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)

Very Accurate History

Very readable history of a story so bizarre it won't seem entirely real. But it was all too real.

Comic Book Fans Rejoice

A thorough history of what went on after the publication of the book "Seduction Of The Innocent" as well as some history of the comics medium before the publication of the above mentioned book let's just say as a comic book fan I loved it. The reader was top notch.

Fascinating

The book itself is well written; I will have to look at the other book he has out on audible.

Rudnicki is a great narrator, but when he attempted a "New York" accent he sounded like one of the characters from his reading of ENDER'S GAME, whom I hadn't realised where supposed to be New Yorkers, and it's kind of jarring.

Other than that, no complaints.

Fascinating

Hadju's incredibly well researched examination of the censorship of comics offers a deeply contextualized narrative about the cultural and social impact and implications of the comics scare while also portraying of the rise and fall of the men and women who worked in the right industry at the wrong time.

Engaging History with Lessons to Learn

Alternate Title: How Early Lurid Comics Failed to Defend Themselves or Adjust to External Pressures. Too bad I wasn't there. There are important lessons to be learned, first that banning or forbidding things is not the answer, that it only perpetuates a vapid status quo that is doomed to fail. Second is identifying what are causes and what are effects (the lurid comics being the effects of deeper societal problems), so you can solve the true problem.

Outstanding!

Loved this wild, winding story of not only comic book history, but a slice of American history not often highlighted. Equal parts tragic and resilient, the stories of the men and women who fought to create the comic book medium is inspiring.

Book Burners Beware

What made the experience of listening to The Ten-Cent Plague the most enjoyable?

A concise account of the history of comics and the fear-mongering that grew up around them in the early days. Remember that time when school librarians, girl scouts and church leaders were holding drives to collect and burn comics? Yeah, this book will make you sad and also make you want to grab a collection of old EC books.

Exhaustive to a Fault

Any additional comments?

This book is an exhaustive description of the movement to ban comic books, commencing with the advent of the Sunday "funnies" in the 1920s, but focused primarily on the political movement of the early 50s that led to the demise of the industry in 1955, and the end of the "golden age."

The problem with the book is its exhaustive nature. It is interesting when describing the comic companies and artists, but it becomes dull and repetitive as it belabors the efforts to suppress comics, seemingly incorporating descriptions of every PTA member, school official and small town mayor who ever spoke out against the publications.

After all this detail, the ending seems rushed, and the final paragraph before the epilogue is the only place that mentions the resurgence of comics less than a decade later, in the silver age, with Stan Lee's marvel rebirth. What changed to enable that? No explanation is given.

Finally, the subtitle implies some insights into how the censorship efforts changed America, but the subject it never mentioned. Did the suppression of comics lead to a greater or lesser proclivity for censorship in the years that followed? We aren't told. I feel like the book should be half as long, and cover twice the period of time, to truly put these events into perspective.

An amazing listen

Amongst one of the many things I love that qualify me for "geek" status is my love of history & comic books. So I was pretty stoked to find "The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America" on Audible.

A great read if you want to learn about the origins of comics

While a little dry this is a great source for any who wish to learn about how comics as we know them today started out and the great upheaval that they underwent about half way through this past century.