Two of the most readable books written about American comics in the last twenty years — both pulled from the shop's own working library, where they were read closely before being offered here as a curated pair. Together they trace the entire arc of mainstream American comics in just two volumes.
David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, first edition hardcover with dust jacket) remains the definitive cultural history of the 1950s comic-book panic — the EC horror titles, the Wertham crusade, the Senate Subcommittee hearings, the Comics Code, the careers ended overnight. It is to comics history what Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City is to the Chicago World's Fair: a serious cultural argument disguised as a page-turner.
Reed Tucker's Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC (Da Capo, 2017, first edition hardcover with dust jacket) picks up the story where Hajdu leaves off. Beginning with the 1961 launch of Fantastic Four #1 and running through the modern Marvel/DC superhero-industrial complex, Tucker treats the rivalry as the foundational drama of modern American comics — who poached whom, who fumbled which deal, who quietly won.
Read together, the pair covers the medium from the panic that nearly killed it (Hajdu) through the corporate rivalry that resurrected it (Tucker). Companion volumes, whether their authors planned them that way or not. A starter set for anyone who wants to understand how mainstream comics actually got here.
Condition: Both volumes Very Good. The Ten-Cent Plague is a first edition hardcover with intact dust jacket; light shelf wear and faintly bumped spine ends, still presents nicely. Slugfest is a first edition hardcover with dust jacket in excellent shape, bright covers, and tight binding. No interior writing or markings on either volume — read closely, kept carefully, and now offered to another reader.
Two of the most readable books written about American comics in the last twenty years — both pulled from the shop's own working library, where they were read closely before being offered here as a curated pair. Together they trace the entire arc of mainstream American comics in just two volumes.
David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, first edition hardcover with dust jacket) remains the definitive cultural history of the 1950s comic-book panic — the EC horror titles, the Wertham crusade, the Senate Subcommittee hearings, the Comics Code, the careers ended overnight. It is to comics history what Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City is to the Chicago World's Fair: a serious cultural argument disguised as a page-turner.
Reed Tucker's Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC (Da Capo, 2017, first edition hardcover with dust jacket) picks up the story where Hajdu leaves off. Beginning with the 1961 launch of Fantastic Four #1 and running through the modern Marvel/DC superhero-industrial complex, Tucker treats the rivalry as the foundational drama of modern American comics — who poached whom, who fumbled which deal, who quietly won.
Read together, the pair covers the medium from the panic that nearly killed it (Hajdu) through the corporate rivalry that resurrected it (Tucker). Companion volumes, whether their authors planned them that way or not. A starter set for anyone who wants to understand how mainstream comics actually got here.
Condition: Both volumes Very Good. The Ten-Cent Plague is a first edition hardcover with intact dust jacket; light shelf wear and faintly bumped spine ends, still presents nicely. Slugfest is a first edition hardcover with dust jacket in excellent shape, bright covers, and tight binding. No interior writing or markings on either volume — read closely, kept carefully, and now offered to another reader.
