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The Ten-Cent Plague

The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

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The Ten-Cent Plague

Written by: David Hajdu
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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About this listen

 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 bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between "high" and "low" art.

David Hajdu reveals how comics, years before the rock-and-roll revolution, brought on a clash between postwar children and their prewar parents. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics became the targets of a raging generational culture divide. They were burned in public bonfires, outlawed in certain cities, and nearly destroyed by a series of televised Congressional hearings. Yet their creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority would have a lasting influence.

©2008 David Hajdu (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Anthropology Comedy & Humor Literature & Fiction Media Studies Popular Culture United States Fantasy
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What the critics say

"Every once in a while, moral panic, innuendo, and fear bubble up from the depths of our culture....David Hajdu's fascinating new book tracks one of the stranger and most significant of these episodes, now forgotten, with exactness, clarity, and serious wit." (Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton University)
"This book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination." ( The New York Times)

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Profile Image for Matthew Lipton

Greater Context for One of The Major Moral Panics

Despite knowing the broad strokes as a comic fan, this book puts the '50s comic scare into perspective, both how it fit into the larger cultural fears of the era, and shedding light on the men and women who helped create an American art form they could prosper in, and of the men and women who snuffed out the careers of many of the former out of fear of where their kid's generation was headed, or even simply out of seeking fame or political aspirations.

It is a trip that brings the listener on an incredible journey, from Florida to France, and from the mean streets of New York's lower east side to the seats of political power in Washington, Ottawa and London.

The narration I feel was rather solid, if a touch dry at times. The biggest problem I felt was, although qoutes were read out in specific voices to distinguish them from the main text, being all read by one person meant many voices blurred together enough I would confuse which comics guy was being quoted at a time. I wonder if having other VA's for the qoutes could have helped this.

The only other review for this on Audible Canada is from someone who clearly did not have the patience for the subject matter, giving the impression to some I'd wager that this is a book that drones on and on about the same points. And while you can find the condensed version of the comics scare very easily online, this gives a much greater understanding of just how America was convinced that Batman and the Cryptkeeper were destroying it's youth.

Plus, the many colourful characters and anecdotes involved in making or attacking comics makes for fun stories to bring up in conversation, a benefit I always appreciate from a non-fiction title.

This is a must listen to any comic fan or even to those who wish to enrich their understanding of 20th century America and it's popular culture.

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Profile Image for G. Aikenhead

So boring!

People used to think comics were bad for kids. it was unfortunate. There. I just saved you 11 hours.

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