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A review by libra17
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America by David Hajdu
5.0
I recently finished reading a few of books about DC's frontline characters - Batman, Catwoman, and Wonder Woman - all of which referenced Wertham, his crackpot crusade, and the effect on those specific characters, and when I stumbled across this while browsing it seemed like a broader narrative account to round out my understanding of the time period that ended up nearly destroying some of our most beloved icons today. In that, The Ten-Cent Plague was a fascinating success. Recounting the origin of newspaper funnies to the tides affecting genre popularity, The Ten-Cent Plague was a wide-lens view the comic industry as a whole during the golden age, though - as in industry leader - EC Comics did have a lot of the limelight. Mostly, though, this book is an account of why comics were popular during that time and place, and why that created a backlash to the medium. It is an account of moral panic which we, from the hindsight of the 21st century, can see was irrational and overblown.
However, readers who know about Professor Carol Tilley's research on Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent should note that her research is not included in The Ten-Cent Plague because (as far as I can tell) it wouldn't be published for another 5ish years. If Hadju had known when writing this about Professor Tilley's conclusions that Wertham baked his research, he would have had much more ammunition with which to attack Wertham's most famous statements. As it is, Harju does just fine with what rational people knew during the comic scare; apparently, there were some rational people still left who submitted research that comics had nothing to do with juvenile delinquency (among other things) and tried to make themselves heard, but - alas - they could not make their voices heard over the hysterical clamoring that graphic stories were simply evil.
Even with that in mind, I very much liked this book. It is something that I very much enjoyed, and it is something I would recommend.
However, readers who know about Professor Carol Tilley's research on Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent should note that her research is not included in The Ten-Cent Plague because (as far as I can tell) it wouldn't be published for another 5ish years. If Hadju had known when writing this about Professor Tilley's conclusions that Wertham baked his research, he would have had much more ammunition with which to attack Wertham's most famous statements. As it is, Harju does just fine with what rational people knew during the comic scare; apparently, there were some rational people still left who submitted research that comics had nothing to do with juvenile delinquency (among other things) and tried to make themselves heard, but - alas - they could not make their voices heard over the hysterical clamoring that graphic stories were simply evil.
Even with that in mind, I very much liked this book. It is something that I very much enjoyed, and it is something I would recommend.