, featuring a team of
superheroes. According to Les Daniels, the good sales of this book
prompted DC’s competitor to develop its own team of heroes, and in
1961 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four appeared under the
Marvel imprint. The resulting boom in superhero comics, which saw
the debut of Spiderman and the Uncanny X-Men, is referred to by fans
as the Silver Age of comics. In the late 1950s and 1960s these fans
were particularly important in shaping the direction of comic books
and comics history. These fans were interested in comic art and story
construction rather than simply the entertainment value of the comic
books. That many of these fans were young adults had important
ramifications for the future direction of comic books. Likewise, their
focus on superheroes meant that these comic books have been
accorded the most attention, and books from publishers such as
Harvey, Dell, and Archie Comics figure little in many discussions of
comic book history because their content is held to be insignificant, at
least to young adults.
Perhaps the first publisher to recognize that comic books direct-
ed specifically at an older audience would sell was William M.
Gaines. When Wertham’s campaign put an end to his horror line of
comics, Gaines focused his attention on converting the satirical comic
book Mad into a magazine. Mad’s parodies of American culture
influenced many young would-be artists. In the late 1960s a number
of these artists, including Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Gilbert
Shelton, began publishing underground comics, or comix, which, as
the x designated, transgressed every notion of social normality.
Nonetheless, the artists demonstrated a close familiarity with the
graphic and narrative conventions of comic art. Discussing these
comix, Joseph Witek has suggested that they should be seen as part of
the mainstream of American comic history not least of all because
comix helped transform comic book content and the structure of
the industry.
A major shift in the industry occurred in the late 1970s and early
1980s when entrepreneurs following the example of the undergrounds
set up specialist comic shops, comic book distribution companies,
and their own comic book publishing companies in which artists
retained ownership of their characters. These changes led to more
adult-oriented comics at the smaller companies and at the two
industry giants, DC and Marvel, which between them accounted for
about 75 percent of the market in 1993. DC and Marvel also
responded to changes in the industry by giving their artists more
leeway on certain projects and a share in profits from characters they
created. These changes took place during a boom time for the industry
with the trade paper Comic Buyer’s Guide estimating increases in
comic book sales from approximately $125 million in 1986 to $400
million in 1992.
This comic book boom was related to the synergies created by
the media corporations that owned the major comic book companies.
DC had been acquired by Warner in the 1960s for its licensing
potential. In 1989 Warner’s Batman movie heated up the market for
comic books and comic-book-related merchandise. DC, Marvel, the
comic book stores, and distributors promoted comics as collectibles,
and many people bought comics as an investment. When the
collectibility bubble burst in the mid 1990s the industry encountered a
downturn in which Marvel wound up bankrupt. Marvel’s difficulties
point to the necessity of large comic book companies diversifying
their characters appearances along the lines of the DC-Warner en-
deavor. On August 29, 1998, the Los Angeles Times reported in some
detail the frustrations Marvel had experienced over thirteen years in
trying to bring Spiderman to the screen.
As the century draws to a close the art form remains strong in
both its comic strip and comic book incarnations. The development of
the Internet-based World Wide Web has seen the art delivered in a
new fashion where strips can be read and related merchandise ordered
on-line. At the close of the twentieth century, then, the essential
feature of comics remains its distinctive characters who unite enter-
tainment and commerce.
—Ian Gordon
F
URTHER READING:
Barrier, Michael, and Martin Williams. A Smithsonian Book of
Comic-Book Comics. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1981.
Blackbeard, Bill, and Martin Williams. The Smithsonian Collection
of Newspaper Comics. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1977.
Daniels, Les. Comix: A History of Comic Books in America. New
York, Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1971.
———. DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic
Book Heroes. Boston, Bulfinch Press, 1995.
COMICS CODE AUTHORITYENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
565
———. Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest
Comics. New York, Abrams, 1991.
Gordon, Ian. Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, 1890-1945. Wash-
ington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.
Goulart, Ron. Over 50 Years of American Comic Books. Chicago,
Publications International Limited, 1991.
Harvey, Robert. The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History.
Jackson, Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, 1994.
Krause Publications. Comic Buyer’s Guide 1993 Annual. Iola, Wis-
consin, Krause Publications, 1993.
Marschall, Richard. America’s Great Comic Strip Artists. New York,
Abbeville Press, 1989.
McAllister, Matthew Paul. ‘‘Cultural Argument and Organizational
Constraint in the Comic Book Industry.’’ Journal of Communica-
tion. Vol. 40, 1990, 55-71.
Nyberg, Amy Kiste. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics
Code. Jackson, Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
Sabin, Roger. Adult Comics: An Introduction. New York,
Routledge, 1993.
Waugh, Coulton. The Comics. Jackson, Mississippi, University Press
of Mississippi, 1990, [1947].
Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. New York, Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1954.
Witek, Joseph. Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack
Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar. Jackson, Mississip-
pi, University Press of Mississippi, 1989.
Comics Code Authority
When the Comics Code was drafted in 1954, it was touted by its
creators as ‘‘the most stringent code in existence for any communica-
tions media.’’ It certainly created a fervor, and sparked heated debate
about the role of comic books and what they could and should do. The
Comics Code Authority, however, was quick to diminish as a
censoring body, challenge after challenge reducing it to relative
powerlessness. Still, the Code, along with the events leading up to it,
had made its impact, not only changing the direction and aesthetics of
American comic books, but also affecting this artistic form interna-
tionally. Conventions were shaped, as artists endeavored to tell their
stories within the Code’s restrictions. Meanwhile, working outside of
the Code, some artists took special care to flout such circumscription.
Although many factors may be considered in the establishment
of the Code, the most widely discussed has been psychiatrist Frederic
Wertham’s book, Seduction of the Innocent, which, in a scathing
attack on comic books, claimed that reading comics could lead to
juvenile delinquency. The book reproduced isolated panels from
several comics and argued that such scenes had a negative impact on
the psychology of children. Although some psychologists argued
against Wertham’s claims, the book was generally well received,
becoming a best-seller and creating a furor over the supposed
insidiousness of the comic book industry. The release of the book was
followed by hearings—commonly referred to as the Kefauver Hear-
ings after presiding senator Estes Kefauver—before the Senate sub-
committee on delinquency. Called to testify, Wertham continued his
attack on comic books, concluding ‘‘I think Hitler was a beginner
compared to the comic book industry.’’ William Gaines, publisher of
the much-maligned EC line of comics, argued that these comics were
not intended for young children and should not be subjected to
protective censorship. Still he found himself forced into a defense not
of comics as an expressive art form, but of what constituted ‘‘good
taste’’ in a horror comic.
After all was said and done, however, it was not from the outside
that the code was imposed, but rather from within the industry itself.
The Comic Magazine Association of America(CMAA) was formed
on October 26, 1954 by a majority of publishers, in an effort to head
off more controversy and to resuscitate declining sales figures. The
CMAA served as a self-censoring body, creating a restrictive code
forbidding much violence and sexual content as well as anti-authori-
tarian sentiment, and even limiting the use of specific words like
‘‘crime,’’ ‘‘terror,’’ or ‘‘horror’’ on comic book covers. Publishers
were now obliged to submit their comics for review by the Comics
Code Authority (CCA). Approved magazines were granted the cover
seal stating, ‘‘Approved by the Comics Code Authority.’’ Publishers
that failed to meet Code restrictions or that declined to have their
books reviewed by the CCA found their distribution cut off as
retailers declined to carry unapproved books. Such publishers eventu-
ally either submitted to the Code or went out of business. Notably,
Wertham had been in favor of restrictions that would keep certain
comics out of the hands of children, but he was troubled by what he
saw in Code-approved books, which he often found no less harmful
than the pre-Code comics.
Two companies, Dell and Gilberton, already regarded as pub-
lishers of wholesome comics such as the Disney and Classics Illus-
trated titles, remained exempt from the Code. Other publishers
worked around the Code. Some resorted to publishing comics in
magazine format to avoid restrictions. Given the virtual elimination
of crime and horror comics, several publishers began to place more
emphasis on their superhero books, in which the violence was bigger
than life and far from the graphically realistic portrayals in crime and
horror comics. It was during these ensuing years that superheroes
came to dominate the form and that DC and Marvel Comics came to
command the marketplace.
In the 1960s a very different response to the Code manifested
itself in the form of underground comics. These independently-
produced comic books included graphic depictions of sex, violence,
drug use—in short, anything that the code prohibited. Moreover,
these comics often paid tribute to pre-Code books and raged against
the very censoring agents that had led to their demise.
The first overt challenge to the Code came from Marvel Comics
in 1971. Although the Code explicitly prohibited mention of drugs,
writer/editor-in-chief Stan Lee, at the request of the Department of
Health Education and Welfare, produced a three-issue anti-drug story
line in Amazing Spider-Man. Despite being released without the
code, these comics were distributed and sold wonderfully, aided by
national press. It was with this publication that the Code finally
changed, loosening up slightly on its restrictions regarding drugs and
clothing to reflect a change in times. Still, most of the restrictions
remained largely intact.
The power of the CCA was still further reduced with the rise of
direct distribution. Shops devoted to selling only comic books, which
received their comics directly from publishers or, later, comic dis-
tributors, rather than general news distributors began to spring up
during the 1970s. With this new system, the vigilance against non-
Code books was bypassed. The new marketplace allowed major
publishers to experiment with comics geared towards an adult
COMING OUT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
566
readership, and allowed more adventurous small publishers to distrib-
ute their wares. The way was paved for major ‘‘independent’’
publishers, like Image and Dark Horse, who refused to submit to the
CCA’s restrictions.
Although the CCA has but a shadow of its former power over the
industry, and although the Code itself has been criticized—even from
within the CMAA—as an ineffectual dinosaur, there can be no
question of its impact. The comics industry, both economically and
aesthetically, owes a great deal to the Comics Code Authority, having
been shaped variously by accommodation and antagonism.
—Marc Oxoby
F
URTHER READING:
Daniels, Les. Comix: A History of Comic Books in America. New
York, Bonanza, 1971.
Nyberg, Amy Kiste. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics
Code. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
Sabin, Roger. Adult Comics: An Introduction. London, Routledge, 1993.
Coming Out
Since the 1960s, the expression ‘‘coming out’’—once reserved
for young debutantes making their entrée into society—has been
subverted to mean ‘‘coming out of the closet,’’ announcing publicly
that one is gay or lesbian. The phrase is ordinarily used in proclaiming
one’s identity to a broader public, though it can also mean acknowl-
edging one’s sexual orientation to oneself, or even refer to the first
time one acts on that knowledge.
Coming out as a subverted assertion originated in the early
twentieth century among the drag ‘‘debutante’’ balls, which were
popular social events in the American Southeast, especially among
African Americans. Drag queens were presented at these balls, just as
young heterosexual women came out at their own events. It was only
later, in the 1950s ambiance that placed a premium on hiding the
abnormal and atypical, that the connotation of coming out of a dark
closet was added, perhaps because of the expression ‘‘skeleton in the
closet,’’ i.e., a guilty secret.
In the post-Stonewall days of gay liberation, many younger gay
men and lesbians believed that repressing their sexual identities was
unhealthy, a stance supported by a growing body of psychological
evidence and that reflected the loosening of strict gender demarca-
tions in American society. From the 1970s, aspects of gay culture that
had once been secret became widely known for the first time: Straight
culture picked up the term ‘‘coming out’’ and began to broaden its
meaning. In the tell-all society that emerged in the U.S. after the
1970s, people came out on talk shows and in tabloid confessions as
manic-depressives, as neatniks, as witches, and other unexpected
forms of identification, some lighthearted, some deeply serious. Even
within the gay and lesbian community, the usage has expanded as
people came out as everything from bisexuals and transgendered folk
to sado-masochists and born-again Christians.
Another related term, ‘‘outing,’’ emerged in the late 1980s as the
opposite of the voluntary confession that had by then achieved
generally favorable connotations. Some gay activists, angered when
some public and successful gay person insisted on remaining in the
closet, deemed it a political necessity to reveal that closeted figure’s
identity, especially when his or her public pronouncements were at
odds with private behavior. The practice divided the gay and lesbian
community, with more radical voices arguing that outing was mere
justice, while others holding it to be the ultimate violation of privacy.
Outing has also been practiced by vindictive or well-meaning straight
people, or by the media, as was the case with lesbian activist
Chastity Bono.
Activists have long insisted that much of the oppression gays
experience would be diffused if all homosexual people came out
publicly. The first National Coming Out Day was declared on
October 11, 1988, the first anniversary of the second gay and lesbian
March on Washington, D.C. Hoping to maintain some of the spirit of
hope and power engendered by the march, organizers encouraged
gays to come out of the closet to at least one person on that day. Some
organizations have even distributed printed cards for gays to give to
bank tellers and store clerks announcing that they have just served a
gay client.
Perhaps it is because American society has grown so fond of
intimate revelation that the term ‘‘coming out’’ has gained such
popularity. Once it was an ‘‘in-crowd’’ phrase among lesbians and
gays, who chortled knowingly when the good witch in The Wizard of
Oz sang, ‘‘Come out, come out, wherever you are.’’ With book titles
like Lynn Robinson’s Coming Out of the Psychic Closet, and Martin
Liberman’s Coming Out Conservative, coming out has gone beyond
sexual identity to include any form of self-revelation.
—Tina Gianoulis
F
URTHER READING:
Bono, Chastity, and Billie Fitzpatrick. Family Outing. New York,
Little, Brown and Company, 1998.
Bosanquet, Camilla. Growing Up and Coming Out. New York, State
Mutual Book & Periodical Service, 1985.
Vargo, Marc E. Acts of Disclosure: The Coming-Out Process of
Contemporary Gay Men. Binghamton, New York, Haworth
Press, 1998.
The Commodores
The Lionel Richie-led soul band the Commodores, whose career
peaked in the late 1970s before Richie left for solo fame, is a prime
example of an R & B crossover success. Beginning as an opening act
during the early 1970s for The Jackson Five, the southern-based
Commodores released a handful of gritty funk albums before slowly
phasing into ballad-oriented material, which gained them the most
commercial success. As their audience transformed from being
largely black to largely white, the Commodores’ sound changed as
well, moving toward the smooth lightness of songs like ‘‘Still,’’
‘‘Three Times a Lady,’’ and ‘‘Easy.’’
Formed in 1968 in Tuskegee, Alabama, the group—Lionel
Richie on vocals and piano, Walter ‘‘Clyde’’ Orange on drums, Milan
Williams on keyboards and guitar, Ronald LaPread on bass and
trumpet, Thomas McClary on guitar, and William King Jr. playing a
variety of brass instruments—was signed to Motown in the early
1970s. Avoiding Motown’s assembly-line mode of music produc-
tion—which included in-house songwriters, musicians, and produc-
ers to help create ‘‘the Motown sound’’—this self-contained group of
COMMODORESENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
567
The Commodores
talented musicians and songwriters remained relatively autonomous.
They maintained their gritty southern-fried funk sound over the
course of three albums: their 1974 debut, Machine Gun; 1975’s
Caught in the Act; and 1975’s Movin’ On. These three albums built
the group a strong base of R & B fans with their consistently good up-
tempo funk jams such as ‘‘Machine Gun’’ and ‘‘The Zoo (Human
Zoo),’’ but they had not yet made the crossover move. Hot on the
Tracks (1976) showed signs of this move with its slower cuts (‘‘Just to
Be Close to You’’ and ‘‘Sweet Love’’ are notable examples). Their
big crossover move came with 1977’s self-titled breakthrough album,
which contained such party favorites as ‘‘Brick House’’ and ‘‘Slip-
pery When Wet,’’ as well as the adult- and urban-contemporary radio
staple ‘‘Easy.’’
It was the massive success of ‘‘Easy’’ that signaled a new
direction for the group and prompted a solo attempt by Richie (who,
nonetheless, remained in the band for another four years). Next came
the Top 40 hit ‘‘Three Times a Lady’’ from the 1978 album Natural
High and the Billboard number one single, ‘‘Still,’’ from 1979’s
Midnight Magic album—both of which continued the Commodores’
transformation from a chitlin’ circuit southern funk party band to
background music for board meetings, housecleaning, and candle-lit
dinners. In the Pocket, from 1981, was Richie’s last album with the
Commodores, and within a year he left to pursue a solo career.
Without Richie’s songwriting (his songs would always be the
Commodores’ strength) and charisma, the group floundered through
most of the 1980s, with the sole exception of their 1985 Top 40 hit
single ‘‘Nightshift,’’ for which album J. D. Nicholas assumed lead
singing duties. The Commodores suffered another blow when pro-
ducer/arranger James Anthony Carmichael, the man responsible for
shaping the majority of the group’s hits, followed Richie’s departure
in the early 1980s.
Richie went on to have a hugely successful solo career before
virtually disappearing from the commercial landscape in the 1990s.
Between 1981-87, he had thirteen Top Ten hits, which included a
staggering five number one singles—‘‘Endless Love,’’ ‘‘Truly,’’
‘‘All Night Long,’’ ‘‘Hello,’’ and ‘‘Say You, Say Me.’’
—Kembrew McLeod
F
URTHER READING:
Koenig, Teresa. Lionel Richie. Mankato, Crestwood House,
1986.
Nathan, David. Lionel Richie: An Illustrated Biography. New York,
McGraw-Hill, 1985.
Plutzik, Roberta. Lionel Richie. New York, Dell, 1985.
COMMUNES ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
568
Communes
Close, interdependent communities not based on family rela-
tionships, communes have a long history in the United States and
continue to represent a strand of American culture and ideology that
sanctions the search for a utopia of peace, love, and equality.
Researcher Benjamin Zablocki defines a commune as a group of
unrelated people who voluntarily elect to live together for an indefi-
nite time period in order to achieve a sense of community that they
feel is missing from mainstream American society. Most commonly
associated with the hippie and flower child members of the 1960s and
1970s counterculture, communes have professed a variety of reasons
for existence and can be politically, religiously, or socially based and
exist in both rural and urban environments. Keith Melville has
observed that commune members are linked by ‘‘a refusal to share the
dominant assumptions that are the ideological underpinnings of
Western society.’’ They are extremely critical of the status quo of the
American consumer society in which they live, and they promote a
new value system centered on peace and love, personal and sexual
freedom, tolerance, and honesty. Members wish to begin living their
A commune in Lawrence, Kansas in 1972.
vision of a better society away from mainstream society and enjoy the
support of their fellow believers.
Communes have existed throughout world history and in the
United States since its founding in the seventeenth century. Famous
nineteenth-century communes such as the Oneida and Shaker settle-
ments consisted of mostly older, middle-class idealists who strongly
believed in the possibility of creating their vision of the ideal society.
They shared strong religious or political convictions and were more
structured than their twentieth-century counterparts. Many of the later
communes would carry on their utopian mission.
The immediate predecessors of the twentieth-century communal
movement were the beatniks and African-American activists who
fought for social changes that the communalists would later adopt in
their created society in a desire to create a new ethics for a new age.
While communes promoted rural, community, and natural values in
an urban, individualistic, and artificial society, popular cultural
images of communes depict isolated, run-down rural farms where
barely clothed hippies enjoyed economic sharing and free love while
spending most of their days in a drug-induced haze. The high
visibility of the countercultural movement with which communes
were associated made them a large component in the national debate