Comics’ dark, daring history told in detail

By MATTHEW PRICE

David Hajdu revisits the art’s tabooed beginnings.

Part of a rambunctious chapter in the history of American popular culture, the comic books of the ’40s and ’50s don’t sound like kid stuff, though that’s exactly what they were. Lurid, daringly subversive, contemptuous of mainstream values, sporting names such as “Menace” and “Tales from the Crypt,” they made the exploits of Superman seem tame by comparison. Legions of young fans ate them up, until some grown-ups came along and ruined the whole thing.

This, in a nutshell, is the story David Hajdu tells in “The Ten-Cent Plague.” Crammed with interviews and original research, Hajdu’s book is a sprawling cultural history of comic books and the men — it was mostly a boys’ club — who wrote, drew and published these over-the-top entertainments. Hajdu also recounts in great detail how grandstanding politicians and social critics, who considered the lurid excesses of comic books a poison, vilified the makers and drove many out of business. Though Hajdu is on the side of the creators — he considers comics, like jazz, a unique expression of the American vernacular — he gives the other side a fair hearing.

For Hajdu, the battle over comics signified the emergence of the new youth culture that would explode after World War II; rock ’n’ roll was only part of it.

“Through the near death of comic books and the end of many of their makers’ creative lives, postwar popular culture was born,” Hajdu writes. “Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry added the soundtrack to a scene created in comic books.” This is a nifty — if sweeping — assertion that Hajdu doesn’t really do justice to, and his thesis gets pushed aside as he floods us with detail, which can be overwhelming at times.

Still, this is a quibble. Hajdu’s strengths are his grasp of the art of the comic book and his lively sketches of the creators — among them Will Eisner, a pioneer who used a noirish, cinematic style in “The Spirit,” about a crime-fighting detective, and William Gaines, who presided over the Educational Comics empire and gave the world Alfred E. Neuman and the inimitable Mad Magazine. Gaines and Eisner were heirs to a tradition that began in the early 20th century with The Yellow Kid, The Katzenjammer Kids and other playfully violent newspaper comic strips.

In the ’30s, comics began to be published in book form. It still was a new art, and there were few rules. A wild, freewheeling spirit prevailed in the studios, most of which were based in New York. “\

By the ’40s, comic books were selling upward of 80 million copies a week. But popularity would bring unwanted attention. Churches and community leaders started to target comic books, and a growing concern with juvenile delinquency added to the frenzy as municipalities passed legislation cracking down on distributors and news agents.

The hysteria increased in the ’50s. With the House Un-American Activities Committee hunting communists, New Jersey Sen. Robert Hendrickson went after comic books. In 1954, Hendrickson held televised hearings that put comic book makers on the spot. Leading the charge was star witness Frederic Wertham, psychiatrist and author of the best-selling “Seduction of the Innocent.”

In a certain respect, “The Ten-Cent Plague” is the story of a defeat, not a victory. Although comic book publishers vowed to better police themselves, the crackdown intensified. The New York state Legislature passed a law suppressing the distribution of racier comic books and banned the use of the words “crime,” “terror,” “horror” and “sex” in their titles. Such laws had a chilling effect, and by 1956 the number of comic books published in the United States dropped precipitously. Hundreds of writers and artists gave up and quit.

Today, the reaction seems misplaced and even naive. As Hajdu points out, no definitive link between youth crime and graphic comic books was ever established. And Hajdu trenchantly points out the flaws in the arguments of critics such as Wertham, who did little to distinguish among the various genres.

For Wertham, a superhero comic book, where good inevitably triumphs over evil, was little different from “Tales from the Crypt,” where evil triumphs all the time. In the end, the Werthams had the last laugh, not the dastardly, mocking Crypt Keeper. He was buried in his grave.

Los Angeles Times-Washington Post