So much so that America was able to elect a black President over a decade ago now. But that very act of healing only made those who still harbored ugly feelings stiffen their backs and grow more vocal in their objections to equality throughout the land. They muffle their rhetoric with lots of gimmicks and tricks, but the old ideas are still there, that white folks and in particular white men are the ones who have been chosen (by God I guess they imagine?) to lead this nation and the world too I suppose. This of course will change with time and demographics and the white power worshippers will slip into the minority, but until then, there will be a fierce struggle that gnaws at the timbers of the country itself as supporters of racism rationalize attacks on legally elected governments and endorse open insurrection as "patriotism".
But enough of my speech. Above is the first comic book series Lobo (all two issues of it) which featured a black main character and hero. It was published in 1965 by Dell Comics. It was the idea of artist Tony Tallarico (who just passed away this past January) and writer D.J. Arneson and they produced the first issue and sent it on its way and went to work on the second. But there was a snag, the news vendors in the land weren't quite ready yet it seemed, and many bundles returned to Dell unopened. The series was ended after just two issues. But it didn't matter, the times they were "a-changin'"and soon black heroes were to spread throughout the pop culture of the American scene and help shape and redefine what the scene was. This month I want to look at some of the comics and movies that brought about those changes.
The mainstay read this month will be the three volumes of Brothers of the Spear from Dark Horse. This back-up series from Tarzan of the Apes by Gaylord Dubois, Jesse Marsh and later Russ Manning was groundbreaking in the sensitive way it portrayed the relationship between Dan-El and Natongo who were "brothers" literally as a result of Dan-El's adoption. Dan-El was from a lost white tribe in Africa but he and his black brother Natongo battled together against many threats for many, many years. A remarkable series that showed many a comic book reader how the color of skin is not a significant and limiting consideration in how humans should interact with one another.
I also want to read yet again the early adventures of Luke Cage Hero for Hire. Produced in the early 70's in the heat of the "Blaxploitation" era this comic brought a black hero front and center demanding spinner rack space alongside his fellow supertypes. Eventually he teamed up Iron Fist and the pair not unlike the Brothers of the Spear showcased a way that men could work together in spite of the limits society seeks at times to put on them. In these early Hero for Hire stories though, Luke Cage is very much like Richard Roindtree's portrayal in Shaft -- street smart and channeling a rage about how the larger society attempts to put limits on him.
Another focus will be Tony Isabella's Black Lightning. This street-level superhero was a late Bronze Age addition to the DCU, but proved a sturdy one over the decades. I'll be pulling these posts and others as well from Rip Jagger's Other Dojo, a blog I operated for a time some years ago when this location became difficult for a bit. Look for Lightning each Wednesday.
Marvel has had some remarkable black heroes over the decades and Falcon and Black Panther are among the most successful, both thriving in the new Marvel movies. I want to look at some of their early struggles against oppression. Expect to see other heroes from Marvel as the month tumbles along. Again Rip Jagger's Other Blog will supply these posts with a fresh perspective at times.
"Showcase Corner" will feature Men of War, a later Bronze Age addition to DC's remarkable war stable of comics. It's notable in that its cover feature was Codename: Gravedigger which starred Captain Ullysses Hazard, a black soldier during WWII. This was DC's last new WWII hero from their classic period of great war stories.
And I want to take a glimpse at some classic "Blaxploitation" horror flicks such as Blacula, Blackenstien and suchlike. These also will be exported from my other now defunct blog. Look for "Soul Cinema" on Fridays this month.
And in keeping with that "Blaxploitation" theme I'd also like to take a gander at two of Marvel's 70's horror titles which played into the trend -- The Living Mummy and Brother Voodoo!
And "The Sunday Funnies" returns as once we again focus our attention on those vintage Tarzan comic strips, these by Burne Hogarth who had the difficult job of following Hal Foster's definitive act. The story literally picks up where Foster left off. Hogarth added a whole new dynamic dimension to the Tarzan universe.
It's going to be a full if short month. And remember that black heroes and black lives matter, not just this month but every month.
Rip Off
A few years ago Harry Belafonte was being interviewed by the BBC and he said that America was built on racism, violence and exploitation but you are right that time and demographics are the only ways that things will change. The racists and white supremacists hated Obama because they knew he was a vision of a future America where non-white presidents are the norm.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that all nations to varying degrees are built on violence and exploitation and ethnic distinctions are always easy ways to spot an enemy. The United States though has a distinction in that it was to a very large extent developed on the back of systemic slavery which required a civil war to end officially and a century of additional legislation to end legally and we're still working on the hearts and minds with limited success.
DeleteObama was a heart punch to racists. He was everything they'd argued for decades and decades that a black man (or woman hence Michelle's ongoing problems) could not be. He demonstrated cautious wise leadership for a country which is often prone to reflexively respond with violence to solve most of its problems. He got the maxim of "walk softly and carry a big stick", the very opposite of what his odious successor subscribed to.
We read ad nauseum about "America's greatest generation" and they were brave, rugged and profoundly racist. America's true "Greatest Generation" is still waiting to be born and it will be comprised mostly of brown skins.
Brothers of the Spear is new to me, so I'm glad you mentioned it & will be exploring it. Now I want to look for those compilations. This sort of information is one of the reasons I enjoy your blog!
ReplyDeleteI'll take pains then not to spoil, at least as best I can. The Dojo is happy to be of service.
DeleteI remember reading an article in some AC collection of jungle comics about Waku, Prince of the Bantu, a black hero who had his own series in the 50's Jungle Tales anthology comic, put out by Atlas/Marvel. It's so weird that most jungle comics we know of feature white leads, and so did Jungle Tales with Jann of the Jungle usually up front. And I'm a big fan of Fiction House comics, which pretty much created the Jungle Girl genre. But it'd be great to discover more comics about the heroes that are actually part of the landscape. Brothers of the Spear is a beautiful example and it seems so obvious that the characters would be mostly black, so much so that you forget to even notice it once you know the characters as individuals. McGregor said he ran up against some resistance at first when editors realized that stories set in Wakanda featured so many black people. Sometimes you can't imagine something until you see it.
ReplyDeleteI looked up Waku and he did indeed make some cover appearances, much to my surprise. Publishers and distributors were hardly interested in making waves in a market which was shrinking by the day, but still, there's what's right and what's wrong.
DeleteI really enjoyed those early Luke Cage comics and still love his 70s look. Good point about America's greatest generation I was surprised to read that the US army was racially segregated hard to believe when we were all fighting a true evil. I'm sure Britain wasn't much better.
ReplyDeleteI think Luke Cage looked best in the first few issues when his boots were blue (or black) and he had yellow flaps. When the boots became all yellow it took a little away from the design's balance, and shows how a small detail can make a huge difference.
DeleteWhen you hear that "Make America Great Again" nonsense this era of "greatness" is what they yearn for. I read stuff everyday about people wanting to sanctify Republicans and find rationalizations for the wretched candidates they vote for. Folks just don't want to face up to the racism which defines so much of American culture and infects its politics and truth told always have.
I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to focus on skin colour - surely that should be a thing of the past. Every group of people is racist to a degree, and many blacks don't like whites and see them as the cause of every bad thing that's ever happened to them. (Which is not to say that they weren't the cause of some of them.) Someone once asked me who my favourite black singers were, and I had to stop and think for a bit. The reason? I don't categorise my singers by their skin colour, I just see them as singers. We really need to get to a time when skin colour isn't even noticed, but while 'Whitey' is held up as the mainstream bad guy all the time (despite William Wilberforce, who was responsible for the abolition of slavery in Britain, being a white guy) that day seems a long way off. Black Lives Matter? I'd say all lives matter. We need to lose the emphasis on skin colour. It's divisive, not constructive.
ReplyDeleteWhile you might well be enlightened sufficiently to dismiss color as a deciding factor in your world choices, the world at large is lagging far far behind in that regard. Not "seeing color" is an ideal we'll hopefully be ready for in the future, but not the future of the Jetsons since everyone there is white. We just haven't moved as far forward in our development as you suggest I think. It's a truism that "all lives matter" but it's a signal of specific protest to say "black lives matter" since those particular lives seem to be cheaper in the eyes of the law enforcement in my country. When that truth changes then we won't need the slogan. I'm not holding my breath.
DeleteThing is, to take a case like George Floyd (as one example), it was a clear case of police brutality and the cops certainly deserved to be dismissed and punished. However, I've not yet seen anything that suggests the cop who was responsible for his death was a racist. By that, I mean no one has so far said that he hated blacks or that George Floyd was 'picked on' because he was black. I think it's therefore too easy sometimes for black people to claim their colour as the reason for all negative experiences. Had George Floyd been white and everything had gone down the exact same way, his colour would likely never have been mentioned - not even if the cop had been black. As for Black Lives Matter, I have some reservations about them, based on the claim that they want to 'defund' and 'disband' the police - a dangerous development if true. Speaking of The Jetsons, if the cartoons were made today, they'd more than likely show people of diverse ethnicities - the Jetsons of the '60s merely reflect the time in which they were made. As does everything.
DeleteHowever, there's no dispute from me that the way black people were treated in the US in the past was absolutely disgraceful. (And yes, it still happens today to some degree.) BBC 2 ran In The Heat Of The Night at the weekend (as well as other Poitier films), and even though I've seen it a few times before since I was a kid, the attitudes of some of the characters is beyond belief. Shocking.
George Floyd is an example of institutional racism where it's not just individuals but the fabric of some aspect of our civil society itself that by its actions demonstrates a racial bias. There is no doubt to any black person I have ever talked to that they are treated differently by police than I might be as a white male. It makes no difference whether they are affluent or not, they get pulled over by police often if not regularly. I drive the same roads and have been pulled over by cops three times across four decades. I simply don't have the worries about police that my black colleagues have. They have to teach their children specifically how to behave differently when police interact with them (which is assumed to be a certainty) so that they will not appear threatening. I don't have such worries and most white folks don't either which is why they cannot fathom the problem.
DeleteI was just listening earlier today to a report about Italian immigrants in the early part of the 20th Century in America and apparently many immigrants back then were regarded as dangerous and resulted in the revival of the KKK. Today in the U.S. it's Mexican immigration that racists like Trump use to stir up the mobs. It's a sure fire button in my country used for decades and decades by unscrupulous folks to gain power. The election of Obama gave naive hope to some that we had entered a post-racial period in America but it in fact merely stirred up the racists to make themselves known.
As for my point about The Jetsons reflecting the popular culture notions of its time, that's exactly the point. That's the time that modern day yahoos yearn for when they say they want to "make America great again", a time when a show about the future (even a cartoon) could be lilly white and no one noticed.
Well, I'm not an expert on America, but in the UK, many blacks have the PERCEPTION that they're treated differently by the police - they expect racism and that accounts, in my opinion, for why they often see it when it's not there. On TV recently (in an ad) a black fellow was saying that non-black people didn't understand what it was like for him to be followed round a supermarket by a security guard just because he was black. And I thought how does he know it was because he was black? Is he a mind-reader? I've been followed round supermarkets by security guards (even black security guards) and it's not likely to have been because of the colour of my skin.
DeleteThe point I'm making is that, nowadays, many black people are brought up to expect to encounter racism, and it's through that prism they define every negative experience they ever have - which to me is a dangerous thing. And despite your experience on the roads, RJ, there's bound to be plenty white folks who've been pulled over and stopped by the police.
As for The Jetsons, I kinda think it was a plus when no one - either black or white - even noticed or thought about what colour some cartoon characters were. If I went to a performance of Porgy and Bess, there's no way I'd be thinking why aren't there more whites. Having said that, I am optically colour-blind so maybe it extends to the way I think too.
I don't think my views are racist - how can they be when I consider Samuel L. Jackson to be the coolest man on the planet?
Nice rappin' with ya.
This is productive chat I agree. I will only add that it's true that many young black men and women are indeed raised with an awareness of racism because they will indeed encounter it. For them it's no less important than sex education for teenagers in general, it's just preparing kids for the inevitable.
DeleteI'd say there's a difference in being brought up to be aware of it, RJ, and being brought up to perceive it in every experience - even when it might not always be there. Having said that though, it's there more often than it should be - especially in America it seems. Put me in charge of the world, someone, and I'd soon solve all its problems. (Or create some more.)
DeleteI'm also glad to see some coverage of Brothers of the Spear. It's also noteworthy than Natongo and Dan-El both had queens of their respective racial alighments, and that both ladies were kickass "sisters of the spear." The Black queen, Zulena by name, is definitely one of the first Strong Black Female characters in comic books, even as a supporting character.
ReplyDeleteI'm very much looking forward to Zulena's appearance. I've just started the second volume and the focus will turn to Natongo and her for a good bit of it. Just seeing black characters handled with dignity and intelligence is remarkable for the era. So often in the 40's they were demeaned and in the 50's invisible.
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