Any comic book fans, or fans of cultural history?

[DDickey]

I'm currently reading a book, entitled "The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America," about the history of comic books culminating with nationwide censorship in the late 40's and 50's. It's a spectacular account of the birth of a specific form of pop culture and also a study of postwar paranoia and diverging cultural shifts.

 

It

[Nephele]

Thanks for the recommendation! I'm buying a copy of this as a gift for someone I know who'll really enjoy reading this. I think I'll read it, too!

 

-- Nephele

[Nephele]

The Ten-cent Plague is not merely a book for comic book fans or fans of cultural history. This book is for everyone who values the basic freedom to read. (Thanks again, DDickey for the excellent recommendation.)

 

I bought this book on Saturday as a gift for my man (an author himself who has had novels published in the young adult horror genre, as well as stories for the comic book industry), and he has been reading quotes from the book to me. You can bet that when he's done reading this book, I'll be reading it next.

 

Here is just one of many bits from the book that I had to make a note of. It is quoted from an editorial that appeared in The Charleston Daily Mail on November 1, 1948, in response to a teacher- and PTA-organized, student-implemented book burning at Spencer Elementary School in Spencer, West Virginia:

 

The burning of books is too recent in our memories. The Nazis burned them. They went on from there and, in one way or another, burned the authors too. It was the purge by fire of those elements which the Nazi party could not tolerate.

 

This purge has no place in a democratic educational system. It is not that books as books are sacred. It is just that the idea of burning them is profane. It is a resort to witchcraft when the need is for education, the use of fire when enlightenment is called for. Perhaps the point can be clarified by asking how many of the boys and girls who burned 2,000 "bad" books have read 2,000 good ones? Of the two possible tasks, the second deserves priority. (page 118)

[M. Porcius Cato]

I read a review of this book, and it looks fascinating. One tidbit that whet my appetite--an image of future Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney shining his junior-sized jack-boots--came from a review in the Globe and Mail. It's not possible to access the site, but the author gives a preview at his own page HERE:

The postwar anti-comics movement, an astonishing outburst of media-induced hysteria, originated in the United States but had repercussions in many lands, including England, Mexico, Taiwan, the Philippines and Canada. In 1949, E. Davie Fulton, an up-and-coming Tory MP from British Columbia, got Parliament to pass a private member