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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #315158 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Customer Reviews

How Comic Books Met Debilitating Censorship
At various times, Americans have chosen to believe that comic books create juvenile delinquency and encourage all kinds of immoral behavior by corrupting the young, as described in the book with a questionable basis, Seduction of the Innocent. The Ten-Cent Plague describes a free-wheeling industry that entertained youngsters and people in their twenties with anti-establishment themes and stories.

Despite little or no research to support these views and the Supreme Court upholding the First Amendment, legislators listened to a few psychiatrists and church and scout leaders who believed otherwise and put stiff penalties on those who put out the most popular comics (especially crime, horror, and romance). Distributors and newsstand dealers didn't want to go to jail over comic books, and they knuckled under to the pressure. Publishers quickly began to go broke. The industry tried to save itself with a rigid self-censorship code that made comics bland and did little to restore sales. Hundreds of comic titles died, and many talented people left the industry under a dark cloud.

Mad Magazine was one of the few survivals, and only because it converted from a comic book to a magazine (which wasn't subject to the same penalties).

It's a chapter in American history that few know about or understand. David Hadju does a solid job of describing it. I was a child during most of this and was aware of the protests against comic books, but didn't realize what the effects were.

This book could have been quite a bit shorter and punchier. I was disappointed that so many simple events (like a comic book burning) were treated in such detail. It was a little ho hum after awhile.