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.
"Marvelous . . . a staggeringly well-reported account of the men and women who created the comic book, and the backlash of the 1950s that nearly destroyed it....Hajdu's important book dramatizes an early, long-forgotten skirmish in the culture wars that, half a century later, continues to roil."--Jennifer Reese, "Entertainment Weekly "(Grade: A-)
"Incisive and entertaining . . . This book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination."--Janet Maslin, "The New York Times
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"A well-written, detailed book . . . Hajdu's research is impressive."--Bob Minzesheimer, "USA Today"
"Crammed with interviews and original research, Hajdu's book is a sprawling cultural history of comic books."--Matthew Price, "Newsday"
"To those who think rock 'n' roll created the postwar generation gap, David Hajdu says: Think again. Every page of "The Ten-Cent Plague "evinces [Hajdu's] zest for the 'aesthetic lawlessness' of comic books and his sympathetic respect for the people who made them. Comic books have grown up, but Hajdu's affectionate portrait of their rowdy adolescence will make readers hope they never lose their impudent edge."--Wendy Smith," Chicago Tribune"
"A vivid and engaging book."--Louis Menand, "The New Yorker
""David Hajdu, who perfectly detailed the Dylan-era Greenwhich Village scene in Positively 4th Street, does the same for the birth and near death (McCarthyism!) of comic books in "The Ten-Cent Plague,"" --GQ
"Sharp . . . lively . . . entertaining and erudite . . . David Hajdu offers captivating insights into America's early bluestocking-versus-blue-collar culture wars, and the later tensions betweenwary parents and the first generation of kids with buying power to mold mass entertainment."--R. C. Baker, "The Village Voice"
"Hajdu doggedly documents a long national saga of comic creators testing the limits of content while facing down an ever-changing bonfire brigade. That brigade was made up, at varying times, of politicians, lawmen, preachers, medical minds, and academics. Sometimes, their regulatory bids recalled the Hays Code; at others, it was a bottled-up version of McCarthyism. Most of all, the hysteria over comics foreshadowed the looming rock 'n' roll era."--Geoff Boucher," Los Angeles Times"
"A compelling story of the pride, prejudice, and paranoia that marred the reception of mass entertainment in the first half of the century." --Michael Saler, "The Times Literary Supplement "(London)
