An artist would have been hard-pressed to find a less respectable way to make a living with their skills than the comic-book industry at its inception—it was a few steps up from sign-painting and pornography, but it was work at a time when that was hard to find. Naturally the field filled up with talented artists barred by prejudice from the more respectable visual-arts fields of the 1940s. Jews, blacks, immigrants and women who had trouble getting interviews with advertising firms or comic-strip and illustration jobs were welcomed into comic books with open arms.
It was perhaps inevitable then that the stories these “outsiders” created would have a bit of a counterculture slant, and that the post-war cultural establishment would push back against their comics. Hard. At least according to David Hajdu, whose new book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America chronicles the cultural struggle over the comic book from its turn-of-the-(last)-century origins to its late-’50s deathbed at the hands of the industry’s attempts to self-censor.
Parents, politicians, church leaders and the media all found a lot to hate about comic books, from the dime rags’ low production values to their effects on the minds and morals of children, but it seems the perceived connection to juvenile delinquency was a prime motivator that led to the hearings, legislative bans and even book-burnings.
Hajdu argues quite persuasively that comics worried adults so much because their kids liked them so much. And their kids liked them so much because they themselves were outsiders in their own society.
Hajdu relies on an interview-fueled journalistic approach and the inherent color of the players to convincingly conjure up an epic story, one that is today more than half-forgotten, even by the comics industry itself. Given our tendency to repeat elements of this story when addressing new and different forms of media and/or youth culture, it’s a story well worth learning and internalizing.
The Ten-Cent Plague
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David Hajdu
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,$26