The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America | David Hajdu

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America | David Hajdu | Incredible Social History

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The Ten-Cent Plagu...

	The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America David Hajdu Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

a must read for any comic book history fan

this book is far from perfect. and i understand where many of the more negative reviews are coming from. the mass condemnation of the comics and how it ruined the medium in the fifties is common knowledge to most comic fans. this book was written with people who dont know about wertham/seduction of the innocent/bill gaines getting grilled on tv by the senate/the comics code in mind. the author assumes his readers arent aware of these things and writes for any reader. however the main market for this book are comics fans and historians and many of them will feel let down or insulted by having these things explained to them as if they have no prior knowledge of them. however this book provides alot of great lessons and allegory about censorship and the author really did his homework. this is one of the first comic book history books i have read that has interviewed the book burners, banners, and many of the writers and artists who left the medium because of the backlash. and the book reads as a great modern social commentary when you consider it in terms of todays backlash against video games.

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Incredible Social History

It's no surprise to readers of David Hajdu's previous works that he knows how to research and how to translate that research into insightful, well-woven prose. He has a knack for finding unforgettable characters and telling their story in a compelling narrative. The book is laced with information gained from numerous in-depth interviews.

The story of the comics is itself incredible. The author clearly has a bone-deep knowledge and love of comics that can be seen in the biographies of the various creators and in the controversies they engendered.

But what most attracts me is that Hajdu provides a new reading for the social history of the 1950s, a new, intriguing way to understand contemporary culture. What a fascinating book for comic book fans. I just hope people seriously interested in contemporary American culture and history will read the book as well.

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Fascinating History

I found this book totally fascinating. Not only does it discuss the social history surrounding comics in the 40's and 50's but you can also see some parallels between the traditional culture's reaction to comics back then and the reaction of some to video games today. (There as some big differences though that will prevent the anti-gaming types (Jack Thompson, etc.) today from doing the damage Werthiemer (sp?) and his crew did back then.) I think anyone interested in social history, comics or video games will enjoy this book.

A good book on an unfortunate chapter in comics industry

Hajdu does a good job of writing about the hysteria directed against sequential art (to use Will Eisner's term) in the 1940s and 50s. He does a good job of portraying just how destructive the forces of censorship can be when certain cultural factors come into play. Things may be much better today, but after reading this book, I can't help but think that another big campaign of censorship against comics and other media is right around the corner.

If this book has a weakness, I think that it's that Hajdu doesn't say much in this book about the present state of the medium of comics or ways that fallout from the 1950s crackdown on comics has continued to affect public perception of the medium. Still, I think that this is a must-read for all comics fans. One especially sobering part of the book is a long list of writers and artists who never worked in comics again after the 1950s crackdown. It's very sad to think that the silencing of these writers and artists may have deprived the world of some brilliant work and that some of these people may have reached the same status as Will Eisner or Jack Kirby if they had been able to continue working in comics. Just thinking about it makes me want to write a big check to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

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How Comic Books Met Debilitating Censorship

At various times, Americans have chosen to believe that comic books create juvenile delinquency and encourage all kinds of immoral behavior by corrupting the young, as described in the book with a questionable basis, Seduction of the Innocent. The Ten-Cent Plague describes a free-wheeling industry that entertained youngsters and people in their twenties with anti-establishment themes and stories.

Despite little or no research to support these views and the Supreme Court upholding the First Amendment, legislators listened to a few psychiatrists and church and scout leaders who believed otherwise and put stiff penalties on those who put out the most popular comics (especially crime, horror, and romance). Distributors and newsstand dealers didn't want to go to jail over comic books, and they knuckled under to the pressure. Publishers quickly began to go broke. The industry tried to save itself with a rigid self-censorship code that made comics bland and did little to restore sales. Hundreds of comic titles died, and many talented people left the industry under a dark cloud.

Mad Magazine was one of the few survivals, and only because it converted from a comic book to a magazine (which wasn't subject to the same penalties).

It's a chapter in American history that few know about or understand. David Hadju does a solid job of describing it. I was a child during most of this and was aware of the protests against comic books, but didn't realize what the effects were.

This book could have been quite a bit shorter and punchier. I was disappointed that so many simple events (like a comic book burning) were treated in such detail. It was a little ho hum after awhile.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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