The Ten-Cent Plague

The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

De: David Hajdu

Narrado por: Stefan Rudnicki

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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"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.

A little dry, but excellent anyway

I got this on sale one day. Honestly I don't know why the rating is under 4. It is non-fiction with lots of facts and a clear timeline. It's scary how it parallels the attack on music, television, movies and video games. The attack on comic books was outrageous and scary, complete with book burnings. I recommend this book, but be warned that it is a little dry and there are names and dates and facts.

Fascinating history and social study

Winston Churchill once said that the worst argument against democracy was talking to the average voter for five minutes. 

This book outlines one of those irritating periods (and there have been so many) when the emotions of the electorate overwhelmed facts or common sense, in this case nearly destroying an entire industry.

David Hajdu follows the history of the comic, from its roots in "Hogan's Alley" (where The Yellow Kid first appeared, giving a name to "yellow journalism") through the first introduction of comic books as free gifts with cereal (an invention of the father of Mad Magazine publisher William Gaines) and into the age of the super-hero comic book. 

There had been regular assumptions by the public and some fact-free theorizing by public experts that the original cartoons were ruining American youth, with the same regularity that everything from the waltz to rock-and-roll were destroying American youth. Hajdu says the original furor over "funny pages" died down at the start of the Second World War, when the comics and their heroes turned patriotic. After the war, however, with the growing success of comic books and the intense competition to create something new, there was a growing belief that the medium was causing juvenile delinquency. This despite the fact that juvenile crime rates began decreasing once fathers began returning from the war. 

Hajdu goes into wonderful details about the oddball personalities who built the industry, as well as the equally oddball experts and politicians who targeted the industry in the 1950s and basically emasculated and destroyed it. (I have often wondered why, as a person raised in the late 50s, the only comics available were generally Casper and Little Lulu.)

Long before "fake news" the experts began making up facts about the damage that comics, their plots, their artwork, their writing, and even their loud colors, were distorting young minds. It didn't matter that none of their contentions were scientifically tested. It fit the assumptions of many Americans who were convinced that there was a problem even if none existed. The real turning point came when the company that William Gaines inherited EC Comics (originally Educational Comics and later Entertaining Comics) realized that there was a potential market to make comics like the horror radio programs that ran in the 1940s. "Tales from the Crypt" and "Weird Science" joined their already popular crime series. But the often bloody and gruesome drawings and macabre stories (the stories no worse than many Poe stories) led to a growing backlash and eventually hearings in the US Senate.

It is a tragic story in many ways, with stories of many who lost their jobs in the industry and never recovered. Hajdu also touches on the aftermath and the gradual recovery with innovators like Stan Lee and Robert Crumb. 

It's a fascinating book that reflects on the times, politics, and the urge to have fun creating something new. Good reading not just for those interested in comics but those interested in modern history, society, and politics.

Fearmongering going out of control

This is what happened when the cave men argued against fire, or when technophobes riled against the Internet. It's another instance of the backlash against anything new, and it will unfortunately continue in a series of generational battles as long as people are around.

Listen to this, and promise yourself that you won't be part of the problem when a new technology emerges.

Have no love for comics, yet found this fasinating

I went out on a limb and got this in a 2-for-1 deal. Was more than a little hesitant considering I've owned less than 10 comic books in my life, but I wanted something non-fiction / educational and tend to enjoy historical books, even if the subjects are unfamiliar.

Anyway, even though I still have no interest to pick up a comic book, I have no regrets in picking this up and feel I can understand the love of comics now and have at least cured myself of ignorance in the history of comics.

However, what I really gained from this book was an interesting look into the viewpoint of the mob, in the generic sense. Those who would rather waste the energy and attention into destroying something they consider strange or evil, rather than channeling that passion and focus into producing something good. The sort who skilled in creating hate and are not only proud in their talent, but are celebrated, for a short time before they are forgotten or turn their attention on a new target.

Having recently read/listened to "The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon" and a similar history of Dungeons and Dragons, where the same single mindedness was aimed at the destruction of video games and RPGs. It becomes depressingly obvious that events do repeat themselves and society will probably continue to lash out at any shifts in culture before any evidence can be gathered while they are lead by those who prefer to see society frozen in the blissful memory of their childhood.

Beyond the more gloomy sections of the history of comics, there is plenty of humor in this narrative along with the bright and dark sides of the corporate world.

The narration was great, though some did complain of mispronunciations. I didn't really notice.

For those interested in this book, I will also recommend "How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, The Ultimate History of Video Games, Super Mario: The History of Nintendo" and "Masters of the Air" a history of the air war over Europe.

Audible 20 Review Sweepstakes Entry

An entertaining review of the birth of comic books

This is a great review of the birth of comic book pop culture and the backlash that nearly killed it. Between the lines are some of the seeds of anti-establishment sentiment.

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.