The Ten-Cent Plague

The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

By: David Hajdu

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between "high" and "low" art.

David Hajdu reveals how comics, years before the rock-and-roll revolution, brought on a clash between postwar children and their prewar parents. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics became the targets of a raging generational culture divide. They were burned in public bonfires, outlawed in certain cities, and nearly destroyed by a series of televised Congressional hearings. Yet their creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority would have a lasting influence.

©2008 David Hajdu (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Every once in a while, moral panic, innuendo, and fear bubble up from the depths of our culture....David Hajdu's fascinating new book tracks one of the stranger and most significant of these episodes, now forgotten, with exactness, clarity, and serious wit." (Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton University)
"This book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination." ( The New York Times)

As good as a novel!

What a terrific book. As a child in the fifties I vaguely remember my parents warning me about comic books. But this book tells all the background information I could have never understood.
And the birth of MAD magazine is a great bonus to the birth of all the comic creations.
How our country got so wrapped up in fearing comic books is absurd, but not surprising given the hubbub a few years back over the flash of a breast at the Super Bowl.
This book is worth every moment of time. And while I usually enjoy the narrator, his attempts to do a "Noo Yawk" accent was a little too "dese, dems, and dose" to enjoy.

Freedom of the Press? Not here you don't.

Well written and frightening account of the McCarthy-esc government crack down o the comic book industry during the 1950s. Less than ten years after WW2, American children were being encouraged to have mass comic book burnings by their teachers and religious leaders. Very scary stuff; I couldn't put it down.

Interesting Read

I had heard about this time in history and this book filled in the details. Makes me want to buy some old EC comics.

comics are serious business

I started reading comics in the 70s and thought the comics code authority stamp was a joke. hearing the background I'm horrified to what some folks went through to try and ban comic books.

great narration and tied in nicely with me reading the "story of marvel comics" a few months ago.

Glad the censors lost the fight and comics live on today.

Great history of the SOTI Era.

This book covers the ongoing attack against comics as an artform and as a legitimate cultural phenomenon. The debate over both the content and the artistic merit of this well established entertainment genre is presented in its historical context in an engaging and entertaining way. Well written and well narrated.

Art can't hurt you

This well researched book clearly details how Comic Books were used as a quick easy target for the difficult problem of violence in society. One can't help but see the parallels to current events as we scapegoat video games as the cause of violence in young people, even though violent crime has gone down as the sale of video games has gone up over the last 5 years. It is precisely the same dynamic described in this book.

A fair criticism is that there are too many sources referenced. I would have liked less quantity and more in depth interviews. However, as a fan of old EC Comics, I enjoyed hearing from all of the people who created them; many who lived through the ban went on to create modern comics. And all of the first person dialog brings the tone of the times to life.

Now I understand why my grandmother, to my horror, threw away all of my comics when she discovered them in my room in 1962. She thought I was headed for a life of crime!

The narration was excellent.

Stefan, no!

This title contains a great deal of information for those of us who are interested in the history of comic strips and/or comic books. That same group, however, are likely to be apalled at Stefan Rudnicki constantly mispronouncing the name "Sub-Mariner." He says it like the word "submarine" with an "er" at the end rather than "mariner" (as in Rime of the Ancient...) preceded by "sub."

Rudnicki is still one my favorite narrators. Other than the above problem his performance is excellent as usual, but for comics geeks that one issue can be fairly irritating.

An important and timely story

I think everyone ought to read this book so they might understand what happens when you impose outside censorship on any medium. I'm glad someone thought to do a book about this incident. My only complaint is that the author has a poor sense of sentence structure and the awkward, crammed-together, run-on sentences make the text hard to follow when it's read out loud.

The. Best.

This is the best history of comics ever. I loved Hajdu’s approach and have recommended this book to all of my comic-loving friends.

Fun, Interesting History of Comic books

I had planned to listen to this as one of three books I was listening to at the time, but I ended up just sticking with this one and finished it quickly. It's an easy listen and pretty interesting, especially if you know nothing about the topic, as was the case with me.

The narrator has a fantastic voice and does a great job. The only thing I didn't love was that when he was quoting any of the publishers or cartoonists, he would do so in a thick, New York accent, which I thought was unecesary. Perhaps it could give the reader a better view of that individual, but I seriously doubt that the narrator has ever heard them speak. Also, they all sounded the same, so it didn't bring any clarity.