Black Images in the Comics

This book spotlights over 100 international 20th-and 21st- century comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels, featuring black characters; each entry is accompanied by an instructive 200-word essay and a representative illustration. The book begins with appalling images of blacks as ignorant “coons” in the earliest syndicated strips (Happy Hooligan, Moon Mullins, and The Katzenjammer Kids), continues with almost-quaint colonialist images (including an example from the often-surpressed Tintin in the Congo) and moves on to such oddities as the offensive Ebony character in Will Eisner’s otherwise classic The Spirit from the ’40s and ’50s. There are often-earnest attempts at ’60s integration in such strips as Peanuts (and comic books such as the Fantastic Four), as well as the first wave of “black strips” like Wee Pals, juxtaposed with the shocking satire of underground comics such as R. Crumb’s incendiary Angelfood McSpade. Black Images in the Comics wraps up in the present with the increased visibility of blacks, often in works produced by blacks, such as the South African strip Madam & Eve, Aaron McGruder’s pointed comic strip The Boondocks, and more.