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US comics show spotlights black heroes, artists, publisher
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Comic books are full of superheroes and a dazzling variety of characters, but in the early days of the American industry one thing was conspicuously rare: black characters.
Now, an exhibit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, chronicles some early artists and a publisher who started to break the comics color barrier in the 1930s and 1940s.
The exhibit “Beyond the Funny Pages” coincides with Black History Month and is underway through the end of February at the city-county building. It covers the contributions of Matt Baker, the first black to work in the industry; Zelda “Jackie” Ormes, the first black female comics artist; and Orrin Evans, the first black comics publisher.
The Toonseum, which celebrates comics art, is helping curate the exhibit. Director Joe Wos notes: “Even today, the funny pages lack diversity. Decades ago, the situation was worse.”
Baker was so talented that he was hired in the early 1940s by New York’s prestigious Eisner & Iger Studio, an otherwise all-white organization. He later drew for Marvel Comics, Gunsmoke Westerns and Playboy magazine.
Amber and Dean Bierkan visited the exhibit and noted that the struggles of black artists are still relevant today. They were struck by Baker’s achievements.
“And he had to draw white men and women,” Dean Bierkan marveled. “That was the market.”
When Orrin Evans came up with the idea of a comic book filled with all-black characters, he faced a backlash. In 1947, Evans published a single issue of “All-Negro Comics” and said he hoped his project would give black artists an opportunity to shine.
After that, the big companies controlling the comics industry “pretty much locked him out. He couldn’t get paper. Nothing,” Wos says. A planned second issue never happened.
The big comics publishers were threatened by the subject matter and the fact that Evans was an independent publisher, Wos says.
The comics venture failed, but Evans was a successful pioneering journalist for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
Ormes, the first black female comics artist, convinced editors at the Pittsburgh Courier in 1937 to let her draw a comics strip “Dixie to Harlem.” It chronicled Torchy Brown’s move from the Deep South to New York City, mirroring a real-life shift of many blacks. Ormes later created a black character named Ginger who discussed civil rights, poverty and other controversial topics in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. That led to FBI questioning and allegations that Ormes was a Communist.
It took decades for black comics characters to enter the mainstream. In the mid-1960s, Morris Turner created “Wee Pals,” the first nationally syndicated strip featuring black characters — only 10 newspapers carried it.
Three months after the Rev Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, 100 papers carried it.
“It took that for white America to recognize that we need to listen to these voices,” Wos said.
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