The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America | 
 enlarge | Author: David Hajdu
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
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Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 11744
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.7
ISBN: 0374187673
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.232
EAN: 9780374187675
ASIN: 0374187673
Publication Date: March 18, 2008
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, March 2008: I may be alone here, but when I read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a whole strata of American artists came to life for me. Ever since then I've been waiting for a book like David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague to come along and show me the contours of this world. Anyone who remembers Positively 4th Street will recognize in this new book Hajdu's peerless ability to weave first-person recollections with an acute perspective of America at a pivotal moment in its cultural timeline. The rise of comics as a mode of expression, an outlet for entertainment, and, rather tragi-comically, as a target for censorship, couldn't be more compelling in anyone else's hands. In deft narrative strokes Hajdu creates a colorful, character-driven story of our first real--and lasting--counterculture (if the burgeoning popularity of graphic novels is any indication) and shows why we embrace it still.--Anne Bartholomew
Product Description
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 pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. No sooner had this new culture emerged than it was beaten down by church groups, community bluestockings, and a McCarthyish Congress—only to resurface with a crooked smile on its face in Mad magazine.
The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has never been fully told—until The Ten-Cent Plague. David Hajdu’s remarkable new book vividly opens up the lost world of comic books, its creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority.
When we picture the 1950s, we hear the sound of early rock and roll. The Ten-Cent Plague shows how—years before music—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.
The Ten-Cent Plague radically revises common notions of popular culture, the generation gap, and the divide between “high” and “low” art. As he did with the lives of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (in Lush Life) and Bob Dylan and his circle (in Positively 4th Street), Hajdu brings a place, a time, and a milieu unforgettably back to life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 Vivid history lesson December 21, 2008
The Ten-Cent Plague does an incredible job of framing the context of the early 1950s and helps us to understand how it was possible for comic books to be seen as a threat big enough to warrant book burnings and Congressional witch hunts. Well told story.
The 10 Cent Plague history and society influence of comics November 22, 2008
The controversy over the damage that comic books can do to young impressionable minds in the 1950's is a very important historical counterpoint to know about. This is the age of McCarthy, schools teaching kids to drop and roll in the case of nuclear attack, Russia on the war path, Prague Spring, and a whole host of post world war two anxieties that gripped and held onto America throughout this decade. The attack on comics was no different, in the age of angst, comics started coming into their own and extending boundaries on what is and what is not acceptable. Society was bound to react in a draconian method which makes for fascinating reading 50 years later.
I found this book fascinating given the historical context of the time, from the end of world war two through the end of the 1950's with the adoption of the Comics Magazine Association of America is responsible for the death of the great American comic book. Bowing to social pressure, the comic book industry had to do something, and the end result was a gutting of the comic book industry. While no one at the time would see the eventual outcome of the CMAA, the influence has been felt by a generation of comic book readers and more. Even though the comic book industry has tried to work out of their slump, it has not gone as good has it could have been if the boundaries had continued to expand with comic books as much as they were expanding with society at the time.
While the comic book industry has attempted multiple attempts at revival and seen some success, the overshadowing of the CMAA and its influences continued to alter how comics were perceived. What is good is that with the advent of comic book based movies, grandparents are showing the grand kids that it is cool to be a super hero, wear your underwear outside your pants, and fight for the good guys. That it is ok to like zombies, detectives, and gritty comics. What is disappointing in this book is that the late 1960's comic book revival, with some of the more interesting new writers, is not discussed. But that would make an equally interesting book to read, honestly David Haidu could write a book for each decade of the comic book industry working out how each decade attempted to touch readers, and how they won, and how the failed.
I really enjoyed this book; it was absolutely fascinating how an industry can gut itself and squander its artistic talent in such a short period of time. This would make a business case study that the pursuit of the short term often comes at the cost of the long term. Five of Five stars, I think I want to read this book again.
OH! DO BEWARE OF MRS. GRUNDY! October 15, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
First, I have to admit that I am not a comic book expert or collector. I do have a modest collection of Black Hawk (Blackhawk) comics, but only because they were my favorites when I was a kid. I really did not read this work due to any overwhelming interest in comics. I did read them growing up and well remember the hysteria surrounding them in the 1950s. I will admit though that I did read quite a number of them during that time period. My parents liked peace and quiet and found that giving me a comic would shut my never ending talk up for a bit. I did read this book though because I do have a great interest in censorship in any form, and I am interested in the particular era covered by this work.
The author has certainly done some wonderful research with this offering. He gives us a very nice discussion of the history of the comic book in America, which I found quite interesting. I am sure that most comic enthusiasts will be aware of this information, but I was not, so I enjoyed it and learned. After his history he goes into the, as I said, "hysteria" which showed its ugly head every so often as to the effect this particular art form had upon the youth of our nation. Particular attention is made to the period of the late 1940s and the 1950s when the real trouble began.
Post war America was in many ways, a rather scary place. For those of you not there at the time, you need to remember stories of The Red Scare, The Bomb, Eugene McCarthy, women asserting themselves in the work place, The Yellow Peril, population upheavals, transformation after a world wide depression...and the list goes on. Among the "evils," or so it was thought, was an increase in juvenile crime. The term "Juvenile Delinquent" became a part of our everyday vocabulary. Naturally, people needed something to blame these problems on. If a communist was not handy, or jazz music was not being played on the radio, then something else had to do. It this case, the comic book was chosen. I suppose since the beginning of time, young folk have rebelled a bit against the system or their elders, and since the beginning to time the elders have sworn up and down that the young are going to hell in a hand basket. When you think about it, this process is still going on. This is the natural way of thing; always has been, always will be.
The author has given us a wonderful study of how a thought, a word, a picture, a story can be twisted and used by the powerful to meet their own needs and justify their own ends. In this case the PTA, politicians, preachers, the church, the Boy and Girl Scouts, schools, educators and the local village idiot all got in on the act. Priest, preachers, congressmen, psychiatrists, the news media, parents, George who worked at the local barber shop, all had an opinion. The author weaves a wonderful readable tale chronicling all of this. Now make no mistake; this is not what I would classify as an "easy read." This is probably more of a scholarly work that a piece of popular history. It is easy to consume and teaches though, and holds the reader's interest.
All in all, I found this to be a remarkable read. I learned new things and it certainly gave me much more food for thought. For history buffs, pop culture enthusiasts, comic collectors, and the generally curious, it would be hard to beat this one. Highly recommend this one.
Don Blankenship
The Ozarks
A real-life horror story October 5, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The history of scapegoating in the 20th-century United States is a long one, with public fears about menaces real or imagined directed at alleged causes ranging from drugs to TV to rock and rap music, accompanied by reams of pontificating and propaganda that tend to seem pretty silly in hindsight (Reefer Madness, anyone?). In The Ten-Cent Plague, David Hajdu tells the story of one particularly dumbfounding example of mass hysteria that gripped the country in the late 1940's and early 1950's in the form of the campaign against comic books. Starting with the rise of the medium in the early 20th century as a mode of expression for minorities, tenement dwellers, and other outsiders, the book moves into an extensive retelling of the way the forces of reaction mobilized to turn comics into symbols of all that ailed society and their creators into pariahs. In a struggle about as even as a fight between Batman and a dimwitted petty thief, reason and moderation were swamped by a small army of their traditional enemies--conjecture, grandstanding, prejudice, moralism, and fearmongering. Supporting his claims with a wealth of direct quotations from those on all sides of the issue, from creators to consumers to persecutors, Hajdu details how occasionally legitimate concerns about excessively lurid comic-book content led to an all-out witch hunt and an example of the mob mentality at its most frightening.
Beginning with exaggerated accusations that comics were fueling a wave of juvenile delinquency that was itself arguably illusory, the anti-comics crusade quickly acquired a creepily totalitarian air as it sought to eliminate any content that constituted even the remotest threat to the ruling authorities or the values of the self-appointed guardians of morality and good taste. As recounted by Hajdu, the pattern was depressingly predictable: the most objectionable comics were presented as indicative of the medium as a whole; the most wild accusations became articles of faith through sheer repetition; state legislatures and civic groups sought to preserve the American way through such seemingly un-American measures as governmental bans and book burnings; and, of course, congressional hearings were held. The hysteria reached its culmination with the now infamous Comics Code, a self-imposed set of laughably puritanical restrictions placed on comic book publishing and enforced in an arbitrary and punitive manner by a collection of some of the least fun people on Earth, which essentially destroyed the comic-book industry from the mid-'50's until its rebirth in the '60's.
The Ten-Cent Plague raises an enormous number of issues that remain relevant to this day, not all of which the book has space to fully address. In spite of its subtitle, there's little here about how the comic-book scare changed American society. Hajdu is largely content to tell a straightforward story about the rise of a distinctly American art form and its persecution by the forces of puritanism and repression. Some of the more intriguing issues that the book raises--the creation of a youth culture and the accompanying threat to the established order; the infantilization of young people's minds by adults; the role of brainwashing and manipulation in maintaining the conformity of postwar American society--are touched upon but not explored in much depth. Still, The Ten-Cent Plague tells a gripping, fascinating, and above all thought-provoking story that raises questions that will remain troubling long after you're done reading. As always, the book reminds us, we should be less fearful of comic books or any other media creation than of those who find threats in everything and humor in nothing.
As engrossing as any four-star comic-book September 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
David Hajdu's "The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America" begins with the sad story of Janice Valleau Winkleman, who retired to Florida after losing the comic-book-artist job she had begun at age 19 and worked for over a decade.
Winkleman was among hundreds of such artists -- mostly social misfits who found a common bond in a new art form, toiled for millions of enthralled readers, and then were hounded out of their jobs by high-minded hypocrites.
"The Ten-Cent Plague" tells how the full-color comic strips of early Sunday newspapers gave way to the more elaborate drawings of 1940's comic books. Among the early practitioners were Bill Gaines, who created MAD Magazine (which began as a satirical comic); and a gag writer named Bob Kahn, who became famous after he changed his name to Bob Kane and created Batman.
The book details how American kids delighted in the comics' anything-goes mission statement, only to be crushed by the adult sentiment of "Father knows best." Readers' parents, who merely sniffed at early comics as kiddie pablum, eventually felt threatened by their anti-authority attitude.
Chief among the book's villains is Frederic Wertham. He was a psychiatrist frequently called upon to testify -- with no documented evidence -- that all comic books led to juvenile delinquency and violent crimes.
Yet the book's most memorably violent imagery is that of American adults' public bonfires of comic books -- an irony that only the victimized young readers seem to appreciate.
The story's climax -- as juicy as any comic-book twist -- comes at the nationwide broadcast of a Congressional hearing about comics. On one side sits a desperate Bill Gaines, trying to defend his life's work while hyped up on diet pills. On the other side, Senator Estes Kefauver, who ends up laying waste to the benign comic-book industry with the same intensity that he ended Joe McCarthy's Red-baiting career.
Just as comic books transcended their pulp origins to become pop art, so author Hajdu takes a seemingly trivial story and imbues it with passion and indignation. The book's pace is as feverish as its subject's. And it shows how the dismantling of the comic-book industry was, in the end, a ham-fisted reaction to some kids questioning the status quo.
When it comes to a First Amendment defense from an unlikely source, "The Ten-Cent Plague" ranks with the movie "The People vs. Larry Flynt." It's a bracing read.
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