“I knew I was smart to get out when I did, because the walls were
starting to fall down,” legendary comics creator Will Eisner says,
explaining his decision to leave comics in 1954. Eisner would
eventually return to the industry—but not until after it had very
nearly been destroyed.
David Hajdu’s exhaustively researched The Ten-Cent Plague documents a little-known but important period in America’s history: the
time when comic books defined a generation and introduced the idea of a
counterculture. In the 1940s, “Comics were selling between 80 million
and 100 million copies every week… reaching more people than movies,
television, radio, or magazines for adults,” Hajdu observes. Just a few
short years later, religious leaders, lawmakers, and psychologists
would condemn the entire medium. Whether it was lurid crime epics in
Crime Does Not Pay or the dubious relationship between Batman
and Robin, comics were decried as a scourge of America’s
youth—and by the late 1950s, congressional hearings, book
burnings, and a restrictive censorship board would scratch a permanent
stigma onto vast swaths of American culture.
It’s strange, then, that Hajdu’s book often feels so dry and
procedural. Considering the garishness of the comics in question
(particularly crime and horror comics like Shock SuspenStories and Tales from the Crypt), one expects The Ten-Cent
Plague to deal with the books’ contents. But Hajdu is more
interested in the legal and social events around the books—a
fascinating subject, sure, but one that could have benefited from more
context.
But that’s a quibble considering how razor-sharp Hajdu’s dissection
of the comic book scare of the ’40s and ’50s is. Utilizing interviews
from roughly a billion notable people—from Eisner to Bill Gaines
to Stan Lee to Al Jaffee to Robert Crumb—Hajdu’s history is
detailed and insightful. The Ten-Cent Plague might lack a
broader cultural and artistic context, but it’s impossible not to be
engrossed in this chunk of forgotten American history—one that
echoes with not only the deeds of the likes of Joseph McCarthy, but
also those of Alfred E. Neuman.
