<em>Green Lantern: Mosaic</em> <em>#1</em>
<p dir="ltr"><span>American comics is a hybrid medium, marrying text and images to tell a narrative. However, within the pages of most American comic narratives is another narrative form -- the advertisement. </span><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/forever-free-dress-your-best"><span>Michael Ray Charles</span></a><span> believes that the concept of blackness as we know it “was linked to early marketing practices, early advertising” </span><span>(qtd. in </span><span>“Advertising and Art: Michael Ray Charles”</span><span>)</span><span>. That is, the advertisements of centuries pass -- ads selling pancake mix or human slaves -- defined what it means to be racially Black today. Comics are an arena where these two concepts meet. The selling of a mass consumer product within a product displaying and dissecting identity is seen in </span><em>Green Lantern: Mosaic #1</em><span>.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span><span>Throughout the comic, John Stewart is shown less fighting space aliens than himself. Visually, this is seen in such imagery as page 20 (see </span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/0f6baba7f02a2e17d3db36c9130376b7.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515324882&Signature=dgWvPhHujhP9XZmiKlzoYBpvy5Q%3D"><span>Fig. 6</span></a><span>), where the inside of John Stewart’s being is shown. Beneath his Black skin and masculine build lies, among other images, his heart has John himself crucified. A Black man is in the position of Jesus, and his Blackness comes not from the outside, but from within his very heart. John Stewart reaffirms his identity even as he is crucified for it. He sees himself not physically as black, but spiritually, raising the question of what makes a person Black and how blackness is experienced.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>Mosaic #1</em><span> shows W.E.B. DuBois’s theory of double consciousness. The reader is visually shown how John sees himself through the eyes of others. John Stewart is deconstructing his identity within the panels of the comic. Outside of those panels, the advertisements within the comic tell the reader who this character is -- a commodity.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span><span>In </span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/f601e95ebdd657584e1dc521650d1446.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515325258&Signature=czeYRXdBrCmTctlPpd1wiRf00aQ%3D"><span>Fig. 3</span></a><span>, a full-page advertisement for basketball player cards is on the left of a full-page comic panel. The ad has a (Black male) basketball player in red doing a layaway. His body language -- legs forming a triangular negative space, one arm with a relaxed hand facing downwards while the other is stretched upward -- is a mirror reflection of John Stewart’s pose as he raises his fist in an act of power, green light emanating around him in glory. The two figures face one another as if deliberately meant to play on one another. If so, does that mean the ad’s tagline of “Good Things Come in Small Packages” applies to John? Is the reader supposed to be reminded that this powerful Black man does not exist -- that John Stewart is but a small package of a man? The struggle of his soul is underplayed when the ad draws attention to John’s physicality, a place Blacks are often visually placed </span><span>(Johnson 10). </span><span>In </span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/854893f7a8fe5000b1c9e5340405f52e.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515325316&Signature=dStq3kFjMWeWOKxoikXqpTs%2Bu%2Fg%3D"><span>Fig. 7</span></a><span>, beside the stunning image of John Stewart’s inner being from </span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/0f6baba7f02a2e17d3db36c9130376b7.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515325389&Signature=zOuKLIZPRcEgj%2FVvb1oRIc4aF5s%3D"><span>Fig. 6</span></a><span> is an ad with the tagline “This kid is having an identity crisis.” Can John Stewart’s struggle be summarized so flippantly? Is that the takeaway the reader is supposed to make, or one the advertisement gives? Lastly, </span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/24b3761dde85caace5e004a8b71009c7.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515325438&Signature=lHKYYRu2W0QR2WH00UiwkC0U1zI%3D"><span>Fig. 8</span></a><span> contains an advertisement for a model rocket. Apparently, the rocket is “Easy to Build…” -- does the same hold true for John Stewart? Is a person so easily built? The comic art would seem to say so. The images of rocket shooting off is analogous to John Stewart flying skyward, pink lines trailing behind him to show his ascent. John’s body mirrors the object on sale. He serves the same purpose as the rocket -- to be consumed after purchase. </span></p>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-17ed6d5f-6d25-2a68-d505-38da2b025959"><span>Clearly, the placement of these ads creates a metatextual narrative and distract from the narrative of a Black man exploring his identity. The reader is pulled out of the story of this character to see him for the product he is a part of. Such a narrative is a rarity for the time: </span><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/rythm-mastr-tower-of-power"><span>Kerry Marshall James</span></a><span> says when explaining his reasoning for creating his “Rythm Mastr” series that “</span><span>the market has somehow never been able to sustain a set of black super heroes [</span><span>sic.</span><span>] in a way that could capture the imagination” (Art21, “‘Rythm Mastr’: Kerry Marshall James”). </span><span>It would seem that DC Comics editorial believed this to be true; hence their cancelling of the series. </span><span>Jones and Hamner confirmed in seperate interviews that DC editorial cancelled the series prematurely at issue 18 despite sales being stronger than the Green Lantern comics starring the white Lanterns (</span><span>Andrew NDB; </span><span>Offenberger). John Stewart’s existential crisis of self -- both as a Black man and a human -- is sold short. The character is objectified and with him is identity as a Black man.</span></span>
Writer: Jones, Gerard.
Penciler: Hamner, Cully.
Inker: Panosian, Dan.
Cover Artist: Stelfreeze, Brian.
<ol><li>Art21. “Advertising and Art: Michael Ray Charles.” Art21, PBS, <a href="https://art21.org/read/michael-ray-charles-advertising-and-art/">https://art21.org/read/michael-ray-charles-advertising-and-art/</a>.</li>
<li>Johnson, Charles. “Foreword.” Black Images in the Comics: A Visual History, by Frederik Strömberg, Fantagraphics, 2003, pp. 6-19.</li>
<li>Art21. “‘Rythm Mastr’: Kerry Marshall James.” Art21, PBS, <a href="https://art21.org/read/kerry-james-marshall-rythm-mastr/">https://art21.org/read/kerry-james-marshall-rythm-mastr/</a>.</li>
<li>Andrew NDB. “Interview with Gerard Jones, 07.20.09.” The Green Lantern Corps Message Board, 20 July 2009, <a href="http://www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8719">www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8719</a>.</li>
<li>Offenberger, Rik. “Getting DOWN with Cully Hamner.” Getting DOWN with Cully Hamner: Interviews & Features Archive - Comics Bulletin, Internet Archive, 4 Aug. 2009, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20090804112217/http://www.comicsbulletin.com/features/112569591736650.htm">web.archive.org/web/20090804112217/http://www.comicsbulletin.com/features/112569591736650.htm</a>.</li>
</ol>
Author (25 Oct 2017)
June 1992
<a href="https://comicsverse.com/author/o0rayday0o/" title="https://comicsverse.com/author/o0rayday0o/">Rachel Davis</a>
Fig. 1: 25.7 x 14.3 cm
Fig. 2: 26.0 x 16.7 cm
Fig. 3: 26.4 x 33.0 cm
Fig. 4: 26.0 x 16.7 cm
Fig. 5: 9.2 x 16.7 cm
Fig. 6: 26.0 x 16.7 cm
Fig. 7: 26.4 x 33.0 cm
Fig. 8: 26.4 x 33.0 cm
Fig. 9: 26.0 x 16.7 cm
Ink on paper
Hempstead: Hofstra University Library Special Collections
<em>Strange Fruit</em>
<p dir="ltr">Out of all of the items in this exhibit, <em>Strange Fruit </em>has the most body diversity. The main black male humans of the comic are Sonny and Mr. McCoy. As seen in <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/bda9add0992f89dd5cb9a4efc7f9625a.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323486&Signature=wJd%2BhiAlRHUf9ig9OmlHG8L6yb4%3D">Fig. 4</a>, Sonny is lean but with some muscle definition, as befitting a physical laborer on a plantation farm. His hair is free and goes in many directions and his beard is full. His clothes are too large for him, as seen from the blue shirt spilling over from his pants and how he pulls at his trousers and excess fabric stretches across his leg. Mr. McCoy, the Northern engineer sent to Chatterlee from D.C. to help save the town, is noticeably different from Sonny.<a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/f77644a8cf9a3ca3e474fd08a1371cdd.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323687&Signature=ql9RdQBspMq5VIXqmcj1i3JkHQU%3D"> </a><span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/f77644a8cf9a3ca3e474fd08a1371cdd.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323687&Signature=ql9RdQBspMq5VIXqmcj1i3JkHQU%3D">Fig. 6</a> </span>shows him to be shorter, rounder in body, with neck fat. He wears glasses, a visual shorthand signifying his higher intelligence to that of the other recurring characters who lack glasses and the knowledge to save the town from the flood. Furthermore, his pencil moustache and formal attire of a bow-tie, white shirt, plaid brown suit, and hat, put him in stark contrast to Sonny and most of the residents of poor Chatterlee.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In comics, body diversity speaks to psychological diversity. Sonny is the rough-and-tough rebelling sharecropper with dreams of fighting Jim Crow and white people, and McCoy is the Northern, educated black man among uneducated, bigoted Southerners, offer a variety of possibilities for who a can be a Black man. Most of the items in this exhibit present a black male for all black males. </span><em>Strange Fruit </em><span>gives the reader two black men to show a multitude of black male expressions. Two black men do this -- and </span><span>only </span><span>two black men. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr">The central black male figure of this comic -- its main character and the strange fruit of the title -- is not a black male. He is an alien who reads as a black male to the Jim Crow characters and the comic reader. And the only way the alien can be read as Black is from his physical appearance. The character never learns a human language -- only the physics and mathematical equations necessary for him to save Chatterlee (see <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/d5cb601655afeb514a7177569340b9a9.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323811&Signature=8hJdeLzrFHjZU8BoxTb9belfZVE%3D">Fig. 5</a> and <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/f77644a8cf9a3ca3e474fd08a1371cdd.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323862&Signature=3zZ7vEnML4bDr0W143mp9Gc9xoo%3D"><span>Fig. 6</span></a>). We know not what he calls himself or what he wants beside a few scattered flashbacks that equate the guns of Chatterlee to space guns. We know not who he is or how he sees himself. Only how others see him (see <em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/items/show/1">Green Lantern: Mosaic</a></em>). And what they see is a black body of colossal proportions. His body is always made to appear large to other characters and sometimes the dimensions of the comic, as seen in <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/ccfdc5457d477b47e35049dc36c71133.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323896&Signature=DsECgDMb%2BDxn968DQBBtr498pBA%3D"><span>Fig. 3</span></a> when the alien’s body surpasses the confines of the panels and gutters. The alien takes up space, whether dominating a skyline with his muscled torso and veiny arms as in <span><a href="https://wst198.omeka.net/items/show/7">Fig. 4</a> </span>or with his long legs reaching the edge of the bound page as in <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/d5cb601655afeb514a7177569340b9a9.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323966&Signature=Lpl2YfXYXT2yOZ0NDo1FkPVIP10%3D"><span>Fig. 5</span>. </a></p>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-434cc422-73fc-181a-e9d7-6e16c79a8bf8"><span>The alien is a black body. That is its purpose; Jones has said that “The appearance of The Colossus [</span><span>sic.</span><span>] acts as [</span><span>sic.</span><span>] a mirror on their [the other characters’] motives” (qtd. in Dietsch). The authorial intent was to have the alien’s black body be a metaphor, yet Jones and Waid ended up relying on visual stereotypes that make the black body inhuman to the reader. One cannot relate to the alien because one does not know who or what the alien is. He is only his appearance -- an appearance that is stereotypical -- the unintelligible black muscular man. Sonny, as the Nat Turner uncouth with a heart of gold, and McCoy, the portly intellectual of diminutive stature and authority, are equally stereotypical. Even a non-character perpetuate visual stereotypes, as seen in the </span><a href="https://ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/antiblack/picaninny/homepage.htm"><span>picaninny</span></a><span> character in </span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/d08ff08f68422217b6843629ca68f8b7.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515324005&Signature=4WYXDi0vX2V3Couy7C8sRhOpLjE%3D"><span>Fig. 2</span></a><span>. Jones and Waid use various types of visual and narrative stereotypes of black bodies in a story about black oppression. The black bodies are diverse but the type of diversity is reductive rather than inclusive. </span><em>Strange Fruit </em><span>serves as a reminder that quantity and breadth of bodies does not equate to qualitative and deep representations of oppressed identities. </span></span>
Writer: Jones, J.G. and Mark Waid.
Penciler and Inker: Jones, J.G.
<ol><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-434cc422-73fd-c7ab-d421-4c49014bb130"><span>Dietsch, TJ. “EXCLUSIVE: Jones & Waid on Examining Racism, Cultural Legacy in 'Strange Fruit'.” </span><span>CBR</span><span>, Valnet Inc., 24 Feb. 2015, </span><a href="http://www.cbr.com/exclusive-jones-waid-on-examining-racism-cultural-legacy-in-strange-fruit/"><span>www.cbr.com/exclusive-jones-waid-on-examining-racism-cultural-legacy-in-strange-fruit/</span></a><span>. </span></span></li>
</ol>
Author (15 Dec 2017)
9 May 2017
<a href="https://comicsverse.com/author/o0rayday0o/"><span>Rachel Davis</span></a>
18.3 x 1.5 x 28.4 cm
(Exterior) Ink, plastic, cardboard; (Interior) Ink on paper
Los Angeles: BOOM! Studios.