The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

It's no surprise to readers of David Hajdu's previous works that he knows how to research and how to translate that research into insightful, well-woven prose. He has a knack for finding unforgettable characters and telling their story in a compelling narrative. The book is laced with information gained from numerous in-depth interviews.

The story of the comics is itself incredible. The author clearly has a bone-deep knowledge and love of comics that can be seen in the biographies of the various creators and in the controversies they engendered.

But what most attracts me is that Hajdu provides a new reading for the social history of the 1950s, a new, intriguing way to understand contemporary culture. What a fascinating book for comic book fans. I just hope people seriously interested in contemporary American culture and history will read the book as well.

Hajdu does a good job of writing about the hysteria directed against sequential art (to use Will Eisner's term) in the 1940s and 50s. He does a good job of portraying just how destructive the forces of censorship can be when certain cultural factors come into play. Things may be much better today, but after reading this book, I can't help but think that another big campaign of censorship against comics and other media is right around the corner.

If this book has a weakness, I think that it's that Hajdu doesn't say much in this book about the present state of the medium of comics or ways that fallout from the 1950s crackdown on comics has continued to affect public perception of the medium. Still, I think that this is a must-read for all comics fans. One especially sobering part of the book is a long list of writers and artists who never worked in comics again after the 1950s crackdown. It's very sad to think that the silencing of these writers and artists may have deprived the world of some brilliant work and that some of these people may have reached the same status as Will Eisner or Jack Kirby if they had been able to continue working in comics. Just thinking about it makes me want to write a big check to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

this book is far from perfect. and i understand where many of the more negative reviews are coming from. the mass condemnation of the comics and how it ruined the medium in the fifties is common knowledge to most comic fans. this book was written with people who dont know about wertham/seduction of the innocent/bill gaines getting grilled on tv by the senate/the comics code in mind. the author assumes his readers arent aware of these things and writes for any reader. however the main market for this book are comics fans and historians and many of them will feel let down or insulted by having these things explained to them as if they have no prior knowledge of them. however this book provides alot of great lessons and allegory about censorship and the author really did his homework. this is one of the first comic book history books i have read that has interviewed the book burners, banners, and many of the writers and artists who left the medium because of the backlash. and the book reads as a great modern social commentary when you consider it in terms of todays backlash against video games.

The inside cover reads "this is the revelatory, until now largely untold story of a lost world of the imagination..." Not quite so true - there was very little in this volume that I hadn't read or seen elsewhere, scattered across the forwards of the recent EC hardback collections, Stan Lee's autobiography, a recent cable documentary about the history of comics, and a dozen other sources. But this book does bring it all together into a clear and fairly comprehensive narrative of those dark days and I recommend it, not just for comic fans but also for those that are just interested in American history and or sociology.

It was an interesting trifecta last week, as I finished this book, watched the season finale of Boston Legal, and began reading Kenneth Johnson's sequel to the 1980s sci-fi miniseries, "V". All three gelled into the message that we usually don't learn from our history and thus do repeat our mistakes. They also gelled into the idea that all it takes for a group to get its way is for it to create a sentiment of fear against something, and then to allow for peer pressure to step in and move the society into a direction no-one would have imagined shortly before. There is little more dangerous than a scared populace.

Mr. Hajdu interviewed some of the, now elderly, children that participated in the bonfires that burned comic books. Just a few years after people reacted in horror to films of the Hitler youth burning books, in Germany, American youth were doing the same thing. The "kids" talked about how they felt they were doing something positive, but in retrospect realized they had been misled and tricked by adults - parents and teachers.

The architects of this censorship created an environment of fear: Store owners feared prosecution and attacks, teenage customers feared being beat up by mobs of do-gooders, parents feared that their children would become monsters, politicians feared they would lose their positions. This great comic book scare was coincident to the much bigger scare of the McCarthy hearings. In both cases a combination of the self-serving and the well-meaning and fear ruined the livelihoods of people. Mr. Hajdu, in an appendix, lists 14 pages (double columned) of writers and artists that never again worked in the industry the loved, after the purge of the 1950s.

Mr. Hajdu takes the time to carefully introduce all of the players, and in so doing, gives a good overall history of comic books in America, from their origins as newspaper strips. In doing this he helps the reader understand how the works were viewed by the average person when the scare began. He also talks about how they changed due to societal changes and due to the crisis.

It's a good book - and thought provoking. Hopefully it will be eye-opening to its readers to be wary of those that deal in fear. Hopefully it will also help its readers to realize that comic books are a medium, not a genre - a medium that can have diverse products aimed at every age group. In recent years district attorneys in Texas and Georgia have tried to prosecute comic book sellers for selling adult comics to adults on the grounds that comic books are for kids. A reminder that 2008 is not that far removed from 1954.

Probably one of the greatest evils in society are the self-righteous moralists who want to rid the world of what they perceive as sinful, usually saying it's "for the children". Usually, the things they want to actually get rid of are merely items that encourage free thought or seemingly contradict their own narrow dogma. Thus today, we get those who want to ban Harry Potter books not because of any proven harm, but merely the fact that they don't fall into their own interpretation of good and evil. It's not enough to choose to ignore the items, but also to deprive others of their joy.

David Hajdu's The Ten Cent Plague details one such situation that occurred in the early 1950s and focused on comic books. This was an era when comics were at a creative and commercial peak, dealing with not only the superhero genre, but also horror, crime, war and romance. While some of it was over-the-top, it also provided entertainment and occasionally delivered a message as well.

The main villain in this piece is Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent, a book that alleged links between comic books and juvenile delinquency, links that were often weak at best, and completely fabricated in other cases. In this Legion of Doom, however, Wertham is merely the biggest name, but there are others as well, driven to hound the comic book industry out of existence. They would use book-burnings, boycotts and the police to get their way, and to a large extent, they would win. Due to their efforts, the Comics Code was instituted, resulting in comics that went from being fun (if edgy) to watered-down pap fit for only the youngest kids. It was like replacing Bugs Bunny and Homer Simpson with Baby Huey and the Care Bears.

It would take decades for the comic books to get back much of the creativity they lost, and commercially, they would never be as dominant again. Yet there were still heroes in this era - most notably Bill Gaines - but they could never quite grasp the significance of Wertham and company until it was too late. Around the only positive that came out of this period was Mad Magazine, which Gaines was able to squeeze past the Comics Code by changing its classification from comic book to magazine.

Hajdu's writing is always engaging. I would have liked a few more illustrations but that's a minor quibble. Overall, this is a good book of relatively modern history, not only giving a good look at another era, but also providing a valuable lesson that too many times, the ones who say they are protecting "the children" from evil may be doing the actual evil themselves.