"Gaines says the comic-book business was subject to the same intense scrutiny that was applied to baseball in the 1920s and to movies in the 1940s. Gaines says the strict censorship crippled the comics industry. In the '50s, he says, there were 700 separate comic books with circulations of up to 400,000. Gaines said those figures began plummeting almost as soon as the censors took on the industry. Now, he says there are only 130 titles in comic books, with an average circulation of 150,000 each."