My PW Interview with David Hajdu

If you haven’t seen this week’s issue of Publisher’s Weekly yet, I’m really glad to see that it has the interview I did with David Hajdu about his forthcoming new book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. I’ve been fascinated by the history of comic books for about two decades now, so when I found out that Hajdu was going to be writing about the censorship battles of the 1950s, I have to confess I almost felt territorial towards the subject in a way—but he does a great job of explaining to a mainstream audience why this story matters, and talking with him about how he came to this point in his career as a pop culture historian and critic was a personally rewarding experience. I’ll admit, though, that my favorite quote from the article is one that doesn’t have anything to do with comics at all:

“If you look at my calendar, the first day of any new writing project always says ‘Stare at the screen and cry.’ So then, at the end of the day, when that’s what I’ve done, I can call it a success.”

photo by Eric Ogden from DavidHajdu.com

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