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“Society looks down on relevant forms of media as lacking the capability for intelligent and coherent storytelling; however, as soon as a medium takes steps to achieve that form, it is chastised for hitting too close to home.”

This was the single sentence description that I conveyed to my mother in describing a book that I had just completed reading, “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and how it changed America.” I heard about this book via an interview done my MSNBC.com Games editor Kristin Kalning, which can be found here. The question that she asked, whether or not every generation has a form of entertainment that adults will never understand, resonated through me as I leafed through the books lengthy but fascinating 300+ pages.

The book goes into great detail describing the history of comic books, and it even delves into detail about how some of today’s iconic heroes. It might surprise readers to know what led to the inspiration of Superman; the fact that he has seemingly unlimited power was due to his designers’ intent to portray him as a ‘Christ-like’ figure.

Comic book history aside, what drew me to this book and made me eager to turn each page were the parallels that existed between the evolution of comics and the rise of video games. The book’s early chapters are dedicated to describing how comic books originated and the first character designs; its later chapters then delve into comic books’ increasing popularity and how it made its writers, artists and creators successful. Finally, the book closes by mentioning how authority figures and watchdog groups percieved comics to be a ‘threat to the children’ and succeeded in having them removed from society.

Successful in this case means that comics were burned, it was considered criminal to own one and that comic book workers were actually out of work. While this is a fantasy that Jack Thompson would notably love, along with the people who nominated him for an award, for me it is something right out of Farenheit 451, where books were burned that promoted free thought.

Ironically, in the book’s closing, it is mentioned that comics only became relevant when they stopped tackling serious issues and just focused on fantasy.

It takes me back to my above quote; people complain when the media fails to tackle intelligent issues, but when it does, it draws controversy. Once I closed the book, I silently hoped that games do not follow the same path to ruin that befell comic books.

For anyone who wants to gain a greater understanding about the changing roles of media in our society, I highly recommend this book.

Those are my two cents.