Diversity in Comics - ANC#1: Sugarfoot - The Complete Story

With the uploading of a complete scan of All-Negro Comics #1 to the Digital Comics Museum recently, we've got the opportunity to take a critical look at each of the stories contained therein. The main stories are all by different artists, with this one, "Sugarfoot" by someone who just signs himself or herself 'Cravat'. It's a well-written short funny story of 8 pages. Sugarfoot and Snake Oil are a couple of homeless guys on the road, on the look-out for a free meal. There's distinct dialect used in this story, with the dialog written to include slang and pronunciation locating the duo and the family they encounter somewhere in the Southern USA.

The song that Sugarfoot is singing could be a corrupted version of Washboard Sam's "Soap and Water Blues" that was recorded in February 1947 (ANC#1 was published in mid-1947), but those lines aren't found in the lyrics. The closest is "I've got a gal shaped like a frog" so the connection is highly speculative.

The previous page introduces a gag that runs through the rest of the story - Sugarfoot saying that Ample is something or other, and she trying to get across to him that her name is actually Ample. Sugarfoot's line, "Baby, you're really stacked!" suggests that this comic wasn't really intended for children.

The lyrics of Snake Oil's song suggest that it is a customized version of St. Louis Blues. Snake Oil must be pretty good, because Sugarfoot and Ample are really swinging!

The story ends nicely with a reprise of the running gag and the two about to have to dive off the railroad track like they did in the beginning. I like this story for the skillful way it takes us through the various stages in the narrative. To me, the art is more complex than it appears at first glance, and it's very communicative. I have to say that I've really enjoyed reading this story, and the Ace Harlem story featured recently on Out Of This World. It's sad that there was only one issue of All-Negro Comics.

Diversity in Comics - ANC#1: Ace Harlem - The Complete Story

Nearly 3 years ago, Out Of This World featured the extremely rare and equally important All-Negro Comics #1. At that time just a handful of pages were available on the web - low resolution scans and no complete stories. Just recently, however, something almost unbelievable happened. Although collectors pay literally thousands of dollars for this highly sought after gem, a magnanimous soul allowed 300 dpi scans of the entire book to be produced for the Digital Comics Museum, making this important work of sequential art available to the world for enjoyment and study (thanks to Yocitrus): All-Negro Comics #1. The digital version of the full book can be downloaded from the DCM website, but what I've done for this post is to crop, and 'clean' by removing the discoloration due to aging of the paper, John Terrell's Ace Harlem story in its entirety, so we can take a look at it here and discuss. First, the story:

This 15 page detective story sends home the "As ye sow, so shall ye reap!" message of inescapable karma pretty strongly. There are lots of period cultural details - the clothes, the activities of the characters, the language, the streets and buildings, cars, interior and street furniture, hardware such as the cash register, some sub-cultural references. The picture we get of this part of  a 1940s inner city area (Harlem?) is that it is populated exclusively by African Americans - good guys, bad guys, innocent bystanders, victims - everybody, evidencing the way this piece of art reflects the highly segregated nature of society at the time, and lives up to the book's title.

Because so much of the content of this story is period specific, full understanding of what it communicates would necessitate a detailed understanding of the cultural items mentioned above. Take the jukebox and the song that it was playing, for example. "Open the Door, Richard" was a novelty rhythm and blues song first recorded by Jack McVea in 1946. The way jukeboxes were loaded with disks, as well as the mechanism for paying for and selecting a song to play would need to be appreciated. What about zoot suits? The lucky charm found by Ace Harlem would have been attached to the lengthy zoot chain that was a required accessory to the zoot suit - this was a watch chain attached to the belt, dangling at least to below the knee, and then back up into the pocket at the side of the pants. The cultural significance of the zoot suit is a PhD in its own right. The further this and other Golden Age comics recede in time in terms of their origin, the more background knowledge is required with which to interpret them. While the basic plot is relatively easy to discern, the implications of all the details, such as those mentioned above, on the mental picture conjured by reading the story, can be better appreciated when one has some familiarity with the culture of the intended audience.

Period popular culture, particularly that of the 20th Century, an era of extremely rapid innovation and change, provides an incredibly valuable resource for analysis of this fascinating time. But African Americans are poorly represented in some areas of popular culture of that period, with items created by African Americans particularly scarce. In the case of comic books, ANC#1 is unique - the only comic out of the thousands of different books that were produced in the first decade of modern comic books' existence, that was written, drawn, and published by African Americans. Few seem to have survived, making the contribution of these scans to the Digital Comics Museum vastly important in terms of allowing access to this significant rarity.

Fawcett's Negro Romance 2: "Love's Decoy"

The third story in Fawcett's Negro Romance 2 is "Love's Decoy", again written by Roy Ald, with art by deservedly, but posthumously and belatedly, celebrated African American comic book artist Alvin Hollingsworth.

Of interest in this particular story is the setting - the Cafe Ebonia, a segregated, African American night club, and its line of African American chorus girls. Otherwise this is standard romance comic material, with a crooked night club owner trying to use the female protagonist to destroy the undercover cop, who ends up being the leading lady's love interest. It's great stuff! The nightclub owner typically (for this kind of story, and in some real life situations) takes multiple advantages of the young girl trying to make it in showbiz, including attempting some unsolicited sexual advances that she has to fend off.

 

 

For the sake of (almost) completeness, there's a two page text story in the comic that Out of This World is pleased to post below. The entire comic (minus of course the cover) has been submitted to the Digital Comic Museum and can be accessed here if you want to download the cbr file.

Fawcett's Negro Romance 2: "Forever Yours"

The second story in Fawcett's Negro Romance 2 is "Forever Yours", and features art by Rudy Palais. The story was again written by Fawcett editor Roy Ald. In this typical romance tale, everything is heading towards 'happily ever after' for this middle class couple, when Edith's whole vision of the future is changed as she learns she has an unspecified, difficult to treat, fatal illness. Faced with the prospect of a mere two years remaining, she switches to party mode, to squeeze out as much enjoyment as possible from the life she has left. Unfortunately this all-out hedonistic pursuit blinds her to the real treasure she has in Don's love, and she even ditches him to go dancing with some random guy who hits on her. Eventually Edith's illness overcomes her, the truth is out, and she finally gets the treatment she needs. It will be a long journey back to good health, but with Don by her side Edith feels sufficient strength to see it through. It is not clear why she didn't start treatment as soon as she learned of her illness, but then we wouldn't have had that section of the story where she loses the plot. So this story falls right in line with the mood and approach taken by Fawcett's other romance titles from the period.

 

There are no white people in the story (or in the whole comic) and so we get a glimpse of the other half of segregated America in the early 1950s. There is nothing in the way of negative stereotyping of African Americans here - the characters in the story are handsome, well-dressed, obviously have a decent income, etc. So the story simply acknowledges and accepts segregation as an existing condition, and does not interrogate or analyze it. Inasmuch as the characters are not depicted as in any way inferior to whites, it could be argued that it is demonstrative of the separate but equal ideal of some pro-segregationists. But the mere fact that Fawcett printed a comic specifically for a black audience (and partly drawn by a black artist) indicates that Negro Romance is really acknowledging the existence of the African American community, who are absent in the vast majority of other comic books. Had African American women of the early 50s been 'looking for a face like theirs', as did Prof William H. Foster III when he read comic books in the 1960s, they would have found what they were looking for in Negro Romance. But clearly the title was not a commercial success, as it folded after issue 3. Rare beyond belief, Negro Romance is nevertheless a true milestone in comic book history. It is actually the first title published by a mainstream comic book company featuring only black characters, in addition to being one of the few comics that featured African Americans in non-stereotyped, non-demeaning imagery from the middle decades of the twentieth century.

One thing I noticed as I continued to scan the book was the absence of ads. If there had been any, they would have to have been on the cover (back and inside), which alas I don't have. I'll have to check to see if that was the standard layout for Fawcett romance comics from that time.

Fawcett's Negro Romance 2: "Possessed" (new scan)

Fawcett's now celebrated Negro Romance 2 was last year the subject of a History Detectives investigation by Gwen Wright, answering Washington University's Gerald Early's questions about the comic book:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/african-american-comic-book/

The video features an appearance by Sequential Crush author, Jacque Nodell, and the website also provides scans of the first story in the book. The episode, very importantly, identified the author of the book as Roy Ald, then an editor at Fawcett, and the artist as Alvin Hollingsworth. Alvin Hollingsworth was African American and, following his career in comics, went on to become a recognized representational and abstract artist and art teacher, before passing away in 2000. The particular copy used in the video had the art slightly defaced by the original owner. Presented here is a scan of "Possessed" from a different (but also coverless) copy of this rare and important book. Over the next few days the other two stories in the issue will be posted here, to mark a return to the blogosphere of Out of This World and to celebrate African American History Month 2012, which focuses on Black Women in American Culture and History. This early 1950s romance comic was written and drawn for a female African American audience, and depicts black women in the kind of romance narrative that was common to all books of that genre at that time. So here's the new scan, same story as the old scan that's out there, but without the pink colored pencil additions that adorn the book used in the History Detectives video:

Once the three stories are posted on Out of This World, the whole (coverless) comic will be submitted to the Digital Comic Museum. I'll post the link to that when it is added to the DCM archive.