Ben Schwartz Responds To Bart Beaty on David Hajdu’s Ten-Cent Plague

I just read Bart Beaty's April 24th piece on David Hajdu's Ten-Cent Plague. I read the book and interviewed Hajdu at an LA Public Library event and think Beaty is somewhat one-sided in his accounting of Hajdu on a couple of subjects. While I defer 100 percent to Beaty on the history of that period (in which I'm a tourist at best) I can speak to Hajdu's book in specifics.

First, Beaty's feeling that Hajdu smeared Wertham: Hajdu does give Dr. Frederic Wertham credit for a number of good works in his life pre-comics crusade, such as opening his free clinic in Harlem for psychiatric care, ­at the time the first and only such clinic ever devoted to the mental health of African-Americans in the USA. He also credits him as a forward thinker re: jazz (if memory serves). Hajdu creates a much more complex image of Wertham than I have ever read. Perhaps it's not as in-depth as Beaty's own study of Wertham and comics. But it still presents Wertham as a person of substance, to be taken seriously, until he takes on the comics debate in the badly researched way that he did. If Wertham is remembered as as the #1 anti-comics crusader, we have to at least give him his due -- he did volunteer for the job. He wrote the key intellectual tract on the subject and publicly testified to the Senate (on TV? I can't remember). Wertham's research is flawed, and if it overshadows the rest of his reputation today, well, he did blow it in a big way. He never renounced it or corrected it, as far as I know (again, I defer to Beaty on that) but Wertham demolished his own image in comics history, if not his whole career. As to Beaty's feeling that Hajdu presents Wertham as the sole reason the comics business faltered: I disagree. Hajdu details the criticism of comics, massive community bonfires to eradicate them, and growing Church pressure allleading up to Wertham --­ who does become the greatest single figure speaking out against comics. Hajdu makes clear that Wertham personified an already fierce movement. Wertham supporters, like the US Senate and Wolcott Gibbs at The New Yorker, also single him out as the leader in the movement. Hajdu discusses many, many local comics crusaders and politicians --­ even adults who burned comics as kids --­ but Wertham made his name on the issue in a widely reviewed book, in national magazines, and on TV ­-- and disgraced himself in doing so.

Secondly, Beaty faults Hajdu for not writing up the deplorable working conditions in the comics industry of the era. No, he doesn't dwell on it as much we've seen in other places, but a) maybe he felt it had been done,which it has, and b) he specifically set out to tell a story of a culture war, a pre-cursor to the cultural debates that would dominate the post-WW II era and soon move on to rock music, and still felt today. You might as well fault others for not recounting the bonfires, anti-comics laws, and anti-comics letters to the editor disputes in local papers as much as Hajdu does. It's simply not the point of his book. Hajdu does make clear that people like Charles Biro and Victor Fox were awful, and portrays Gaines as a step up, but still a liar. Hajdu shows Gaines making all sorts of promises on creator royalties and other issues in meetings with talent, but when it came down to the paperwork, he went by the same old sweatshop work-for-hire contracts his dad used. It's also pointed out that Sheldon Moldoff came to pitch Gaines comics suspiciously like those Feldstein edited a year later. Gaines even had an unsigned contract in his desk for Moldoff when he went with Feldstein, so, I certainly didn't come away thinking Hajdu's book oblivious to working conditions or making Gaines out a hero (or even reliable narrator).

Third, as to Beaty's claim that Hajdu romanticizes artists taking pride in their comics work: I disagree. Hajdu quotes critic Stanley Kaufmann, a comics writer in the 1940s, who says he did know co-workers who felt this way. Kaufmann then calls them "fools." Will Eisner is not complimentary of the majority of the comics business, mostly to set his own work apart, I imagine --­ but the idea that comics was a stepping stone job is not left out. Hajdu does spend time on those who loved the medium, despite, or because of, its low rent status and relative creative freedom. By the 1950s, the first generation of artists who grew up on comic books, and specifically wanted to work in comic books, came along. They wanted to do good work, pitched all sorts of high minded projects, but were cut short by the anti-comics crusade. Why focus on them? I imagine, to emphasize that we lost a generation of ambitious people, not just a few star talents like Kurtzman and Kriegstein who we know today.
 
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