Over at The Comics Reporter, Bart Beaty is busy putting some serious smack down on David Hajdu’s book The Ten-Cent Plague. Fer example:
But still, the old myths are powerful myths. The image that Hajdu paints in his book is of a hapless little cottage industry beset by outside forces. It would be a lovely notion were it not for the power wielded by comic books and newsstand distributors at that time. Wertham, whose ‘powerful friends’ were to be found running a free clinic in Harlem, took on an enormously wealthy industry long-rumored to be connected to organized crime. It’s not a coincidence that the Senate committee spent the third day of their investigation on issues of distribution and the ‘pressures’ brought to bear on magazine dealers to stock magazines that they might otherwise opt not to. Sadly, aside from the occasional passing reference to the garment industry, this is not a line that Hajdu chooses to investigate.
The assault continues today.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:26 am
About time someone offered an alternate take on the tired old party line.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
There seems to be a lack of confrontation with the central point, though- sure, Wertham wasn’t a bad guy overall, but on this particular issue he was in the wrong. Crime comics and horror comics were not, as far as anyone has been able to find out, having a deleterious effect on American children, and the inquiry into the comics industry ended up damaging the creative development of the form instead of actually fixing the corruption Beaty points out. They basically got punished for the wrong sins.
As criticism of the book (which is the primary purpose) it’s good, but this version of events is pretty spotty on its own.