Blacker the Ink

FRANCES GATEWARD is an associate professor in the department of cinema and television arts at California State University-Northridge. She is the editor of Seoul Searching: Cultural Identity and Cinema in South Korea. JOHN JENNINGS is a professor of media and cultural studies, University of California Riverside where he is Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow. He is the author of Black Comix: African American Independent Comics, the award-winning graphic novel The Hole: Consumer Culture, and the national bestseller, Kindred, a graphic adaption of Octavia Butler's classic novel.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Sweeter the Christmas Panel I: Black Is a Dangerous Color1   "No Sweat!:” EC Comics, Cold War Censorship, and the Troublesome Colors of “Judgment Day!” 2   Sex in Yop City: Ivorian Femininity and Masculinity in Abouet and Oubrerie’s Aya 3   A Postcolony in Pieces: Black Faces, White Masks and Queer Potentials in Unknown Soldier Panel II: Black in Black and White and Color4   Fashion in the Funny Papers: Cartoonist Jackie Ormes’s American Look 5   Graphic Remix: The Lateral Appropriation of Black Nationalism in Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks Panel III: Black Tights6   American Truths: Blackness and the American Superhero 7   Drawn into Dialogue: Comic Book Culture and the Scene of Controversy in Milestone Media’s Icon 8   Critical Afrofuturism: A Case Study in Visual Rhetoric, Sequential Art, and Post-Apocalyptic Black Identity 9   Bare Chests, Silver Tiaras and Removable Afros: The Visual Design of Black Comic Book Superheroes Panel IV: Graphic Blackness10   Daddy Cool: Donald Goines’s “Visual Novel” 11   The Blues Tragicomic: Constructing the Black Folk Subject in Stagger Lee 12   Provocation Through Polyphony: Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner 13   Performance Geography: Making Space in Jeremy Love’s Bayou, Volume 1 14   A Secret History of Miscegenation: Jimmy Corrigan and the Columbian Exposition of 1893 15   It’s a Hero?: Black Comics and Satirizing Subjection Notes on ContributorsIndex

"Like the comics selected for analysis, this collection of essays works to expand our understanding of the mediums of Blackness and comics. Through observant and meticulous close readings of comic books, newspaper comic strips, digital comics, and graphic novels, alongside the respective sociohistorical and cultural contexts of their production, dissemination, and consumption, the contributors shed light on overlooked and perhaps unknown cartoonists and stories from the past, provide new insight on well-known comics and histories, and challenge our understanding of what constitutes black comics." (Cinema Journal) "This volume provides what has been lacking in some previous work-variety of content, precision of approach and execution, and depth of analyses … The Blacker the Ink advances the study of black comics significantly by offering new insights and a wealth of information free of gobbledygook ... Highly recommended." (Choice) "A fascinating look at the growing complexity and diversity in representations of Blackness in comics, graphic novels and sequential art." - Bambi Haggins (author of Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America) "An essential guide for anyone interested in the intersections between race and comics, this volume is full of startling and original insights about the creators, comics, and graphic novels that represent people of African descent from the 1930s to the present." - Jonathan W. Gray (author of Civil Rights in the White Literary Imagination) "An important collection for academics and fan communities as we continue to expand scholarship on Black comics, their histories and their creators." (Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics) "The Blacker the Ink features an emerging methodology that may be characteristic of, and useful for, the continued development of black comics studies." (Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature)