J-School Prof Gives Talk on Subversive Role of Comics

Columbia Journalism School professor and author David Hajdu spoke about his new book, The Ten-Cent Plague, in an interview last night at Book Culture. The book centers on the history, implications, and demise of the American comic book industry during the mid-1900s.

“They [comics] were written by young people who considered themselves outsiders,” Hajdu said. “They were designed to alienate older people and they succeeded so much that it created dire repercussions. ... They [comics] were coded challenges to the norms of the day.”

Comic books were a source of entertainment that crossed class lines in the 1950s and were seen, unlike photographs which depicted reality, as representing “a spin and a different point of view,” Hajdu said. “The shorthand for being a juvenile delinquent in these days was reading comics and if you read comics, you became a juvenile delinquent.”

“The real horror in these stories,” Hajdu added, “and what was most subversive was the American living room and a challenge to the suburban living standards of the day. ... Married life was a source of unbearable torment” to the comic book characters.

In response to the non-conformist ideas presented in wartime comics, the intelligentsia led what Hajdu described as a “crusade” against the comic book industry, characterized by “full-blown hysteria” and over a hundred pieces of legislation condemning comics as well as “dozens upon dozens” of comic book burnings. The harsh attacks of the early 1940s continued through the mid-1950s and culminated in the destruction of a once-thriving industry. Critics in the 1950s thought that “for kids to develop worship of superheroes was a collapse of institutional justice,” according to Hajdu.

Comic book codes, established as a method of cleaning up the cartoons, mandated that comics “reinforce the sanctity of the home and the family” and could not encourage viewers to question authority, Hajdu said. “The deepest treachery of the codes was that it robbed comics of their identity as something that challenged the status quo.”

“I thought it was an interesting intro to a forgotten episode in our cultural history,” David Ressel, Journalism ’07said. “In truth, this is some stuff I know nothing about, but it’s something I would like to learn about. A lot of the culture we get today is inspired by people who have been affected by comics.”

samantha.saly@columbiaspectator.com