Download or read book The Ten Cent Plague written by David Hajdu and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-02-03 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, the popular culture of today was invented in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. But no sooner had comics emerged than they were beaten down by mass bonfires, congressional hearings, and a McCarthyish panic over their unmonitored and uncensored content. Esteemed critic David Hajdu vividly evokes the rise, fall, and rise again of comics in this engrossing history. "Marvelous . . . a staggeringly well-reported account of the men and women who created the comic book, and the backlash of the 1950s that nearly destroyed it....Hajdu’s important book dramatizes an early, long-forgotten skirmish in the culture wars that, half a century later, continues to roil."--Jennifer Reese,Entertainment Weekly(Grade: A-) "Incisive and entertaining . . . This book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book’s imagination."--Janet Maslin,The New York Times "A well-written, detailed book . . . Hajdu’s research is impressive."--Bob Minzesheimer,USA Today "Crammed with interviews and original research, Hajdu’s book is a sprawling cultural history of comic books."--Matthew Price,Newsday "To those who think rock 'n' roll created the postwar generation gap, David Hajdu says: Think again. Every page ofThe Ten-Cent Plagueevinces [Hajdu’s] zest for the 'aesthetic lawlessness' of comic books and his sympathetic respect for the people who made them. Comic books have grown up, but Hajdu’s affectionate portrait of their rowdy adolescence will make readers hope they never lose their impudent edge."--Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune "A vivid and engaging book."--Louis Menand,The New Yorker "David Hajdu, who perfectly detailed the Dylan-era Greenwhich Village scene in Positively 4th Street, does the same for the birth and near death (McCarthyism!) of comic books inThe Ten-Cent Plague." --GQ "Sharp . . . lively . . . entertaining and erudite . . . David Hajdu offers captivating insights into America’s early bluestocking-versus-blue-collar culture wars, and the later tensions between wary parents and the first generation of kids with buying power to mold mass entertainment."--R. C. Baker,The Village Voice "Hajdu doggedly documents a long national saga of comic creators testing the limits of content while facing down an ever-changing bonfire brigade. That brigade was made up, at varying times, of politicians, lawmen, preachers, medical minds, and academics. Sometimes, their regulatory bids recalled the Hays Code; at others, it was a bottled-up version of McCarthyism. Most of all, the hysteria over comics foreshadowed the looming rock 'n' roll era."--Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times "A compelling story of the pride, prejudice, and paranoia that marred the reception of mass entertainment in the first half of the century."--Michael Saler,The Times Literary Supplement(London) David Hajdu is the author ofLush Life: A Biography of Billy StrayhornandPositively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña.
Download or read book Crossover Volume 2 the Ten Cent Plague written by Donny Cates and published by . This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five years ago the realm of comic book fiction collapsed into our very real world. And now, amidst the chaos, a new threat has risen. Someone, or something, is killing comic book writers and artists all over the country. Watch as the mystery of this serialized killer explodes into four color carnage as we are joined by the wildest creator-owned character reveals yet! Scott Snyder! Brian K. Vaughan! Chuck Zdarsky! Robert Kirkman! Brian Michael Bendis!! No one is safe in this action packed, blood-soaked second volume of....CROSSOVER! The powerhouse creative team of DONNY CATES (Venom, Thor), GEOFF SHAW (Thanos Wins), DEE CUNNIFFE (REDNECK), and JOHN J. HILL (NAILBITER) brings you the second volume of the all-new, genre-defying series. Collects CROSSOVER #7-13
Download or read book Heroes and Villains written by David Hajdu and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heroes and Villains is the first collection of essays by David Hajdu' award - winning author of The Ten - Cent Plague' Positively 4th Street' and Lush Life. Eclectic and controversial' Hajdu's essays take on topics as varied as pop music' jazz' th...
Download or read book Lush Life written by David Hajdu and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) was one of the most accomplished composers in American music, the creator of such standards as "Take the 'A' Train", yet all his life he was overshadowed by his friend and collaborator, Duke Ellington. Through scrutiny of Strayhorn's private papers and more than five hundred interviews, Hajdu revives Strayhorn as one of the most complex and tragic figures in jazz history.
Download or read book Marvel Comics written by Sean Howe and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history -- Marvel Comics – and the outsized personalities who made Marvel including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby. “Sean Howe’s history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of weirdoes changed the world…That it’s all true is just frosting on the cake.” —Jonathan Lethem For the first time, Marvel Comics tells the stories of the men who made Marvel: Martin Goodman, the self-made publisher who forayed into comics after a get-rich-quick tip in 1939, Stan Lee, the energetic editor who would shepherd the company through thick and thin for decades and Jack Kirby, the WWII veteran who would co-create Captain America in 1940 and, twenty years later, developed with Lee the bulk of the company’s marquee characters in a three-year frenzy. Incorporating more than one hundred original interviews with those who worked behind the scenes at Marvel over a seventy-year-span, Marvel Comics packs anecdotes and analysis into a gripping narrative of how a small group of people on the cusp of failure created one of the most enduring pop cultural forces in contemporary America.
Download or read book A Revolution in Three Acts written by David Hajdu and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bert Williams—a Black man forced to perform in blackface who challenged the stereotypes of minstrelsy. Eva Tanguay—an entertainer with the signature song “I Don’t Care” who flouted the rules of propriety to redefine womanhood for the modern age. Julian Eltinge—a female impersonator who entranced and unnerved audiences by embodying the feminine ideal Tanguay rejected. At the turn of the twentieth century, they became three of the most provocative and popular performers in vaudeville, the form in which American mass entertainment first took shape. A Revolution in Three Acts explores how these vaudeville stars defied the standards of their time to change how their audiences thought about what it meant to be American, to be Black, to be a woman or a man. The writer David Hajdu and the artist John Carey collaborate in this work of graphic nonfiction, crafting powerful portrayals of Williams, Tanguay, and Eltinge to show how they transformed American culture. Hand-drawn images give vivid visual form to the lives and work of the book’s subjects and their world. This book is at once a deft telling of three intricately entwined stories, a lush evocation of a performance milieu with unabashed entertainment value, and an eye-opening account of a key moment in American cultural history with striking parallels to present-day questions of race, gender, and sexual identity.
Download or read book Men of Tomorrow written by Gerald Jones and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2005-10-11 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animated by the stories of some of the last century's most charismatic and conniving artists, writers, and businessmen, Men of Tomorrow brilliantly demonstrates how the creators of the superheroes gained their cultural power and established a crucial place in the modern imagination. "This history of the birth of superhero comics highlights three pivotal figures. The story begins early in the last century, on the Lower East Side, where Harry Donenfeld rises from the streets to become the king of the 'smooshes'-soft-core magazines with titles like French Humor and Hot Tales. Later, two high school friends in Cleveland, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, become avid fans of 'scientifiction,' the new kind of literature promoted by their favorite pulp magazines. The disparate worlds of the wise guy and the geeks collide in 1938, and the result is Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman. For Donenfeld, the comics were a way to sidestep the censors. For Shuster and Siegel, they were both a calling and an eventual source of misery: the pair waged a lifelong campaign for credit and appropriate compensation." -The New Yorker
Download or read book The Horror Comic Never Dies written by Michael Walton and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horror comics were among the first comic books published--ghastly tales that soon developed an avid young readership, along with a bad reputation. Parent groups, psychologists, even the United States government joined in a crusade to wipe out the horror comics industry--and they almost succeeded. Yet the genre survived and flourished, from the 1950s to today. This history covers the tribulations endured by horror comics creators and the broader impact on the comics industry. The genre's ultimate success helped launch the careers of many of the biggest names in comics. Their stories and the stories of other key players are included, along with a few surprises.
Download or read book Seal of Approval written by Amy Kiste Nyberg and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1998 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The content of comic books has been governed by an industry self-regulatory code adopted by publishers in 1954 in response to public and governmental pressure. This book, the first full-length study of this period of comic book history, examines the reasons that comic books were the subject of heated controversy. In tracing the evolution of the controversy and the resulting code, Seal of Approval shows that the comic book has yet to achieve legitimation as a unique form of expression appreciated by readers of all ages.
Download or read book Comic Book Nation written by Bradford W. Wright and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-10-17 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of comic books from the 1930s to 9/11.
Download or read book Pulp Empire written by Paul S. Hirsch and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-06-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Popular Culture Association's Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Book in Popular or American Culture In the 1940s and ’50s, comic books were some of the most popular—and most unfiltered—entertainment in the United States. Publishers sold hundreds of millions of copies a year of violent, racist, and luridly sexual comics to Americans of all ages until a 1954 Senate investigation led to a censorship code that nearly destroyed the industry. But this was far from the first time the US government actively involved itself with comics—it was simply the most dramatic manifestation of a long, strange relationship between high-level policy makers and a medium that even artists and writers often dismissed as a creative sewer. In Pulp Empire, Paul S. Hirsch uncovers the gripping untold story of how the US government both attacked and appropriated comic books to help wage World War II and the Cold War, promote official—and clandestine—foreign policy and deflect global critiques of American racism. As Hirsch details, during World War II—and the concurrent golden age of comic books—government agencies worked directly with comic book publishers to stoke hatred for the Axis powers while simultaneously attempting to dispel racial tensions at home. Later, as the Cold War defense industry ballooned—and as comic book sales reached historic heights—the government again turned to the medium, this time trying to win hearts and minds in the decolonizing world through cartoon propaganda. Hirsch’s groundbreaking research weaves together a wealth of previously classified material, including secret wartime records, official legislative documents, and caches of personal papers. His book explores the uneasy contradiction of how comics were both vital expressions of American freedom and unsettling glimpses into the national id—scourged and repressed on the one hand and deployed as official propaganda on the other. Pulp Empire is a riveting illumination of underexplored chapters in the histories of comic books, foreign policy, and race.
Download or read book Sonata for Jukebox written by Geoffrey O'Brien and published by Counterpoint Press. This book was released on 2005-04-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dazzling and original, Sonata for Jukebox is a brilliant foray into how pop music has woven itself into our lives since the dawn of the recording age. Geoffrey O'Brien delves into twentieth-century pop music as we experience it: a phenomenon that is at once public and private, personal yet popular. O'Brien's book is more than a history of pop music, although fragments of that history find their way into its pages. And it reaches far beyond a memoir, although it is an entertaining biography of the author's ears and his family's exceptional affinity, with pop music--his father was a leading New York DJ and his grandfather led a dance band in Philadelphia. Ultimately, it is an exploration of what we as listeners hear, what we think we hear, and how we connect that experience with the rest of our lives. The dizzying array of musical references plays like a sound-track as O'Brien explores how our lives are lived in the presence--and in the memory of the presence--of music.
Download or read book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story written by Alfred Hassler and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Now Top Shelf has teamed up with the Fellowship of Reconciliation to produce the first ever fully-authorized . . . edition[s] of this historic comic book, as a companion to the bestselling graphic novel March: Book One."--Publisher's website.
Download or read book Demanding Respect written by Paul Lopes and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-07 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From pulp comics to Maus, the story of the growth of comics in American culture.
Download or read book Seduction of the Innocent Revisited written by John Fulce and published by Vital Issues Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Comic Books and the Cold War 1946 1962 written by Chris York and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that comic books of the post-World War II era are poorly drawn and poorly written publications, notable only for the furor they raised. Contributors to this thoughtful collection, however, demonstrate that these comics constitute complex cultural documents that create a dialogue between mainstream values and alternative beliefs that question or complicate the grand narratives of the era. Close analysis of individual titles, including EC comics, Superman, romance comics, and other, more obscure works, reveals the ways Cold War culture--from atomic anxieties and the nuclear family to communist hysteria and social inequalities--manifests itself in the comic books of the era. By illuminating the complexities of mid-century graphic novels, this study demonstrates that postwar popular culture was far from monolithic in its representation of American values and beliefs.
Download or read book American Comics A History written by Jeremy Dauber and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sweeping story of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels and their hold on the American imagination. Comics have conquered America. From our multiplexes, where Marvel and DC movies reign supreme, to our television screens, where comics-based shows like The Walking Dead have become among the most popular in cable history, to convention halls, best-seller lists, Pulitzer Prize–winning titles, and MacArthur Fellowship recipients, comics shape American culture, in ways high and low, superficial, and deeply profound. In American Comics, Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes readers through their incredible but little-known history, starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting and iconic images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus; the golden age of newspaper comic strips and the first great superhero boom; the moral panic of the Eisenhower era, the Marvel Comics revolution, and the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s; and finally into the twenty-first century, taking in the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen alongside the brilliant rise of the graphic novel by acclaimed practitioners like Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel. Dauber’s story shows not only how comics have changed over the decades but how American politics and culture have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell. Striking and revelatory, American Comics is a rich chronicle of the last 150 years of American history through the lens of its comic strips, political cartoons, superheroes, graphic novels, and more. FEATURING… • American Splendor • Archie • The Avengers • Kyle Baker • Batman • C. C. Beck • Black Panther • Captain America • Roz Chast • Walt Disney • Will Eisner • Neil Gaiman • Bill Gaines • Bill Griffith • Harley Quinn • Jack Kirby • Denis Kitchen • Krazy Kat • Harvey Kurtzman • Stan Lee • Little Orphan Annie • Maus • Frank Miller • Alan Moore • Mutt and Jeff • Gary Panter • Peanuts • Dav Pilkey • Gail Simone • Spider-Man • Superman • Dick Tracy • Wonder Wart-Hog • Wonder Woman • The Yellow Kid • Zap Comix … AND MANY MORE OF YOUR FAVORITES!
