Apparently, this particular edition, which Comics.org says is from publisher Very Good Books, came out in 2023, which was, as the title indicates, the 75th anniversary of the 1947 release of the original All-Negro Comics.
In the meantime, since I read this edition, I should probably go ahead and discuss it here.
Some of the prose pieces, like Chris Robinson's foreword, Qiana Whitted's five-page essay and a contribution from Golden Age of Comics Blogging alum David Brothers help explain what exactly the book is, was and meant.
The original anthology title was the brainchild of Philadelphia journalist Orrin Cromwell Evans, who scripted all six features, a rather remarkable feat given the variety of genres: Crime, child-like fantasy, heroic action and several different comedic pieces, ranging from a page of one-panel cartoons to a one-page strip to a more extended seven-pager. (There was also a short prose story, entitled "Ezekiel's Manhunt"; like the many Hop Harrigan prose stories that interrupted the comics action in the Golden Age issues of All-Star Comics collected in the recent DC Finest: Justice Society of America collections, I skipped that completely.)
The book wasn't called All-Orrin Cromwell Evans Comics, though. Rather, the selling point was that it was the first comic written, drawn and published entirely by Black folks and, crucially, starring all Black characters.
This was, obviously, so rare in the 1940s as to be a novelty...hell, it is and was so rare that such books are still a novelty more than 75 years later (You may note that in the last decade or so, DC and Marvel have devoted themselves to publishing occasional special issues that focus on particularly under-represented creators and characters, particularly various pride specials by LGBT+ creators focused on their respective universe's small but growing stable of LGBT+ creators. I'm not as up on Big Two comics as I used to be, but I know, for example, DC has done a couple focused on Black creators and characters in 2023's DC Power: A Celebration and DC Power 2024).
While there were some notable Black creators working in comics in the medium's Golden Age, Black characters were rare, and mostly limited to often problematic supporting characters and comedic relief, like, say The Spirit's Ebony White or Captain Marvel's Steamboat Bill (More often still, if there were Black faces in a comic feature at all, they were in the background, and more caricature than character).
In the past few months, I read Lou Mougin's surveys of Golden Age comics, Secondary Superhero Comics of Golden Age Comics and Secondary Action Heroes of Golden Age Comics, which covered basically every feature that wasn't published by the companies that would become, or become acquired by, DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and I'm pretty sure I could count on one hand all of those that weren't white people. And still have a few fingers left.
All-Negro Comics was a remedy to that.
The 48-page comic, reprinted in its entirety here, opened with an inside front cover featuring a short letter to readers from Evans himself, under a banner reading, "All-Negro Comics, Presenting Another FIRST in Negro History." In it, he promised "fast action, African adventure, good clean humor and fantasy" and, further, that "Every brush stroke and pen line in the drawings on these pages are by Negro artists." He hoped the comic would give such artists an opportunity to "gainfully use their talents" and "glorify Negro historical achievements."
Well, I'm not sure how that worked out, as there was no issue #2 and, reading the list of contributors, I didn't recognize any of their names (for whatever that's worth).
As for the contents, the book kicks off with "Ace Harlem," the "famed Negro detective". The 15-page story opens with a murder and robbery. Ace Harlem is called in to investigate, finds a telling clue and manages to track down the murderer, who has since killed again and will, ultimately, himself die in an ironic death that delivers a kind of final, karmic justice.
It's a perfectly serviceable crime comic, with an obvious anti-crime message—"I know it sounds like old stuff to you," Ace tells a beat cop in the last panel, "But I never heard of a crime yet that ever gained anybody any good!"
Yet even going into it knowing the title of the book, it was still rather striking to see a Golden Age comic in which every single character is black: The hero, the criminals, the victim, the beautiful young woman, those interviewed during the investigation, every single bystander and background figure.
"Ace" is followed by "The Dew Dillies," big-headed, cherubic characters. One, a boy, has a little pair of wings, while the other, a girl, has a mermaid-like tail. They have a short, gentle adventures involving a few animals, their motivation mainly being to eat something delicious. This one reads a bit more like a children's book than a comic, with all of the dialogue and narration running in print along the top or bottom of the panels, rather than being spoken in dialogue bubbles or confined to narration boxes.
Next is the prose story, which, as I said, I skipped, as I always have with Golden Age prose stories in comics.
And then there's "Lion Man," a jungle adventure story that, despite its title, isn't quite a superhero story, but would seem to be in that particular ballpark. The title character doesn't wear a costume or have any super-powers.
Instead, he is an "America-born, college educated...scientist, sent by the United Nations to watch over the fearsome 'Magic Mountain' of the African Gold Coast." There is enough uranium there to make "an atom bomb that could destroy the world."
Lion Man, whose real name is never used, seems to split his duty between guarding the mountain and keeping comedy relief character Bubba, a bulbous headed little boy, out of trouble.
Real trouble comes in the form of some white dudes in pith helmets, the only white faces in the whole book. Like "Ace Harlem," it is not hard to imagine this strip continuing and evolving into something more long-lasting (Lion Man's name, scientific background and the whole huge-deposit-of-valuable metal bit reminded me, a reader on this side of 1966, a bit of Marvel's much later Black Panther character).
That's followed by "Hep Chicks on Parade," featuring four single-panel cartoons with captions running below the quite-striking images, probably the best, most refined drawings in the whole book, each poking gentle fun at the outlandish fashions of the women in each.
That's followed by two more comedic features.
The first of these is "Lil' Eggie," a one-page gag strip basically revolving around the idea that being married isn't always better than being a bachelor (As progressive as the "all-Negro" aspect of the book may be, one could certainly quibble with the gender politics of a few stories!).
The second is "Sugarfoot and Snake-Oil," billed simply as "Sugarfoot" in its first panel. This features some down-on-their-luck musicians getting into various scrapes, making music in exchange for a good meal from a farmer and his wife.
It's full of slapstick humor, and characters speaking in the sort of dialects that might make one cringe if one thought the middle-aged, white, city-dweller who wrote so many books at the time were responsible for scripting it ("Wal, I dunno, but come over to my house anywhow, maybe my gal has somet'ing to eat," the farmer tells Sugarfoot, to which he responds, "Now you is talkin.'")
It ends with a kinda neat splash page featuring all of the characters together, with Lion Man and Bubba manning a magazine stand selling issues of All-Negro Comics, Sugarfoot and Snake-Oil standing before it as customers, and Ace Harlem and the Dew Dillies reading copies of their comic in the background.
Like a lot of Golden Age comics, these stories tend towards the rough and primitive, and while there is certainly potential to some of them, it is mostly unrealized potential. Though the medium is about a decade into its existence, its format and conventions are still being realized. While none of the folks involved seem to be, say, a Jack Kirby or a Will Eisner or a Mac Raboy or a Jack Cole or a pick-your-favorite-Golden Age-artist-we-still-talk-about-today, the writing and art seems pretty standard for the time.
Also, it's great fun to get a whole issue like this, rather than just the cherry-picked lead superhero features that we so often get with modern collections of Golden Age comics.
The reprint of the original All-Negro Comics #1 only accounts for about half of this hard cover book, though. It's followed by some of the prose pieces I mentioned and, interestingly, brand-new strips from contemporary creators featuring Ace Harlem, Lion Man and the other characters and/or features of the original, including an update of the prose piece (which I also didn't read) and another four strips making light of the outrageous fashions of young black women.
These are all fine and are obviously a bit more sophisticated in their storytelling, but also lack the more simple, rough-hewn charm of the earlier stories.
Anyway, if you're as interested in the first decade or so of the medium as I am, keep an eye out for All-Negro Comics this fall (And, if you can't wait for the new one, I guess you can check your local library for the earlier edition)
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