The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague (2008, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) is a single-issue graphic novel adaptation of his acclaimed nonfiction book, examining the moral panic and censorship that nearly destroyed the American comic-book industry in the 1950s. Through vivid storytelling, it traces the rise of horror and crime comics, the Senate subcommittee hearings, and the creation of the Comics Code Authority. This work matters as a concise, visually engaging history of a pivotal moment that reshaped the medium.