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

I picked this up on an impulse at the half-price bookstore. I had a residual interest in the topic of the comic-book censorship era left over from seeing Weird Comic Book Fantasy all those years ago at Dad’s Garage.

The book gives an interesting background on the early days of comics. One of the amazing things was how easy it seemed to get a job in the comics industry; Apparently you just had to walk in and ask for one, and they put you to work drawing spots on Jungle Woman’s leopard skin outfit. The downside was that the industry was so looked down upon, that you couldn’t tell people in polite society what you did for a living.

While superhero comics got a bad rap, the main thrust of the book-burning and banning was geared towards the horror and crime genre that predominated. From this book, it was hard to tell if there was quality storytelling going on… on one hand the process is described as hurried and formulaic, on the other hand the comics are talked about with fond reverence for the artistry. Regardless, it sounds like the kind of stuff you hate to be on the side of defending, but know you must because free speech is sacred.

The story is frustrating at its core, because you know this kind of thing keeps happening, and will continue to happen: some group of folks take it upon themselves to decide what we can or can’t read, putting forth “protecting the children” as their rallying cry.

Makes me want to hit the comic book store and buy a batch in belated protest.

Arkansas by John Brandon

McSweeney’s was having a garage sale, $5 or less for some of their copies of books they had stored in the attic, sold as-is. The copy of Arkansas I got (ordered along with Hornby’s Shakespeare Wrote For Money) was in perfect condition, so I don’t know what the fuss was about.

I read about Arkansas when it first came out, a first novel with interesting narrative style. I was intrigued, but more or less forgot about it until the McSweeney’s sale.

I really enjoyed the style, and the story is an engaging tale of back country drug dealers. On average, I don’t ordinarily go for drug dealer tales, but McSweeney’s gave me a hard sell in their pitch, so I gave it a chance.

If nothing else, I think Brandon uses the second person narrative form better than any other example I can name. This is not much of a feat, since the only other 2nd person writing I’ve read is Tom Robbin’s Half Asleep in Frog’s Pajamas, and that one seemed like a stunt more than anything else.

The trick is that Brandon only uses the second person on a certain character, and all the other’s character’s narrative tracks are in third. It works. For me, anyway. And since those chapters were about me, I guess that’s all that matters.

Apparently my name is Frog now.