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

Introduction

There has been a significant change in the way the comics were written initially than how they are written now. However, soon after the comics emerged, there were many bonfires, congressional hearings as well as McCarthyish panic that took place because of the content of the comics that was not monitored and censored. Culture of comics changed at the end of the World War II and the mid of 1950's. This was the time when the popular culture of what comics are today was born. The pages of the comic books today are illustrated boldly.

Summary of Content and Analysis

In America, publishing comics' books were not an easy task. However, the other countries were already publishing comics since long. Reading comic books were also included in their reading habits since long. It was in the prevailing mindset, in America where the domain of the young exists because of which comics have remained. Many people have said that changes have taken place in the comics than what they were in the early stages. However, there is a lot of material which is available in the comics, and they are for every age. Comics were more accurate in the initial stage since the time they changed. An immense deal was paid for it in terms of the monetary cost.

In “Ten-Cent Plague” the writer, David Hajdu has looked at the woeful time. He has done an insightful examination on the way in which McCarthyism affected the comic books. Before the examination was conducted, the comic books were expanding at a phenomenal pace. This is because the sales were high and there was a wide variety of comic books that were being sold. The topics on which the comic books were written ranged from super heroes and romance to horror and true crime. It was mainly because of topics related to horror and crime that further popularized the comics. This was because there were many people who were interested in such topics while reading comic books. However, there were some people who were concerned about the comic books. These included J. Edgar Hoover and the law enforcement officials who openly discussed the fear of the amount of juvenile delinquency that was growing. Moreover, the parents in America also showed concern in this regard because they were worried about their children who were getting prone to ...