Book Review: FORGOTTEN: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes

FORGOTTEN: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War
HARPERCOLLINS – @HarperCollins

AUTHOR: Linda Hervieux – @lindahervieux
ISBN: 978-0-06-231379-9; hardcover (October 27, 2015)
368pp, B&W, $27.99 U.S.

Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War is a 2015 non-fiction book from author Linda Hervieux.  This World War II-era history book tells the story of an all-black battalion whose crucial contributions on D-Day have gone unrecognized to this day.

What is forgotten is what Forgotten remembers for us.  You did not see it in Steven Spielberg's 1998 Oscar-winning film, Saving Private Ryan, but African-American service men did participate in the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II.  In the early hours of June 6, 1944 (D-Day), the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, a unit of African-American soldiers, landed on the beaches of France (primarily Omaha Beach and Utah Beach).  Their orders were to man a curtain of armed balloons meant to deter enemy aircraft.

Although little was expected of these black man, their bravery and valor in not only maintaining the balloons, but also in rescuing fellow soldiers and in fighting the enemy earned praise from U. S. and Allied military officers and officials – from high to low rank.  They also earned the respect of some of the very White soldiers with whom they could not serve because the U.S. armed forces were segregated even during World War II.

However, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, their exploits and service, were forgotten.  One member of the 320th, Waverly Woodson, would be nominated for the Medal of Honor, but it was an award he would never receive.  Over one million African-Americans served during World War II, but the nation’s highest decoration was not given to black soldiers in World War II, although many were recommended for the award.

Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War remembers them.  Author Linda Hervieux also chronicles the injustices of Jim Crow America, especially during the 1940s.  The past is brought to life in an extraordinary blend of military and social history.  Forgotten is the book that finally pays tribute to the valor of this all-black battalion; its crucial contributions at D-Day have gone unrecognized to this day, but no longer...  The recognition begins with Forgotten

When I saw director Oliver Stone's 1986 film, Platoon (which won the Oscar as “Best Picture” of 1986), it was the first time I saw a movie that depicted African-American soldiers serving during the Vietnam War as more than just background players.  The only reason I knew that Black soldiers served in Korea was because the assistant principal of my high school was a veteran of Korea.  Occasionally, I saw a Black actor playing a serviceman on the television series, “M.A.S.H.”  Popular media and pop culture and the arts to which I was exposed, especially as child, said very little about Black men serving in Korea.

These slights of Black soldiers during Korea and Vietnam were nothing compared to the uncountable slights against Black servicemen and servicewomen during World War II.  It seems that history practically erased African-Americans from the history of WWII.  In high school, we did not cover WWII – believe it or not.  I did not know that there were African-American pilots during WWII until I first learned that Star Wars creator, George Lucas, had been trying to get a film about those pilots, the “Red Tails” made, as early as the 1990s.  Lucas eventually financed the production, marketing, and distribution of the film himself.

I saw Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima films, Flags of My Father and Letters from Iwo Jima, but it was afterwards that I learned that Black marines had participated in that battle.  However, Flags of My Father, which focuses on the American side of the battle of Iwo Jima, did not depict African-Americans in the fight.  Director Spike Lee was critical of Eastwood for this omission, but that earned him ire for saying this, but none for Eastwood.

When I read the email in which HarperCollins' marketing department offered review copies of Forgotten, it was the first time I had ever heard of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion.  That's my fault.  As an African-American, I should be reading more books about the history of Black folks in America.  I read a lot of journalism, articles, essays, etc. about Black History, but I think I have only read three or four books about Black History or African-American historical figures during the last decade.  For an African-American who calls himself a writer, that is sad.

Well, luckily we have the pluck, skill, talent, and perseverance of Linda Hervieux.  Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War is an essential book about a pivotal time in the history of the United States:  militarily, politically, socially, and culturally.  It is a fantastic read, and Hervieux should probably write more non-fiction books... on any topic.

This brilliant book will often make you burning angry, but it will also make you proud of a group of men you never knew.  Black servicemen like those in the 320th made an awful, racist country that thought too much of itself look better than it should.  Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War is an assault on the kind of memory that is nothing more than a column of support for Jim Crow America.  This book is the restoration, not of history, but of America's story.  Now, it is up to us to make sure that neither Forgotten nor the men of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion are ever relegated to the remainder bin of history.

A+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2016 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

Review: STRANGE FRUIT #2

STRANGE FRUIT No. 2 (OF 4)
BOOM! Studios – @boomstudios

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

WRITERS: J.G. Jones and Mark Waid
ARTIST: J.G. Jones
LETTERS: Deron Bennett
COVER: J.G. Jones
24pp, Colors, $3.99 U.S. (October 2015)

Suggested for mature readers

Strange Fruit is a four-issue comic book miniseries from comics creators, Mark Waid (Daredevil; Kingdom Come) and J.G. Jones (Wanted; Y: The Last Man).  According to publicity released by publisher BOOM! Studios, Strange Fruit is “a deeply personal passion project” and is a “provocative examination of the heroic myth confronting the themes of racism, cultural legacy, and human nature through a literary lens, drawing from Southern folklore and tradition.”

Strange Fruit is set in and around Chatterlee, Mississippi.  It is April 1927, during what would become known as the “Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.”  The Mississippi River is rising, threatening to break open the levees and destroy Chatterlee, after already washing away other “God-fearing” towns.  The race to shore up the levees is also threatening to break open the racial and social divisions of Chatterlee and the surrounding area.  Into this roiling situation, a mysterious Black man falls from the sky.

As Strange Fruit #2 opens, the mysterious (and tall and muscular) Black man enters Chatterlee, where he immediately scares all the White women and angers most of the White men.  Eventually, he finds residence in the town jail, where he is reunited with the agitatin' young Black man, Sonny, who has named the strapping mystery man, “Johnson.”  Meanwhile, another Black outsider believes that Johnson can save the town from the “mighty Mississippi.”

J.G. Jones is producing some of the most beautiful comic book art that I have ever seen, and until I see otherwise, I am calling his work on Strange Fruit the best of this year.  His cartooning of the human face is breathtaking, and his ability to give each and every character a different and unique face is something that is rare in comic books.  Jones' dexterity in portraying a variety of expressions, moods, emotions, etc. for each character further demonstrates that he is a master comic book artist and also a masterful graphical storyteller.

Overall, the series remains in a teasing mode about everything:  the mystery Black man, the missing boy, and especially some of the characters.  I wish this story settled on who the leads are, so that the narrative would seem a little less unsettled like the roiling river that threatens Chatterlee.  I'll toss those complaints aside for now because I cannot get enough of Jones and Waid's emerging masterpiece.

A

www.boom-studios.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

Review: STRANGE FRUIT #1

STRANGE FRUIT #1 (OF 4)
BOOM! Studios – @boomstudios

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

WRITERS: J.G. Jones and Mark Waid
ARTIST: J.G. Jones
LETTERS: Deron Bennett
COVER: J.G. Jones
24pp, Colors, $3.99 U.S. (July 2015)

Suggested for mature readers

Strange Fruit is a new four-issue comic book miniseries from comics creators, Mark Waid (Daredevil; Kingdom Come) and J.G. Jones (Wanted; Y: The Last Man).  According to publicity released by publisher BOOM! Studios, Strange Fruit is “a deeply personal passion project” and is a “provocative examination of the heroic myth confronting the themes of racism, cultural legacy, and human nature through a literary lens, drawing from Southern folklore and tradition.”

Strange Fruit #1 opens in Chatterlee, Mississippi, April 1927, during what would become known as the “Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.”  The Mississippi River is rising, threatening to break open the levees and destroy Chatterlee, after already washed away the “God-fearing” town of Seeley.  The race to shore up the levees is also threatening to break open the racial and social divisions of Chatterlee and the surrounding area.  Into this roiling situation, a mysterious Black man falls from the sky.

Strange Fruit was already a controversial comic book months before its release.  I  imagine that it will draw ire from people who were perturbed by Quentin Tarantino's 2012, Oscar-winning film, Django Unchained.  Fiction like Tarantino's film and Strange Fruit draw controversy because of their subject matter and because of the settings of their narratives.  Another reason such works are controversial is because African-American critics see them as cheap entertainment and violent melodramas that exploit the troubled and painful history of Black folks in America.

To be fair to J.G. Jones and Mark Waid, anything set in the racist, police state that was the Deep South in the 1920s (and 30s, and 40s and 50s and 60s...) is bound to court controversy.  Also, Waid was born in 1962 in Alabama, so he spent his childhood in the vicinity of the troubled times of the Civil Rights movement.  [I don't know when Jones was born.]  Actually, I give Jones and Waid credit for depicting how Whites treated Black locals during the Great Flood (to say nothing of other natural disasters).

A well-known comic book artist once criticized members of his message board for using the term “boy scout” in a derogatory way.  He said that “decent people” knew that the Boy Scouts organization was a good thing.  I started to inform him (but didn't) about the story that during the Great Flood, some “decent people” in Mississippi had Boy Scouts point rifles at Black locals, who had been forced to fill sand bags to protect from a breach of the levee, in order to assure that they would keep working.

You see, many Black people had little or nothing, in the way of property, to lose during the Great Flood if a levee broke along the Mississippi River and washed away a town.  White land and property owners and businessman had everything to lose, and thus, treated Blacks like slaves who were expected to save business they probably weren't even allowed to patronize.  This also happened when fire threatened fields planted with crops, as was the case in early 20th century Louisiana when Whites used murder and violence to intimidate Black locals into fighting the fire.

Jones (who was born in my home state of Louisiana) and Waid are merely digging in the dirt of their birthplaces using myth and Southern folklore and tradition to examine their birthright.  That birthright is the human stain of the legacy of racism, slavery, a failed Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, the police state, and extreme violence.

As for reading this series, I'm in.  Thank you, Mr. Jones and Mr. Waid.  I hope that Strange Fruit is the first of many such comic book series.  Maybe, comic book publishing companies, which are owned and operated by White people, will even have the vision to publish such material when it is created by African-Americans.  In my review of a future issue of Strange Fruit, I will praise J.G. Jones' utterly beautiful painted art to the high heavens.

A

www.boom-studios.com
#comicsforward

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

Review: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
HARPCOLLINS/HarperPerennial – @HarperCollins

AUTHOR: Harper Lee
ISBN: 978-0-06-093546-7; paperback (July 5, 2015)
336pp, B&W, $14.99 U.S., $18.50 CAN

First published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel from author Harper Lee.  The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.  It was adapted into a film drama, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), directed by Robert Mulligan and written for the screen by Horton Foote.  The film would go on to receive eight Academy Award nominations and win three at the 35th Academy Awards ceremony on April 8, 1963, including a best actor Oscar for Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

Harper Lee's second novel, Go Set a Watchmen, was recently published.  Because it features many characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchmen is being described as a sequel or follow-up to the 1960 novel.  As I understand it, however, Go Set a Watchmen was Harper Lee's first draft of the novel that would become To Kill a Mockingbird.  A few months ago, HarperCollins offered book reviewers on its contact lists a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird in preparation for the release of Go Set a Watchmen.  I read To Kill a Mockingbird almost 20 years ago, and as I wanted to read it again, I accepted a copy for review.

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the Deep South of the early 1930s, and, if my “figurin'” is right, it opens in 1932 or thereabouts.  The location is the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, the county seat of Maycomb County.  The narrator of the book is the presumably adult Jean Louise Finch, who was called “Scout,” as a child.  Jean Louise's story is a coming-of-age tale about a particular time in her childhood.  The story begins when Jean Louise/Scout is six and ends when she is 10.

Scout lives with her widower father, Atticus Finch, an attorney and Alabama state legislator; and her older brother (by three years), Jeremy Atticus Finch, called “Jem.”  They have a live-in housekeeper and caretaker, an African-American woman named Calpurnia.  Scout and Jem befriend Charles Baker Harris, called “Dill,” a boy who is a year older than Scout and is from Mississippi.  Dill visits every summer, staying with an aunt, Miss Rachel Haverford, who lives in Maycomb.

The trio of Scout, Jem, and Dill spend their summers playing and having adventures.  Their biggest obsession is discovering the mystery of a next-door neighbor, Arthur “Boo” Radley.  Their determination to get a look at “Boo,” who has rarely left his home in years, takes up much of the early part of the book.

The turning point comes when Scout and Jem's father, Atticus, is appointed the public defender of a young Black man, Tom Robinson, who is unjustly accused of and criminally charged with raping a young white woman.  The trial occurs in the summer of 1935, and Scout witnesses the quite heroism of her father, as he struggle for justice in a courtroom where the weight of history and also irrational hate are bigger obstacles than the prosecution.

After 50+ years of praise and of being a “beloved classic,” To Kill a Mockingbird does not need to be reviewed... one would think.  However, I believe that this book should never be forgotten.  It should be discussed not only in schools and in other academic settings, but also in the larger world of people who pay attention to books and to their importance.

To Kill a Mockingbird is filled with wisdom, but not the homespun kind that is little more than an old adage.  What this novel has to say, one has to engage; the reader has to think about it and to ruminate on its passages and lessons.  For instance, there is the following passage in which Atticus informs his children:  “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

I never realized until my second reading that Tom Robinson, accused of rape by a pitiable white trash teenage girl and her cowardly, lazy, shiftless white trash father, is this story's mockingbird.  You see, all a mockingbird does is sing, while other birds might be pests.  The mockingbird is innocent, and it is a sin to kill an innocent – a truth so plain that most people are blind and ignorant to it.

I had a English lit instructor (who may have been a professor) who said that society hid dangerous books away in the children's literature section.  She used Lord of the Flies, as well as To Kill a Mockingbird as examples.  I think To Kill a Mockingbird is a dangerous novel.  The reason is simple.  This novel's depiction of injustice and blind and violent hate in the Deep South; its portrayal of honor and quite heroism; and its examination, measure for measure, of the irrationality of the White adults of Maycomb's attitudes toward race and class are all seen through the eyes of child, Scout's.

Jean Louise tells the story through her younger self, Scout, and Scout sees the world in a matter of fact way, innocently free of the dressings of subterfuge and hypocrisy.  Of course, it takes a child to catch an adult saying one thing and meaning another.  Late in the novel, Scout attends a tea party held by her Aunt Alexandra (Atticus' sister, who moves in with the family).  One of the women attending mentions how horrible it is that Adolf Hitler is having Jewish citizens arrested and imprisoned simply for being Jewish.  A child whose father is defending a wrongly accused Black man, without guile, will wonder why that same woman cannot see the plight of her Black neighbors with sympathy.

This is why To Kill a Mockingbird is a dangerous book.  Harper Lee's narrator is a child who views the beauty of the world as plainly as she sees the lies, inequities, violence, hatred, and racism.  Unlike an adult, Scout won't try to justify injustice the way adults do so that they can live with themselves.  Any American who reads books must read To Kill a Mockingbird at least twice in their adulthood.

A+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux (Support Leroy on Patreon)


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

Book Review: WELCOME TO BRAGGSVILLE

WELCOME TO BRAGGSVILLE
HARPERCOLLINS/William Morrow – @HarperCollins @WmMorrowBks

AUTHOR: T. Geronimo Johnson
ISBN: 978-0-06-237763-0; hardcover (February 17, 2015)
384pp, B&W, $25.99 U.S.

An slightly different version of this review appeared at the website, ComicBookBin.

Welcome to Braggsville is a 2015 novel from author T. Geronimo Johnson.  A PEN/Faulkner finalist, Johnson is the acclaimed African-American author of the novel, Hold It 'Til It Hurts.  Welcome to Braggsville focuses on four college students, their plan to stage a dramatic protest during a Civil War reenactment, and the resulting fallout.

Welcome to Braggsville, Georgia – population 712.  For the better part of two centuries, Braggsville's denizens have called it “The City That Love Built in the Heart of Georgia.”  D'aron Little May Davenport is a son of Braggsville, and his name, “D'aron” is really Irish and is pronounced like “Daron,” or so say his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Davenport.

D'aron is currently attending the University of California-Berkeley, better known simply as “Berkeley.”  Although he had few close friends in Braggsville, D'aron has found three kindred spirits in college.  There is Louis Chang a/k/a “Loose Chang, who is Malaysian, but tells people that he is Chinese.  A jokester, Louis wants to be a stand-up comic –  the “Lenny Bruce Lee” of comedy.

Next, there is Charles “Charlie” Roger Cole, the former football star and Black friend from Chicago.  Like the former Senator Barack Obama, Charlie is “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”  Finally, there is Candice Marianne Chelsea, an Iowa blonde who claims Native American roots.  D'aron is in love with her, but so are Louis and Charlie – maybe.  This quartet comes together as the “4 Little Indians.”

One day, in alternative history class, D'aron lets slip loose that Braggsville hosts an annual Civil War reenactment that has recently been re-branded as “Patriot Days.”  Candice suggests that the 4 Little Indians travel to Braggsville and crash Patriot Days in an act of “performative intervention.”  The journey to Braggsville provides plenty to laugh at, but things turn decidedly unfunny.

William Morrow sent me an advance reader's edition of Welcome to Braggsville.  In a letter posted on the very first page of the book, Jessica Williams, the editor of this novel, describes it as “Alternatively poignant and provocative, hilarious and devastating...”  Yes, yes, yes, and yes; Welcome to Braggsville is all that.  Williams says that this novel is “a brave and necessary portrait of contemporary America....”  That's sho-nuff true.

You see, Welcome to Braggsville is not really like many novels that fill bestseller lists and store bookshelves.  It's plot might seem simple – kids protest a Southern Civil War reenactment.  However, that truly only scratches the surface of this ambitious novel that plumbs the depths of both the human heart and the troubled racial and racist history of the United States.  There are probably potboiler novels that can be described similar to this:  say something like:  star police detective tracks a mysterious new spree killer whose crimes are uncannily similar to murders committed by the Ku Klux Klan a century ago!  But Welcome to Braggsville is not about plot.

At its center, Welcome to Braggsville tackles an act that may be racist or have racial overtones.  This complex, messy, and beautiful novel is both surprisingly readable and stubbornly difficult.  T. Geronimo Johnson digs into the lies and deceit about racism, discrimination, exploitation, and even about America's most recent imperialist adventures.  He deconstructs it all and tries to get at the human heart of the matter.  Perhaps, that is where the answers and solutions are – in the yearning, confused, and troubled human heart.  This is the kind of novel that is both a necessary read and a good read.  Welcome to Braggsville is the modern satirical novel, but its pedigree is Southern-fried and Southern Gothic.  We need more fiction like this.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

I Reads You Review: DEATHLOK #1

DEATHLOK (2014) #1
MARVEL COMICS – @Marvel

WRITER: Nathan Edmondson
ART: Mike Perkins
COLORS: Andy Troy
LETTERS: VC's Joe Sabino
COVER: Mike Perkins with Andy Troy
VARIANT COVERS: Clayton Crain: Skottie Young
28pp, Color, $3.99 U.S. (December 2014)

Rated “T+”

“The Enemy of My Enemy”

Deathlok is a Marvel Comics cyborg character that first appeared in Astonishing Tales #25 (cover date: August 1974).  Also known as “Deathlok the Demolisher,” he was created by artist Rich Buckler and writer Doug Moench.  There have been several different versions of the character, but the recurring theme for all these characters was that a dead human was reanimated with cybernetic technology and became Deathlok.

Now, there is a new Deathlok, and he appeared in the eight-issue event miniseries, Original Sin.  This Deathlok is Henry Hayes (an African-American), who works for Medics Without Borders, a job that cost him a leg.  Hayes received a composite fibers prosthesis from a company called Biotek, but the company also placed him under mind-control.  Apparently, Hayes is now an operative who works as an assassin, killer, and soldier.  Henry Hayes is the star of a new Deathlok comic book series from writer Nathan Edmondson, artist Mike Perkins, colorist Andy Troy, and letterer Joe Sabino.

Deathlok #1 (“The Enemy of My Enemy”) finds Henry getting some fine-tuning on his Biotek prosthesis.  A week later, he is on a mission in Ludzern, Switzerland.  Back home, Henry's teenaged daughter, Aria, is mostly ignoring him.  S.H.I.E.L.D isn't ignoring him, however, as Director Maria Hill has assigned Agent Hope, a researcher, to investigate Deathlok.

I really like Mike Perkins' art in this first issue.  It seems like a blend of Bryan Hitch and styles not seen since the 1970s and 80s, especially in the depiction of human anatomy and of the domestic scenes.  Nathan Edmondson, who can write intriguing stories, does just that here.  Deathlok #1 is a well-put together first issue.  I am curious enough to read more issues, but I don't see myself paying $3.99 per issue for the pleasure of reading this new Deathlok past the first story arc.  That might change if I hear things about the second arc that really intrigues me.

PREACHING TIME: By the way, I have nothing against Nathan Edmondson.  I always enjoy his writing.  However, I have to admire the contortions through which Marvel Comics will go in order to avoid hiring Black writers, even on books starring African-American characters.

I had to laugh at Marvel Studios' announcement of a Black Panther movie, when I know that no Black man will play a major part in this movie beyond Chadwick Boseman as the film's star.  I don't see a Black woman doing much in the film other than playing a small supporting role, either.  Will a Black man or woman ever write, direct, or produce a Marvel feature film?  I certainly don't see that happening during this round of films that Marvel has mapped out to the year 2028 (or 2029). PREACHING TIME OVER

Oh, yeah.  Once again, Deathlok #1 is good and has potential.

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

I Reads You Review: STORM #1 (2006)

STORM #1 (of 6)
MARVEL COMICS – @Marvel

WRITER: Eric Jerome Dickey
PENCILS: David Yardin
INKS: Jay Leisten
COLORS: Matt Milla
LETTERS: VC’s Randy Gentile
COVER: Mike Mayhew
40pp, Color (April 2006)

Rated T+

Storm a/k/a Ororo Munroe is a Marvel Comics super-heroine and longtime member of the X-Men.  She was created by writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum and first appeared in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (cover dated: May 1975).

Storm is also the former queen consort of Wakanda, a title she held when she was married to King T’Challa, better known as the superhero, the Black Panther.  Before the two were married (in Black Panther #18 cover dated: September 2006), Marvel published several stories and comics under the tagline, “Prelude to the Wedding of the Century.”

One of those series was Storm, a 2006 six-issue miniseries, written by Eric Jerome Dickey and drawn by David Yardin.  Dickey (born July 7, 1961) is a New York Times bestselling African-American author, who is best known for his novels about contemporary African-American life.  He has also written crime novels that are international in their casts and settings.  With the Storm miniseries, Dickey re-imagines the first meeting between the younger versions of both Ororo Munroe and T'Challa.

Storm #1 (“Chapter One”) opens in an outdoor market in an unnamed African country.  Ororo Munroe, our future “Storm,” is among a number of street urchins that prowl the market looking for things they can steal from the shoppers and shopkeepers and even from those simply passing through the market.  Goaded by the others, Ororo steals a camera from a white man.  What she does not realize is that this white man is Andreas de Ruyter, a ruthless hunter who is also a racist.  He is determined to track Ororo using any brutal means necessary.  Zenja, a jealous rival of Ororo’s, watches the situation, making plans of her own.

Flashbacks also show Ororo with her parents, her father, David Munroe, and her mother, N'Dare.  With the upheaval of change causing so much turmoil in America, N’Dare wants to return to her home country in Africa.  David does not believe that they will be better off in Africa.  Will their marriage survive this crucial disagreement?

Meanwhile, Ororo’s strange powers began to manifest themselves.  Plus, Teacher arrives to tell Ororo that the lessons in picking pockets and thievery she learned from Achmed El-Gibar are not enough.

I have written, both here and at other places, about Black and African-American writers having more opportunities to write for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and even the larger independent publishers like Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, and IDW Publishing.  I think that there should be more Black writers in comics, but not because of race and representation alone.  Black writers also mean different perspectives on storytelling and diverse points-of-view.

In one single issue, Storm #1, Eric Jerome Dickey shows what different perspectives on storytelling and diverse points-of-view can mean to the mythology of one X-Men in particular, Storm, and to the X-Men, in general.  Dickey really puts Ororo through her paces, forcing her to endure many challenges and obstacles if she is to survive her life as a thief and as a denizen of a jungle refuge.

However, Ororo’s life is not just difficult because she is an orphan, but also because she is, in some ways, a stranger in Africa.  Dickey, as a Black man, understands the stress fractures that exist in what it means to be Black and how it relates to heritage.  When Ororo’s fellow thieves insist that she is not one of them, Dickey brings a sense of authenticity and realism to those accusations.  He hits right at the heart of the matter.  Africans may see Ororo as a Black American and not at all as an African, no matter what her mother, N’Dare’s origins are.

This is a different kind of racial, ethnic, and national conflict than what we get in comic books written by white comic book writers trying to depict racial disputes.  An African-American understands the intercene conflicts that sometimes exist between black Africans and the descendants of the Diaspora.  Ororo is caught in the middle between Africa and America, or, perhaps, more accurately, she has a place on both sides.

I enjoyed reading Storm, a comic book made especially rewarding by the unique viewpoint and experience that Eric Jerome Dickey brings to the life of young Ororo Munroe.  The art by David Yardin and Jay Leisten, is not grand from a visual standpoint, something I expect of a Storm comic book.  However, Yardin and Leisten ground the story in reality, and are the right choices to illustrated and visualize both the ideas and pasts that Dickey is exploring.  I look forward to reading more of this miniseries.

A-

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

I Reads You Review: COLORS IN BLACK #1

COLORS IN BLACK #1
DARK HORSE COMICS – @DarkHorseComics

SCRIPT: J.R. Lamb, Scott Tolson
ART: Scott Tolson, Christopher Schenck
COLORS: Scott Tolson, Greg Simanson, Christopher Schenck
LETTERS: Erik Bell, Greg Simanson
COVER: Scott Tolson
32pp, Color, $2.95 U.S., $4.15 CAN (March 1995)

Colors in Black was a four-issue comic book miniseries published by Dark Horse Comics in 1995.  The series’ covers bore a “Comics by Spike” logo because Colors in Black was published “in cooperation” with Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks, the production company started by the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker, Spike Lee.

In an afterword to the first issue, the goal of Colors in Black is described as “to promote dialogue between the various ingredients of American’s melting pot, which we hope will result in a better understanding of each other in the long run.”  I don’t know if the series reached that goal (especially in light of the Jena Six, Troy Davis, Trayvon Martin, etc).  I don’t know anyone else who read it, although I knew people who were aware of the series, so I can’t ask that “better understanding” question.

Colors in Black #1 offers four short comics stories, with writer and artist Scott Tolson being the guiding force behind most of the material in this first issue.  The opening piece is “The Introduction (an’ Shit) or The Bad Rap Song,” written by J.R. Lamb and drawn by Scott Tolson.  Four characters break the fourth wall and speak directly to the reader about the black experience.

It is a fun read because all four characters have such distinctive points of view about being black, African-American, or a person of color, but it can also be jarring.  I don’t know if this is the best way to open the series, as this introduction does not necessarily reflect the other stories.  On the other hand, “The Introduction (an’ Shit)” does let the reader know that this comic book has little to do with a typical “black experience” or with presenting a monolithic viewpoint.

There are two stories in this first issue that deserve to be called powerful.  The first is “The Life That Jack Built” (by Scott Tolson with Greg Simanson), which personifies how material wealth and the quest for a highly-materialistic version of the American dream have a dark side.  The words and pictures work in tandem and separately; this makes the story’s themes and, of course, message, work in a way that that isn’t so much aggressive as it is victorious.

Tolson offers another powerful story, “Passion Play.”  This story juxtaposes an “angry” young black man with a white scholar’s interpretation of an angry young black man and his explanation of why they are angry.  The story impressively pits theory against reality, and the art and graphical storytelling is expressionistic in a way that leaves everything up to the interpretation of the reader.

I think Colors in Black #1 is not about preaching to the reader, but rather allowing the reader to think and to engage.  That isn’t the usual in American comic books, which generally feed readers material they digest as entertainment, sometimes merely for the sake of escapism.

Colors in Black #1 can also be seen as being essentially an alternative comic book similar to the kind that Fantagraphics Books or Drawn & Quarterly would have published at the time Colors in Black was first released.  Of course, the exception is that North American alt-comix publishers were not publishing black alt-comix.

B+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

Christmas Gift Book Idea: Born on the Kitchen Floor in Bois Mallet

One thing these Thanksgiving and holiday gatherings can certainly do is let people know what other folks are up to.

I learned that my brother-in-law's sister, Lovey Marie Guillory, has recently published through Amazon a book about her family's history, which also covers Louisiana history and the story of Black Creoles in the state.  The book is "Born on the Kitchen Floor in Bois Mallet," and here is your Amazon link:





By Editor
THE END

Review: MARCH: Book One

MARCH: BOOK ONE
TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS – @topshelfcomix

WRITERS: John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
ARTIST: Nate Powell
EDITORS: Chris Staros with Leigh Walton
ISBN: 978-1-60309-300-2; paperback (August 2013)
128pp, Black and White, $14.95 U.S.

Congressman John Lewis is Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District Representative (GA-5, Democrat).  Lewis was also one of the “Big Six” leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement (with the others being Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., James Farmer, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young).  Before such fame and accomplishments, he was born John Robert Lewis in February 1940 to sharecropper parents, Willie Mae (Carter) and Eddie Lewis.  His early life, from farm boy to activist college student, is the focus of March: Book One.

March: Book One is a comic book written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, drawn by artist Nate Powell, and published by Top Shelf Productions.  This is the first of three graphic novels recounting the life of Congressman John Lewis.  March: Book One is both a riveting history of the United States during the second half of the 20th century and an evocative personal story of a famous man’s life.

Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights includes the key roles he played in the historic 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 Selma-Montgomery March.  March will apparently focus on Lewis’ personal story and on the highs and lows of the broader movement for civil rights in the U.S.

March: Book One opens on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama (part of the 1965 Selma-Montgomery March) on March 7, 1965, the date that would become known as “Bloody Sunday.”  The story moves forward to January 20, 2009, and sees Lewis share the story of his past with a mother and her two young sons.  The narrative moves back in time again, to the 1940s, where in first person, Lewis recounts the early events and incidents that shaped his life.

March: Book One’s co-writers John Lewis and Andrew Aydin recount Lewis’ life on a 110-acre cotton, corn, and peanut farm in Pike County, Alabama.  This section of the narrative covers Lewis’ time as a junior chicken farmer and chicken rights activist (of sorts) up to 1954.  Both reminiscence and personal history, it is as if Lewis and Aydin are spinning tales from the world of young John Lewis, yarns of childhood that go beyond the personal and intimate about Lewis and into the small world that his home and community.  So we learn about his family, their wishes, small incidents (like trading chickens for much-needed flour and sugar), their way of life (having to miss school to work the fields), and transformative moments (Lewis’ trip “up north” to Buffalo with his maternal uncle, Otis Carter).

In 1954, momentous events in the larger world outside of Lewis’ life as farm kid and ambitious country boy begin to transpire.  The Supreme Court rules “separate but equal” unconstitutional in Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka.  A young preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges.  Two adult white men kill a black child named Emmett Till, are acquitted of their crime, and publicly brag about (making them the original George Zimmermans).  On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a city bus.  The Civil Rights Movement is gaining momentum.

Lewis becomes a part of that movement when he becomes a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary.  He attends a workshop on non-violence taught by Jim Lawson.  Lewis later helps to organize sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.  That begins with test sit-ins in 1959 and launches with the history changing real deal in February 1960, which culminates into an eventual public confrontation with Mayor Ben West of Nashville.

Obviously, John Lewis is a man who has made history.  However, in the humble and gentle way in which Lewis and Aydin tell this story, Lewis is as much a witness to history as he is a participant.  Lewis, the character in March: Book One, is not the hero who changed things.  He is also a participant, one among many; leader and organizer, yes, but also part of a fellowship.  This striking modesty brings the reader into the story, and in the retelling, allows the reader to be a quasi-witness to history.

I don’t think that I have ever seen any work by cartoonist and graphic novelist Nate Powell that was not published in black and white.  Powell’s black and white comics are not about the contrast of black and white – negative and positive space.  His storytelling is a graphical space in which black and white blends and unites to create nuance, subtlety, texture, complexity, ambiguity, and mystery.  For March: Book One, Powell creates a visual storytelling tapestry that is at once grand, earth-shattering history, but also singularly, personally intimate and deeply human.

In March: Book One, Lewis, Aydin, and Powell have created a story that wrestles grand history down to size so that it is not too big for anyone to grasp.  In this small-sized manner of storytelling, we can see the humanity in and importance of all the participants in our story we call history.

A+

For more information about March: Book One and to read a 14-page preview, visit here or http://www.topshelfcomix.com/march

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

------------------------------------------

I Reads You Review: X-Men #1

X-MEN #1
MARVEL COMICS

WRITER: Brian Wood
PENCILS: Olivier Coipel
INKS: Olivier Coipel and Mark Morales
COLORS: Laura Martin
LETTERS: VC’s Joe Caramagna
COVER: Olivier Coipel with Laura Martin
28pp, Colors, $3.99 U.S. (July 2013)

Rated T+

Marvel Comics’ Marvel NOW initiative (which began in Fall 2012) is the major re-launch of the publisher’s comics line. Within that major re-launch have been several re-launches, and one of the big unveilings is a new comic book entitled, X-Men.

The new X-Men is written by Brian Wood and drawn by Olivier Coipel. That is a major creative team, but the really big news about this new X-Men title is that it features a female-only lineup. This new X-Men comic book stars Storm, Kitty Pryde, Psylocke, Rachel, Rogue, and Jubilee.

X-Men #1 (2013) begins with Jubilation Lee (Jubilee, of course) on the run, and in possession of an infant. Someone is following her, and she calls for the X-cavalry. Meanwhile, John Sublime shows up at The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning in Westchester, New York. He has a tale of impending doom to tell.

Writing the X-Men means recycling the ideas of other writers, ideas that were first published decades ago. What Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, and Chris Claremont wrote can be and has been rehashed, re-imagined, remade, and re-jiggered into countless new comic book stories. This has gone on for decades and can go on for many, many more decades.

Along comes Brian Wood. He is one of those writers that can take someone else’s concept and write new stories that are as fresh and as innovative as the original idea. See him do it on Dark Horse’s new eponymous Star Wars comic book with artist Carlos D’Anda. Wood’s new X-Men is the freshest take on the franchise since Grant Morrison shocked us with New X-Men 13 years ago.

One of the elements that made Morrison’s New X-Men so bracing was the art by Frank Quitely. Wood has an artist collaborator who is still ascending. Olivier Coipel, the French comic book artist, has not yet reached his creative peak, but he is a good storyteller. His pretty, eye-candy style is made even prettier by Laura Martin’s dazzling colors.

Coipel is making X-Men a stimulating, refreshing read. Also, amazing is that he is the first “artist of color” (or how about “Black guy”) to be the series artist (and not a guest artist) on a main or “flagship” X-Men title in the 50-year history of the franchise. When you consider that people associated with Marvel have evoked Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to describe the X-Men, it is ridiculous that it took this long.

By the way, no African-American or Black writer has been the series writer for Uncanny X-Men or X-Men. Is this an accident or is it because the powers-that-be over the years just wanted it that way? Well, I guess Brian Wood and Olivier Coipel are as bold as it’s ever going to get.

Any way, I like X-Men #1. This is just the first issue, but I already think that the 2013-launched X-Men is a fabulous comic book.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

A Column On How Not to End Up Like Trayvon Martin

I wrote a piece that is part spoof of Geraldo Rivera and part satire for my Black Astronaut page at the Comic Book Bin.  Please, go here and enjoy.

"Listen, Whitey!" and Pat Thomas in the U.K. in April

Pat Thomas Travels Over Land and Sea With

Listen Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power

Fantagraphics Books and Light in the Attic Records are excited to announce that author, lecturer, and music-man Pat Thomas is hitting the road with Listen Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power. Meet the mofo behind the book that pays tribute to the Black Power Movement of the ’60s-’70s. Heading up the West Coast and then across the pond to England, Thomas will be giving talks, signing books, and playing tracks at both bookstores and record shops.

While researching this book project in Oakland, Thomas discovered rare recordings of speeches, interviews, and music by noted activists Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, and others that form the framework of this definitive retrospective. Listen, Whitey! chronicles the forgotten history of Motown Records’ Black Power subsidiary label, Black Forum, which released politically charged albums by Stokely Carmichael, Langston Hughes, Bill Cosby, and Ossie Davis, among others. Obscure records produced by African-American sociopolitical organizations of the period are examined, along with the Isley Brothers, Nina Simone, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Watts Prophets, Roland Kirk, Horace Silver, Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, Stanley Crouch, and many more. Thomas will give a slide and music presentation, and then sign copies of Listen, Whitey! and the companion CD of the same title from Seattle-based Light in the Attic Records. The album features rare tracks from African-American activists like Dick Gregory, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Last Poets, with protest music by Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Gil Scott-Heron, Roy Harper, and more.

Listen, Whitey! features nearly 200 pages of text accompanied by over 250 large sized, full-color reproductions of album covers and 45 rpm singles — most of which readers will have never seen before. The book creates a cultural context for the iconic images and the accompanying album.

For a preview and more information, visit www.fantagraphics.com/listenwhitey.

LISTEN, WHITEY!: THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF BLACK POWER
By Pat Thomas
$39.99 USA
ISBN 978-1-60699-507-5
Published by Fantagraphics Books

Event listing information:

Monday, April 2, 12-1PM
University of Southern California
Ronald Tutor Campus Center
Geoffrey Cowan Forum, Room 207
Annenberg School across from Heritage Hall.
3607 Trousdale Pkwy
LOS ANGELES, CA 90089
213.821.3015
http://www.annenberg.usc.edu/

Wednesday, April 4, 7pm
Book Soup
8818 Sunset Blvd.
W. HOLLYWOOD, CA 90069
310.659.3110
http://www.booksoup.com/

Thursday, April 5, 7-8PM
AMOEBA Records, LA
6400 Sunset Blvd.
LOS ANGELES, CA 90028
323.245.6400
http://www.amoeba.com/

Saturday, April 7, TBA
Warbler Records & Goods
131 E De La Guerra St
SANTA BARBARA, CA 93101
805.845.5862
http://www.warblerrecords.squarespace.com/

Tuesday, April 10, 7:30PM
The Booksmith
1644 Haight St.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117
415.863.8688
http://www.booksmith.com/

Wednesday, April 11, 7:30 pm
Pegasus Books 2349 Shattuck Ave.
BERKELEY, CA 94704
510.649.1320
http://www.pegasusbookstore.com/

Sunday, April 22, 7:30 PM
Powell’s City of Books
1005 W Burnside
PORTLAND, OR 97209
503.228.4651
http://www.powells.com/

Wednesday, May 9, TBA
University of Southampton
University Road, SOUTHAMPTON SO17 1BJ
+44 (0)23.8059.5000
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/

Thursday, May 10, TBA
SPONSORED AND PRESENTED BY
THE WIRE MAGAZINE
Cafe OTO
18 - 22 Ashwin St.
Dalston, LONDON E8 3DL
http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/

Friday, May 11, TBA
Rough Trade East “Dray Walk”
Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane, LONDON
E1 6QL
+44 (0)207.392.7788
http://www.roughtrade.com/

Tuesday, May 15, TBA
Durham University
Lecture Room of the Music Department
The University Office
Old Elvet, DURHAM
DH1 3HP
+44 (0)191.334.6305
http://www.dunelm.org.uk/

43rd NAACP Image Awards Winners in Literary Categories

The 43rd NAACP Image Awards winners were announced in a ceremony, February 17, 2012 and broadcast live on NBC.

The 43rd NAACP Image Awards winners - Literature Categories:

Fiction: Reshonda Tate Billingsley, "Say Amen, Again" (Gallery Books)

Nonfiction: Hill Harper, "The Wealth Cure: Putting Money in Its Place" (Gotham Books)

Debut author: Lyah Le Flore, "The Strawberry Letter" (Ballantine/Random House)

Biography/autobiography: Harry Belafonte, "My Song" (Knopf)

Instructional: T.D. Jakes, "The T.D. Jakes Relationship Bible: Life Lessons on Relationships from the Inspired Word of God" (Atria Books)

Poetry: James Golden, "Afro Clouds & Nappy Rain: The Curtis Brown Poems" (iUniverse)

Children: Tony Dungy (author), Ron Mazellan (illustrator), "You Can Be A Friend" (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing - Little Simon)

Youth/teens: Jeff Burlingame, "Jesse Owens: I Always Loved Running" (Enslow Publishers, Inc.)

Stephen Eric Bronner: At Home With the Bigot

At Home With the Bigot
By Stephen Eric Bronner, Reader Supported News
14 February 12

Reader Supported News Perspective

Republicans and their conservative allies insist that racism is a thing of the past. But their party still serves as the bastion of anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-black, and anti-feminist activism. Not since the Great Depression has its lower-middle class base experienced such disorientation and disruption. President George W. Bush left them with two failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bursting of the sub-prime housing bubble and the crashing of the derivates market in 2007. And then, on top of it, came the electoral defeat in 2008 that produced the first black president of the United States. Military miscalculation abroad, economic collapse at home, and burning political humiliation fueled the stubborn radicalism and small-minded resentment of what would become the Tea Party. Coming from non-urban areas mostly in the South and the Mid-West, but also from white immigrant enclaves in some big cities, its members have their own forms of moral cognition. They have little use for globalization, the welfare state, new social movements or the "adversary culture" inherited from the 1960s. Wearing revolutionary garb and tricorn hats, disrupting town meetings devoted to healthcare and other social issues, bullying progressive congressional representatives and holding rallies of their own, they constitute a new generation of reactionary activists calling for "revolution" - though, naturally, only one that will protect their privileges and interests.

The Tea Party meshes libertarian capitalists preaching the gospel of the free market and reactionary populists intent upon rehabilitating "family values," rehabilitating religion, and a parochial vision of community. Over the last century, for the most part, these trends were diametrically at odds with one another: Libertarians had little use for rabble-rousing bigots, religious fanatics or the like, while populists hated big business, open markets, and the scientific culture of modernity. Ronald Reagan initially brought these contradictory trends together. He blended the anti-union and de-regulating interests of elites committed to the classical principles of the free market with the cultural conservatism and hyper-nationalism of the old "moral" majority and burgeoning religious movements. George W. Bush built on that coalition. But there was new urgency for an organizational alliance between liberations and populists following the economic collapse of 2008 and subsequent presidential victory of Barack Obama. Fears of dramatic state intervention into the economy blended with horror over the symbolic implications of having a black president for the image of community associated with old television shows like Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Happy Days. Out of this alliance and these anxieties, indeed, the Tea Party was born in 2009.

The GOP was quick to recognize its importance. Seasoned operatives of the Republican Party were soon offering their advice and leadership. They originally thought the Tea Party might be manipulated. But the opposite took place: the tail wound up wagging the dog. There is an old saying: styles make fights. The new rhetoric was supplied by Fox News and a score of feral media demagogues, among whom Glenn Beck and Michael Savage were merely the most venal. Evangelicals and far-right groups associated with them and others like them, and the Tea Party routinely began referring to President Obama as the Anti-Christ and as an Imam. The bigot applauded. Advertisements compared him and his family to chimpanzees, portrayed the White House with rows of watermelons on the lawn, and implied that the president is a crack addict. But the problem apparently was not the bigot's friends who supposedly hate blacks: it was rather Obama who clearly hates whites. The new president was seen as the advocate of the (black) welfare cheat, the (Latino) immigrant, the anti-Christian (Arab) terrorist, the supposedly overpaid (lazy and shiftless) union worker, and anti-family (feminist and gay) forces. The Tea Party channeled the bigot's prejudices. It would become easy for him to identify with the (white) business elite whose (seemingly color-blind) policies attacking the bureaucratic welfare state appeared intent upon recreating a patriarchal world of white privilege.

Lingering economic recession, fear of radical social and economic reform, and fanatical mobilization (coupled with disillusionment of those expecting yet more radical changes by the new regime) brought about the sweeping victory of the far right in the Congressional elections of 2010. Now it was the Republicans' turn to applaud. The Tea Party was not simply nuts. Challenging the seemingly sacrosanct image of FDR and the New Deal, whatever its racist and intolerant elements, the Tea Party had become the agent of what might be termed capitalist fundamentalism. This meant highlighting the "invisible hand" of the market and the individual (not the accumulation process and class) as the units of social analysis. The state budget could now be equated with a household budget and everyone would now echo the mantra of Margaret Thatcher: "There is no society, there are only individuals." The welfare state would now be condemned (once again) not merely as wasteful - but immoral. Hard work brings rewards. Individuals are responsible for themselves, not others. Lack of ambition and foresight by individuals are the causes of unemployment and poverty. No free rides! Evangelicals know the "truth": no abortions, no condoms, and no gay marriage - women back to the kitchen and gays to the closet.

With the increasing influence of the Tea Party upon the Republican Party, indeed, the once modest home afforded the bigot turned into a mansion. Rooms would prove available especially for someone who is neither white nor male and who seemingly represents the less privileged. Women like former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin or Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota) reaffirm the house-wife or the "soccer mom" in the face of an economy in which the single breadwinner has become an anachronism. A gay couple (two male earners) is trotted out occasionally to congratulate the Tea Party for its libertarian values. There is the Latino Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla), who is apparently terrified by the immigrant mob threatening to invade from South of the border. The bigot has also made friends with an African-American or two. Hermann Cain received his applause for insisting that Blacks were "brain-washed" into supporting the Democratic Party, thereby confirming the bigot's old belief that they are too stupid to favor egalitarian and redistributive policies on their own. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas champions tough love while his (white) wife champions the Tea Party. Then there is Congressman Allen West (R-Fla), whose idea of tolerance is to tell liberals "to get the hell out of the United States" and then identify the Democratic Party with the Nazi propaganda machine. This cast of characters, it should be noted, is not simply useful for propagandizing the undecided: it also reinforces the bigot's idea of what makes a real person of color or a real woman. These political figures validate the benevolent image of a bygone America in which taxes were low, government was small, women were in the kitchen, and the only important color was white.

The clock has already been turned back. A study released on October 29, 2011, by the Bertelsmann Stiftung showed that the United States has plummeted into the bottom five among the thirty nations comprising the industrial world in "Overall Social Justice Rating," "Overall Poverty Prevention Rating," Overall Poverty Rate," "Child Poverty," and "Income Inequality." Libertarian economic policies championed by the Tea Party endanger democratic deliberation, diversity, and cosmopolitan ideals. New socio-economic burdens and constraints also threaten disadvantaged groups. People of color will disproportionately suffer from a flat tax as well as other regressive attempts to shrink the tax base and, subsequently, bankrupt the welfare state. African-Americans and Latinos will be disproportionately impacted by attempts to demand photo-ID, literacy tests, and the like in order to vote. Redistricting and racist zoning regulations are recreating segregation while the uncurbed use of private money in election campaigns is disenfranchising the working people and the poor. Privatizing the prison system has sharply increased incarceration, especially among minority groups: people of color constitute 70% of inmates, nationally, and one in three African-American males is currently either awaiting trial, in jail, or on parole. Since convicts cannot vote, hundred of thousands of primarily African-Americans and people of color are currently being disenfranchised by what has been called the "new Jim Crow."

There is hardly a policy proposal forwarded by the GOP that does not disadvantage people of color, women, and working people - and, worse, there is hardly a single major Republican politician willing to publicly challenge the rhetoric or the proposals of the far right and the Tea Party. The mainstream has justified the extreme. All candidates for the Republican presidential nomination of 2012 seem to worry about a "disappearing white majority" as they take turns in attacking the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "food stamp presidents," and critics of religious dogmatism (as well as the Crusades). White supremacists of varying shades try to recruit and mix with luminaries of the Republican Party at conferences like that hosted by the American Conservative Union. Fragments of half-baked conspiracy theories float around in the minds of many grassroots activists in the Tea Party. Obama may look like he is in charge but (especially since he is black) the more paranoid insist that he is being controlled by more powerful interests and organizations like the Bilderberg banking group, the Trilateral Commission, Freemasons, Islamic terrorists, or Jews - or all of them working in concert. Conspiracy theory is common currency in the Tea Party and, again, there is hardly a single Republican willing to condemn it. Such talk makes no sense and thus frustration grows, resentment increases, and rage intensifies. It is taken out not merely on African-Americans but on other outsiders as well: gays, immigrants, Arabs, and Jews. Bigotry has become a commonplace of political life in the United States. The jargon of prejudice, sometimes veiled and sometimes not, is now so prevalent that most people simply shrug their shoulders. And the Tea Party has been in the vanguard. The influence of their words on action may be indirect: but it is, nonetheless, palpable.

Everyday violence (that mostly goes unreported) against homosexuals, immigrants, and minorities is simply a routine fact of American life. Doctors performing abortions outside the larger cities do so at their own risk. The virtual obsession of the Tea Party with the right to own firearms (including AK-47s) does not merely express a desire to hunt ducks. Mainstream politicians of the Republican Party again fall into line. Sure: explicit calls for the use of violence come only from the margins. Just as the conservative mainstream has helped legitimate the Tea Party, however, the Tea Party is giving new hope to fanatics who stand even further on the right. The Republican Party has lacked the courage to take on the bigots in its own ranks - and its toleration of the Tea Party validates precisely what its ideologues wish to deny: racism is alive and well in the United States. And, all the while, the bigot is smiling. The approving winks that he gets are evident everywhere. What one reaps is what one sows. The prejudices of times past have not disappeared. One just needs to know where to look. Talk about the "end of racism" has become a bad joke. Conservative politics attests to its continuation. The Tea Party will probably find itself in the trashcan of history once Republicans suffer some serious electoral defeats. But its mass base will undoubtedly survive and take new organizational forms as it always has in the past - from the "Know-Nothings" to the KKK to McCarthy to the "Silent Majority" and the "Moral Majority" and God knows what other fringe groups. For the foreseeable future, however, the bigot has no need to worry. With the Republican Party, indeed, he has once again found himself a happy home.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Eric Bronner is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of Global Relations at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights: Rutgers University. The Senior Editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, he is currently working on a manuscript entitled The Bigot for Yale University Press.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

Listen, Whitey! Fantagraphics Bookstore Kicks Off Black History Month

Listen, Whitey!

Celebrate Black History Month on February 4 at Fantagraphics Bookstore with two new books on the Civil Rights movement.

Fantagraphics Bookstore kicks off Black History Month on Saturday, February 4 with the debut of two diverse books. Seattle-based music scholar Pat Thomas, author of Listen, Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965 – 1975, will be joined by Seattle authors Mark Long and Jim Demonakos, who together with cartoonist Nate Powell created the graphic novel The Silence of Our Friends.

While researching this book project in Oakland, archivist Pat Thomas discovered rare recordings of speeches, interviews, and music by noted activists Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, and others that form the framework of this definitive retrospective. Listen, Whitey! also chronicles the forgotten history of Motown Records’ Black Power subsidiary label, Black Forum, which released politically charged albums by Stokely Carmichael, Langston Hughes, Bill Cosby and Ossie Davis, among others. Obscure records produced by African-American sociopolitical organizations of the period are examined, along with the Isley Brothers, Nina Simone, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Watts Prophets, Roland Kirk, Horace Silver, Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, Stanley Crouch, and others that spoke out against oppression.

Thomas will give a slide and music presentation, and limited number of advance copies of the book will be available to the public. Also making its debut is a companion CD of the same title from Seattle- based Light in the Attic records. The album features rare tracks from African-American activists like Dick Gregory, Eldridge Cleaver, Last Poets, and others, with protest music by Bob Dylan, John and Yoko Ono, Gil Scott-Heron, Roy Harper, and more.

The Silence of Our Friends is the semi-autobiographical tale of Mark Long. Set in 1967 Texas against the backdrop of the civil rights struggle, a white family from a notoriously racist suburb and a black family from its poorest ward cross Houston’s color line, overcoming fear and violence to win the freedom of five black college students unjustly charged with the murder of a policeman. Co-authored by Jim Demonakos (founder of Seattle’s Emerald City Comicon), and drawn by award-winning cartoonist Nate Powell, The Silence of Our Friends is a new and important entry in the body of civil rights literature.

Saturday, February 4 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.)
In Seattle’s colorful Georgetown neighborhood.
Phone 206.658.0110.

Leroy Douresseaux on DARK RAIN: A NEW ORLEANS STORY (OGN)

DARK RAIN: A NEW ORLEANS STORY
DC COMICS/VERTIGO

WRITER: Mat Johnson
ARTIST: Simon Gane
COLORS/GREY TONES: Lee Loughridge
LETTERS: Pat Brosseau
COVER: Simon Gane, Daymon Gardner, Nessim Higson
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2161-4; paperback
160pp, 2-Color, $19.99 U.S., $22.99 CAN

Three years after DC Comics/Vertigo published his graphic novel, Incognegro, I was wondering if and hoping that author Mat Johnson would return to comic books. He has. It’s with a wonderful new graphic novel, Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story.

Mat Johnson is an award-winning author who has drawn acclaim for his books, such as the novel, Hunting in Harlem, and the non-fiction, The Great Negro Plot. He has also written for DC Comic’s Vertigo imprint. He wrote the 2005 graphic novel, Hellblazer: Papa Midnite, (originally published as a miniseries) and the aforementioned, Incognegro (2008), which I consider to be one of the great comics work of the first decade of this new century.

His latest graphic novel is Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story, which has simultaneously been released in hardcover and paperback editions. Drawn by Simon Gane with colors and gray tones by Lee Loughridge, Dark Rain is largely set in New Orleans and takes place in 2005 during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The story focuses on two small-time ex-cons, the kind of guys who do prison time for one stupid mistake, and they’re both in need of cash. Dabney Arceneaux is an African-American combat veteran who can’t get a business loan and is behind on child support to an obnoxious ex-wife. Emmit Jack is a Cajun who just wants to get paid.

It is Emmit who gets a message from back home in New Orleans that his old employer, the Banque de Congo Square, is under duress and ripe for the picking, thanks to Hurricane Katrina’s strike against New Orleans. Jack convinces Dabney to help him get back to New Orleans for a bank robber payday. However, an old military acquaintance of Dabney’s, one Colonel Driggs, the head of the ruthless private security force, “Dark Rain,” also has his eyes on the Banque de Congo Square prize. All three men will find that the Big Easy is going to change their lives – whether they like it or not.

Back during those last three days of August 2005, the television media showed lots of images from inside New Orleans, as the city’s social structure and infrastructure cracked and, in many cases, fell apart. Some of the media showed images of citizens stranded on rooftops and trapped in and around the New Orleans Superdome. Other media realized how photogenic and newsworthy African-Americans are when we are in a state of agitation and keenly focused on what they called incidents of looting. That makes great television and draws ratings from those who need almost daily affirmation of what bad eggs colored folk are. And media like FOX News gave those people all the video footage of looting they could stand and more.

What only a few media outlets reported on were members of the Gretna Police Department shooting at Black people as those “refugees” tried to cross the bridge (the Crescent City Connection) to safety and leave New Orleans. You probably never heard that men from the white enclave, Algiers Point, formed vigilante groups and hunted black men “like pheasant” (their words), killing an unknown number (perhaps as many as 18). Of course, you didn’t.

Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story doesn’t cover all the uncovered news, but what Mat Johnson does is scratch well-beneath the surface of what you’ve heard about the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s strike on New Orleans. What’s amazing is how Johnson dramatizes some of real life events of Katrina and folds them into a riveting and unusual take on the crime thriller. The characters involved, the plans for the heist, the pacing of the story, the starts and stops on the way to Congo Square: these elements make such a crazy rhythm for this story. It is, however, a rhythm the keeps you tied to the grand scheme of Dark Rain, the main plotline, which is seeing who gets the cash.

In the same narrative in which he is spinning this highly-original take on the bank robbery tale, Johnson is telling a very human drama full of full of hope and even humor. The characters have true grit, fully on display as they are determined to overcome rank greed and bullying racism. At the same, their shortcomings and sins make them perfect foils for a reality that doesn’t give them their way. Dark Rain makes me call Mat Johnson brilliant, and although he has only written three graphic novels to this point, he is already one of the best writers in comics.

I don’t want to speak of artist Simon Gane as if his part is something wholly separate from Johnson’s. Gane’s graphical storytelling makes it seem like Dark Rain was born as a comic book without being a script and pages of art first. Gane captures the nuances of Johnson’s story, but the fact that this British artist can capture institutional racism and blatant bigotry that is as American as American can be is impressive. Gane juxtaposes the light and the dark, and his compositions ably convey the humor Johnson often places in this story at the most unexpected moments.

Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story would fit as a Vertigo Crime novel because of the bank robbery, but it is Fantagraphics/Pantheon in its social/character drama/satirical side. Dark Rain may be a comic book, but it should take a place of importance among the stories that chronicle New Orleans’ visit from Hurricane Katrina.

A

Leroy Douresseaux on INCOGNEGRO - A Graphic Novel Review

INCOGNEGRO - OGN
DC COMICS/VERTIGO

WRITER: Mat Johnson
ARTIST: Warren Pleece
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1097-7; hardcover
136pp, B&W, $23.99 U.S.

[I wrote this review over three years ago. Since then, I’ve come to believe that Incognegro is one of the best comic books of 2001-2010, the first decade of this new century, along with comics like The Original Johnson, Nat Turner, Louis Riel, and Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit.]

Award-winning author Mat Johnson has drawn acclaim for his books, including the novel, Hunting in Harlem and the non-fiction work, The Great Negro Plot. His entry into comic books was the six-issue miniseries, Hellblazer: Papa Midnite (now a trade paperback), published to coincide with the 2005 Hellblazer comic-to-film, Constantine.

Vertigo, the DC Comics imprint, released Johnson’s second comics project this past February as their offering for “Black History Month.” This Black History graphic novel, entitled Incognegro, is an absolutely terrific graphic work of detective fiction. Just to get this out of the way: the art by Warren Pleece doesn’t reach Johnson’s heights. The black and white composition is inconsistent from one page to the next, and the juxtaposition of dark and light and warm and cool space is erratic. This is peculiar considering that Pleece is a seasoned and respected professional.

Set in the 1930’s, Incognegro has as its heart, Zane Pinchback, a Harlem, NYC-based reporter for the New Holland Herald. Although Zane is a Negro, his skin complexion is so light that he can pass for a White man. In fact, he does. Zane occasionally leaves the relative safety of Harlem and heads to the Deep South where he infiltrates the local White populace – going “incognegro.” This colored version of going incognito allows him to take pictures of the lynching of black men (portrayed here as a civic event like a county fair or church picnic, which was often true in real life), as well as learn the names of the respectable folks attending these ghastly, all-too-human events.

The novel opens with a lynching, during which Zane’s cover is blown. After barely escaping with his life, Zane returns to Harlem and demands a new and safer job from his boss at the Herald. The boss wants one more column written by the mysterious “Incognegro,” and he’s sure Zane will be interested in covering this next case. It’s in Tupelo, Mississippi, where Zane’s estranged brother, Alonzo “Pinchy” Pinchback, is scheduled to hang for the murder of a white woman.

Zane races to Tupelo, once again passing as a White man, but this time, his aimless friend, Carl, a light-skinned Negro who can also pass, is coming along in hopes of learning how Zane does it, so he can take over when Zane quits being “Incognegro.” In Tupelo, however, Zane and Carl discover that this murder is set in a place where a Black person’s life is always in mortal danger. A labyrinthine mystery, with a huge cast of shady, inbred crackers, confronts Zane, and to make matters worse, someone quite deadly has arrived in Tupelo right behind Zane. This new arrival is no stranger to the famous/infamous newspaper columnist, “Incognegro,” and he plans on putting an end to the faux-White man.

As a murder mystery, Incognegro is just as good as any crime/detective comic book series or graphic novel published by an American comic book company. Stylistically, in terms of setting, plot, mood, atmosphere, and to a certain extent in the way the characters behave, Incognegro has the flavor of the work of brilliant African-American writer and mystery novelist, Walter Mosley (in fact, a quote from Mosley is on the front of Incognegro’s dust jacket). This is a riveting tale of a man in mortal danger, doggedly determined to find out who the real culprit is before his brother is lynched. What adds to the drama and conflict is that all of Zane’s efforts, regardless of if he solves the case or not, may earn him a rope around his neck.

If Incognegro makes a great statement about that misnomer “Race,” it’s that a person, who can be identified as “Black” or “Negro,” even if he has a light complexion or skin color, will face the same horrors of prejudice and racism as a man who obviously looks “Black.” It’s a matter of status as much as it is birth. People like to believe that there is always someone beneath them. Perhaps, it is a group of people that they believe they are better than and always will be better than. In the time in which Incognegro is set, dirt poor ignorant white trash has something in common with respectable white people – as white people they were better than niggers.

Someone born a nigger being able to pass for White must have terrified White people (and probably still does for some). If it’s so easy to stop being a Black man and become a White man, then, being White may not really have as much value as Whites believed. Still, in the context of this book, being Black meant a mob of White devils could, on a whim, decide to murder you – as the villain learns in the end.

Congratulations to Mat Johnson for presenting a graphic novel that is as riveting as it is ingenious. Incognegro is a thoughtful mystery tale and a nasty reminder of the kind of violence and hate that has left a lasting wound on our beautiful nation.

A+

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Philip Schweier on Biracial Ultimate Spider-Man and Black Perry White

Philip Schweier is a long-time writer for the Comic Book Bin, penning the column "Phil's Bubble" on a regular basis. Schweier also writes about comic book history and pop culture.  His latest installment of Phil's Bubble is "Losing the Race" in which he discusses changing the skin color of  comic book characters.  He writes:

In some instances, race is germaine to a character’s personality; Luke Cage, for instance. But for the most part, race, in a fictional context, should not be an issue. These are make-believe characters who do not exist in the real world.

Schweier uses the recent announcement that Laurence Fishburne will play Perry White in the Superman film franchise reboot, The Man of Steel (2013) and Marvel's new Black and Latino Spider-Man in the publisher's Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series.

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I've noticed that the change in a character's gender, ethnicity, or skin color is most controversial with comic book fans when the change is from White character to Black.  I think this has less to do with the conservatism of comic book fans, who are often notoriously against change, and more to do with the straight-up racism of some of them.

I think that is reflective of the industry in general.  DC Comics is relaunching and launching 52 different comic book titles from the end of August through September.  None of those series has an African-American writer, including the three series that will star Black characters.

Marvel is the same.  President Barack Obama has made several appearances in various Marvel comic books, but there are currently no African-American writers working on an ongoing series for Marvel.  Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King are often brought up when discussing the X-Men, yet in 50 years of publication, the African character, Storm, is the only regular character of color in the X-Men.  There have been a smattering of others here and there, but it's been pitiful.