The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America Review
It's never been easy to publish comic books for all ages in America. While other countries long ago incorporated the medium into their reading habits, comics and graphic novels have remained, here in the States, the domain of the young--at least in the popular mindset. And while many have pointed out that comics have grown up--and that there's a wealth of material available for all age ranges--it's more accurate to not that comics grew up a long, long time ago . . . and they paid a great price for it. David Hajdu takes a look at that dark time in The Ten-Cent Plague, his insightful examination of the effect of McCarthyism on comic books.
Prior to the investigation, comics were expanding at an amazing pace. Sales were high, and a wide variety of books were sold, ranging from superheroes to romance to horror to true crime. It's those latter two that seemed to push the envelope a little too much for some people's tastes. With J. Edgar Hoover and other law-enforcement officials openly discussing their fear of a growing amount of juvenile delinquency, parents all over the country were fearful. And ready to listen to some (perhaps well-intentioned) fear-mongering from Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who headed up the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. Wertham considered comics a source of evil, having a detrimental effect on the impressionable minds of the young, and it didn't take much for him to convince congress, teachers, and parents of the same thing.
Those of us who grew up reading comics heard a lot about Wertham--he was the reason every issue we bought contained a seal stating it was "Approved by the Comics Code Authority"--but the majority of new graphic novel readers might be unaware of his work. His famous phrase "Seduction of the Innocent" became a catchphrase among comic readers, and it sums up the heart of his argument. As Hajdu fairly presents, Wertham wasn't the oppressive censor he was often made out to be. In fact, he was somewhat progressive in his views. He truly believed that comic books were causing irreparable damage to the psyches of American youths and he took it upon himself to lead the charge against them.
The result was a seriously weakened industry that couldn't tell all the stories it wanted to tell. Creativity was limited, and sales were affected as a result. It's taken decades for comics publishers to make the headway needed in the States to change all that--most notably through underground comix beginning in the '60s and after a "British Invasion" in the '80s ushered in a new direction (and attracted an older audience).
Hajdu has a natural storytelling ability that keeps all of this subject matter from ever getting too dry. He wisely avoids heavy-handedness in favor of a more objective approach, smoothly presenting opposing sides with empathy.
Graphic novels continue to draw a wider and more diverse audience day by day. The throngs of new readers now drawn to the medium will learn much about the art form in this dense work. That understanding may help them see how graphic novels even now aren't that far removed from that seemingly long-ago time. And many more will wonder where the art form would be now if it hadn't been stifled just when it was beginning to branch out.
-- John Hogan
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America Feature
- ISBN13: 9780312428235
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In the years between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, the popular culture of today was invented in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. But no sooner had comics emerged than they were beaten down by mass bonfires, congressional hearings, and a McCarthyish panic over their unmonitored and uncensored content. Esteemed critic David Hajdu vividly evokes the rise, fall, and rise again of comics in this engrossing history.
David Hajdu is the author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña. He is the music critic for The New Republic, and he teaches at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Book of the Year
In The Ten-Cent Plague, David Hajdu looks at the rise and fall of comic books, the art defined by creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority.
The Ten-Cent Plague shows how—years before the rock and roll music of the 1950s—comics brought on a clash between children and their parents, between prewar and postwar standards. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics spoke to young people and provided the guardians of mainstream culture with a big target. Parents, teachers, and complicit kids burned comics in public bonfires. Cities passed laws to outlaw comics. Congress took action with televised hearings that nearly destroyed the careers of hundreds of artists and writers. Hajdu aims to revise common notions of popular culture, the generation gap, and the divide between “high” and “low” art.
"The Ten-Cent Plague is the third book by David Hajdu to take a subject suitable for fans' hagiography and turn it into something of much wider interest . . . this book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination."—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"The meticulously researched evidence of how easily America can be gulled into trashing its defining ideals in the name of Americanism—as if we needed any reminders—are among the highlights of Hajdu's book . . . The Ten-Cent Plague is a worthy addition to the canon of comic-book literature."—Ron Powers, The New York Times Book Review
"A lively read, The Ten-Cent Plague digs deeply into the social context surrounding the 'comic-book panic' of the first half of the 20th century . . . The greatest strength of The Ten-Cent Plague is the breadth of the author's primary research, particularly his interviews with 'more than 150 comic-book artists, writers, editors, publishers, readers, and others.' The stories these men and women tell are by turns hilarious, heroic, horrific, and heartbreaking. I've read dozens of versions of the 1954 tale, but more than any other writer, Hajdu allows us to understand what it was like for the people who worked at producing these not-so-funny books . . . Hajdu's book expands our understanding of the personal consequences of 'the great comic-book scare.'"—Gene Kannenberg, Jr., The Chronicle of Higher Education
"Horror and other raffish comics, and the campaign to stamp them out, are the subject of David Hajdu's smart new book, The Ten-Cent Plague (one thin dime being the price of the average comic in those days). Hajdu has consulted surviving artists and writers from the period, many of whom were unable to work again in the comics business after the crackdown. The result is a stylish, informed account that shows how easy it is to think fuzzily about other people's pleasures . . . Hajdu evokes the era colorfully and wittily."—Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post Book World
"The Ten-Cent Plague is David Hajdu's affectionate yet outraged account of this important but little-remembered segment of cultural history . . . The Ten-Cent Plague is an admirable account. Hajdu writes well and has performed the enormous service of interviewing more than 150 comic-book publishers and creators, which coupled with his archival research enabled him to produce a lively and nuanced portrait of a fascinating aspect of American culture . . . By and large free of meditation and moralizing, The Ten-Cent Plague keeps the focus on the remarkable men and women who produced the comics, the purveyors of junk science and Puritanism who hounded them, and the elected leaders who adopted egregiously unconstitutional legislation to drive the comic-book publishers out of business."—Daniel Akst, The Boston Globe
"As David Hajdu reports in his vivid and engaging book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, more than twenty publishers were putting out close to six hundred and fifty titles a month. Eighty to a hundred million comic books were sold every week; according to contemporary reports, the average issue was passed along to six or more readers . . . It seems plausible to say, as Hajdu does, that in the early nineteen-fifties comic books reached more people than magazines, radio, or television did. Most of those people were children."—Louis Menand, The New Yorker
"As David Hajdu's new book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, shows, there was a time when comics were universally regarded as the boogeyman of literature, an epidemic-like scourge that was believed to be the major cause of juvenile delinquency, illiteracy, bad grades, mass idiocy, and what was understood to be the general moral decay of society. Comic books were not only blamed for warping the fragile young minds of children, they were all but accused of ruining their eyesight and stunting their growth. There are obvious parallels to the Red Scare of the same period, as Mr. Hajdu shows. Yet there were also different forces at work: Mr. Hajdu convincingly makes a case that comic books, long before pop music, were the first form of American culture created exclusively for children. When the
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Customer Reviews
Forgetting the First Amendment - Tax Writer - Maui
Laws aren't any crazier today then they were 50 years ago-- people just have short memories!
This excellent is about the comic-book bans that the government inacted in the 1950s-- they burned comic books all over the nation. They even banned Wonder Woman because she was too much like a sexual dominatrix (with the gold lasso, etc) and her outfit was too skimpy. Compare that to the flesh you see on TV now!
The first amendment basically went out the window for 10 years for an entire subset of the print industry.
The only drawback I felt, was that the book jumped around a lot-- from one point of view to another. But it was very exciting reading, and well-researched. I really enjoyed it.
comic books - Wayne R. Klatt - Chicago, IL
What a wonderful book this is, despite a subject that hardly seems interesting, the moral outrage over comic books in the early 1950s. The author delightfully recreates the period and clearly loves his subject. Comic book creators and publishers come off as people you would like to know, and the outrage over easy subjects is amusing. The depiction of the era is good, and there even are nuggets of genuine wisdom. Admittedly, the cumulative effect of all these comic books was a bit much at the time, but contrary to the critics they did no harm. "The Ten-Cent Plague" is fun to read, and I regard it as a lucky find.
Jul 01, 2010 13:00:13
