Monthly Archive: March 2008

The journalist David Hajdu’s new book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America, has been billed as a retelling of the little-known inquisition against comics that nearly killed the industry in the 1950s.

It does tell that story (and quite well), but perhaps more importantly it serves as one of the best histories yet of the Golden Age of comics. Picking up literally with the creation of the comic book, The Ten-Cent Plague chronicles the medium’s rise as cartoon characters gave way to superheroes, adventurers, pirates, criminals and jungle queens.

With an unerring eye for the telling detail, Hajdu brings to life the mad men of the early comics scene, a rag tag group of artsy teens and swindler publishers who make today’s comics personalities seem tame by comparison. Big names like Will Eisner and Bob Kane earn mention, along with a great number of lesser-knowns.

Harry "A" Chesler, Jr., the comic-book packager, applied the "Jr." to his name or dispensed with it as he saw fit, and put quotation marks around the initial because he thought they were stylistically correct, and he had a point. When he was asked what the "A" stood for, he said, "Anything."

If anything, Hajdu goes a bit overboard in describing so many people in great detail. While these anecdotes are interesting and reveal an impressive layer of research, they also meander and distract from the central narrative. That being the progression of comics pushing ever harder against any perceived boundaries, just as the youths who devoured the books tested the confines of their mid-century upbringing.

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Apparently playing Wolverine has given Hugh Jackman a taste for comic books, as the actor just announced his production company is developing a new comic series with Virgin Comics.

Nowhere Man is planned as a potential comic, movie and video game, according to an article in Variety.

Story was being kept under wraps, but Jackson’s Seed Productions partner John Palermo said it features a protagonist reminiscent of the one Will Smith played in "I Am Legend." The concept is a futuristic world where mankind has traded privacy for safety, a premise that sprouted with Seed, Virgin CEO Sharad Devarajan and chief creative officer Gotham Chopra.

"This is our first comic, and we feel the concept is transferable to other arenas, perhaps first as a videogame, and then a movie," Palermo said.

Writing duties and "co-creator" status go to Marc Guggenheim, who has written Wolverine, coincidentally enough, as well as several other comics series.