Comic Book Epidemic: The Ten Cent Plague

The Ten-Cent Plague

After the Second World War and the population sky-rocketed, the youth of the 1950's wanted their medium that would help them stand out. All generations have their own form of outlaw youth and in the 1950's comic books were still the most popular form of media among children. However, the Superman comics of the 1930's and the Captain America of 1940's wouldn't cut it for these kids either. In 1948 there were over 90 million comic books sold, adding to the cultural revolution in America. Anti-Fascist book burning's were common during the war and now these reformists turned their attention to the new style of comics the 50's kids were craving. 

Some of the new comics that arose were more satirical take on already popular comics such as SuperDuperMan. A take on the already ultra successful Superman comics, SuperDuperMan was created by Mad Comics and the premise of SuperDuperMan was that he would beat up innocent people, use his X-ray to peek into girls bathrooms and pursue money instead of doing the right thing. 

Parents obviously had trouble with comics like this and again the comic book burning's began. It was apparent that Americans could easily be swayed to eliminate any kind of freedom of speech purely for the sake of maintaining the, "American Way".