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

David Hajdu

Macmillan, Feb 3, 2009 - Comics & Graphic Novels - 434 pages

In the years between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, the popular culture of today was invented in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. But no sooner had comics emerged than they were beaten down by mass bonfires, congressional hearings, and a McCarthyish panic over their unmonitored and uncensored content. Esteemed critic David Hajdu vividly evokes the rise, fall, and rise again of comics in this engrossing history.

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User Review  - mrgan - LibraryThing

Abandoned, sadly. There's clearly a fascinating story here, but it's laid out in a dense, haphazard, and tiring manner. Everything is given the same flat treatment, from the story of the first ...

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User Review  - DarthDeverell - LibraryThing

In The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, David Hajdu argues, "Though they were not traitors, the makers of crime, romance, and horror comics were propagandists of ...

Contents

• Prologue: 3
• Society Iss Nix: 9
• It Was Work: 32
• Crime Pays: 53
• Youth in Crisis: 71
• Puddles of Blood: 92
• Then Let Us Commit Them: 112
• Woofer and Tweeter: 132
• LoveLOVELOVE: 154
• New Trend: 175
• Humor in a Jugular Vein: 193
• Panic: 209
• The Triumph of Dr Payn: 228
• What Are We Afraid Of?: 245
• Weve Had It: 274
• Murphys Law: 305
• Out of the Frying Pan and into the Soup: 319
• Epilogue: 331
• Appendix: 337
• Notes: 353
• Bibliography: 407
• Acknowledgments: 413
• Index: 417

About the author

David Hajdu is the author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariņa and Richard Fariņa.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
• Author: David Hajdu
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2009
• ISBN: 0312428235, 9780312428235
• Length: 434 pages
• Subjects: Comics & Graphic Novels / Nonfiction / General; History / United States / 20th Century; Literary Criticism / Comics & Graphic Novels