Throughout the comic, John Stewart is shown less fighting space aliens than himself. Visually, this is seen in such imagery as page 20 (see Fig. 6), 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.
Mosaic #1 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.
In Fig. 3, 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 (Johnson 10). In Fig. 7, beside the stunning image of John Stewart’s inner being from Fig. 6 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, Fig. 8 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.
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: Kerry Marshall James says when explaining his reasoning for creating his “Rythm Mastr” series that “the market has somehow never been able to sustain a set of black super heroes [sic.] in a way that could capture the imagination” (Art21, “‘Rythm Mastr’: Kerry Marshall James”). It would seem that DC Comics editorial believed this to be true; hence their cancelling of the series. 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 (Andrew NDB; 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.]]>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. Michael Ray Charles believes that the concept of blackness as we know it “was linked to early marketing practices, early advertising” (qtd. in “Advertising and Art: Michael Ray Charles”). 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 Green Lantern: Mosaic #1.
Throughout the comic, John Stewart is shown less fighting space aliens than himself. Visually, this is seen in such imagery as page 20 (see Fig. 6), 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.
Mosaic #1 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.
In Fig. 3, 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 (Johnson 10). In Fig. 7, beside the stunning image of John Stewart’s inner being from Fig. 6 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, Fig. 8 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.
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: Kerry Marshall James says when explaining his reasoning for creating his “Rythm Mastr” series that “the market has somehow never been able to sustain a set of black super heroes [sic.] in a way that could capture the imagination” (Art21, “‘Rythm Mastr’: Kerry Marshall James”). It would seem that DC Comics editorial believed this to be true; hence their cancelling of the series. 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 (Andrew NDB; 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.One of the rebels, a Black man named Mr. X, tells Jeremy he distrusts the former poster boy of the Confederacy (see Fig. 3). Yet, two pages later, he is asking Jeremy to be the figure of the rebellion (see Fig. 4). He doesn’t trust Jeremy, yet he wants the man he said has not proven himself of the resistance’s protection to visually lead them. Captain Confederacy is Jeremy’s story, he experiences the hero’s journey. However, why is Mr. X not the hero?
Mr. X is already well-known and feared by the Confederacy for his rebellious actions, as Jeremy’s introduction states. He already is a symbol. He has proven his commitment to the cause and knows how to organize such far-flung allies as Kate and Kitsune. Surely he has the confidence to be a symbol of the resistance if his “Purple Rain”-era Prince appearance is any indication. Most importantly, though, Mr. X has a greater stake in dismantling the Confederacy. Mr. X, as a man of color, is a second-class citizen -- he is persecuted. Jeremy is not. The only reason Jeremy leaves the Confederate side is because his best friend -- a black man -- is killed by the Confederacy. Shetterly and Stone have a black man killed -- ending his story -- by the government to awaken the consciousness of a white man to save society. A superficial excuse is given for Jeremy wanting to directly fight the government (he needs an antidote from the government in order to live), but that does not mask the fact that Captain Confederacy is a white savior story.
Why do Shetterly and Stone make Jeremy the hero? According to Shetterly, it is because Jeremy, as an attractive white male, is the symbol of the Confederacy: “The way to weaken symbols is to subvert them. That was my intention when I wrote Captain Confederacy” (Shetterly). What this does is make the words “hero,” “South,” and “man” synonymous with the white race. Jeremy being Captain Confederacy does not so much weaken and subvert the symbol -- it reinforces that symbol’s ideology that white is right. Having a Black man free himself and his fellow citizens -- black and white -- would be the subversion. Instead, we have Mr. X made one-note by being having a white man tell the reader who he is rather than showing Mr. X’s character via his actions. Also, Mr. X’s Prince appearance is inappropriate. It lacks the militancy of Kitsune’s costume while looking diminutive and unimaginative to Captain Confederacy’s muscles and costume (see Fig. 1). Mr. X is grounded in the reader’s reality, not a heroic one, with his stereotypical, humorously out-of-place attire and accent. Mr. X is created and drawn to be read as Black. That is his character, and it shows Captain Confederacy’s failing
Despite noble intentions, Captain Confederacy's Achilles heel is the very thing it is satirizing: it is a story trying to show the stupidity of systemic racism, yet uses racist story tropes to send that message. As such, the message fails. The black body satirizing racism will be explored in other works Charles’s (Forever Free) Dress Your Best (1999) or even Wiley’s Ice T (2005). In regards to Captain Confederacy, if Fredrik Strömberg is correct in saying comics give “a clear picture of the spirit of a certain time,” then it stands to reason that the picture “Captain Confederacy #4” gives three decades later is of a better world for white men -- and, therefore, Black men as well (Strömberg 23).]]>Whereas Warhol frames dehumanized black bodies for gallery walls, Shetterly and Stone frames African-Americans for the mass public of 1986 (and the 21st-century, as Shetterly made most of the series available for free online). Still, even with the restoration of human identity to black bodies, the positioning of Blacks within this comic reveals the comic medium’s tensions between breaking and needing tropes.
One of the rebels, a Black man named Mr. X, tells Jeremy he distrusts the former poster boy of the Confederacy (see Fig. 3). Yet, two pages later, he is asking Jeremy to be the figure of the rebellion (see Fig. 4). He doesn’t trust Jeremy, yet he wants the man he said has not proven himself of the resistance’s protection to visually lead them. Captain Confederacy is Jeremy’s story, he experiences the hero’s journey. However, why is Mr. X not the hero?
Mr. X is already well-known and feared by the Confederacy for his rebellious actions, as Jeremy’s introduction states. He already is a symbol. He has proven his commitment to the cause and knows how to organize such far-flung allies as Kate and Kitsune. Surely he has the confidence to be a symbol of the resistance if his “Purple Rain”-era Prince appearance is any indication. Most importantly, though, Mr. X has a greater stake in dismantling the Confederacy. Mr. X, as a man of color, is a second-class citizen -- he is persecuted. Jeremy is not. The only reason Jeremy leaves the Confederate side is because his best friend -- a black man -- is killed by the Confederacy. Shetterly and Stone have a black man killed -- ending his story -- by the government to awaken the consciousness of a white man to save society. A superficial excuse is given for Jeremy wanting to directly fight the government (he needs an antidote from the government in order to live), but that does not mask the fact that Captain Confederacy is a white savior story.
Why do Shetterly and Stone make Jeremy the hero? According to Shetterly, it is because Jeremy, as an attractive white male, is the symbol of the Confederacy: “The way to weaken symbols is to subvert them. That was my intention when I wrote Captain Confederacy” (Shetterly). What this does is make the words “hero,” “South,” and “man” synonymous with the white race. Jeremy being Captain Confederacy does not so much weaken and subvert the symbol -- it reinforces that symbol’s ideology that white is right. Having a Black man free himself and his fellow citizens -- black and white -- would be the subversion. Instead, we have Mr. X made one-note by being having a white man tell the reader who he is rather than showing Mr. X’s character via his actions. Also, Mr. X’s Prince appearance is inappropriate. It lacks the militancy of Kitsune’s costume while looking diminutive and unimaginative to Captain Confederacy’s muscles and costume (see Fig. 1). Mr. X is grounded in the reader’s reality, not a heroic one, with his stereotypical, humorously out-of-place attire and accent. Mr. X is created and drawn to be read as Black. That is his character, and it shows Captain Confederacy’s failing
Despite noble intentions, Captain Confederacy's Achilles heel is the very thing it is satirizing: it is a story trying to show the stupidity of systemic racism, yet uses racist story tropes to send that message. As such, the message fails. The black body satirizing racism will be explored in other works Charles’s (Forever Free) Dress Your Best (1999) or even Wiley’s Ice T (2005). In regards to Captain Confederacy, if Fredrik Strömberg is correct in saying comics give “a clear picture of the spirit of a certain time,” then it stands to reason that the picture “Captain Confederacy #4” gives three decades later is of a better world for white men -- and, therefore, Black men as well (Strömberg 23).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. Strange Fruit gives the reader two black men to show a multitude of black male expressions. Two black men do this -- and only two black men.
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 Fig. 5 and Fig. 6). 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 Green Lantern: Mosaic). 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 Fig. 3 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 Fig. 4 or with his long legs reaching the edge of the bound page as in Fig. 5.
The alien is a black body. That is its purpose; Jones has said that “The appearance of The Colossus [sic.] acts as [sic.] 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 picaninny character in Fig. 2. 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. Strange Fruit serves as a reminder that quantity and breadth of bodies does not equate to qualitative and deep representations of oppressed identities. ]]>Out of all of the items in this exhibit, Strange Fruit has the most body diversity. The main black male humans of the comic are Sonny and Mr. McCoy. As seen in Fig. 4, 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. Fig. 6 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.
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. Strange Fruit gives the reader two black men to show a multitude of black male expressions. Two black men do this -- and only two black men.
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 Fig. 5 and Fig. 6). 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 Green Lantern: Mosaic). 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 Fig. 3 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 Fig. 4 or with his long legs reaching the edge of the bound page as in Fig. 5.
The alien is a black body. That is its purpose; Jones has said that “The appearance of The Colossus [sic.] acts as [sic.] 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 picaninny character in Fig. 2. 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. Strange Fruit serves as a reminder that quantity and breadth of bodies does not equate to qualitative and deep representations of oppressed identities.There is quite a bit of presuming one has to make with this comic. We never see the police officer, yet we know the sole speaker of the comic is a police officer. Each panel’s first sentence mirrors the beginning sentence structure of Miranda Rights. It alternates between “You have the right…” and “I have the right…” Other textual clues, such as the “my police chief” of the top right panel and the “I have the right to be investigated by people I work with” (see Fig. 2) insinuate this character’s profession, it is the parroting of the Miranda Rights that is most telling of this figure’s authority. Like in Captain Confederacy and (Forever Free): Dress Your Best, this white figure commands authority despite being merely omnipresence and never fully embodied for the reader. However, in Knight’s work, that authority is heightened by the fact that the character is presumably alive while the black body is dead. Seeing this police officer murder a Black body, yet speak to it in the same manner as if the body were alive -- the lack of individual distinction between a living Black body and a dead Black body -- is chilling. The fact that those words are about rights is haunting.
And what of the black body in this scene? We know it is a body of a man of color because his hand is colored more darkly than the officer’s (see Fig. 1). The body lies face down, back containing three holes presumably from bullets fired by the smoking gun. Despite the rightful assumption that the Black body is dead, the corpse contains one of the only visual movement throughout the comic. Whereas the smoke of the gun and the dialogue in the speech bubbles imply movement, the comic becomes a comic -- it shows sequencing -- through the increasing amount of blood seeping through the bullet holes from panel-to-panel (compare Fig. 1 to Fig. 2 to Fig 3). Warhol used an image of a real, living Black man being attacked, yet Knight’s cartoon representation of a Black male is more violent than Warhol’s. Warhol’s darkening of the image and removal of its context took away the humanity. As such, the violence to that Black man is not as troubling -- the viewer can gaze upon that image with relative comfort. Knight’s Black body is a simplified symbol of a Black body. Like Warhol, we can also not see this character’s face. And yet, the Black man here is so much more human and effective.This is possibly because of the character’s lack of realism. Scott McCloud calls this “amplification through simplification”: “[b]y stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning,’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.” (McCloud 30). By reducing the Black body to two distinguishing physical features (darker skin and curly hair) and a sociopolitical one (police brutality towards Blacks), Knight humanizes and elicits strong emotions from a Black cartoon. Knight’s comic relies on the reader’s understanding of 2015 American politics and history to understand the comic. There is less visual narrative help and more reliance on the reader’s knowledge and presumptions. This pays off in creating a comic that has the reader see and feel for the brutalization of and indifference towards Black bodies.
]]>This 6-panel webcomic (three rows with two panels each) features the Black male body in the context of being just a Black male body. Whereas other items in this exhibit have the Black body in dialogue with Western art, American history, existentialism, and more, Keith Knight keeps the Black body within itself. No other body appears in this comic but that of a Black character. Knight keeps the Black body as a Black body. That is the point of his comic -- to see a Black body as it is and see what it means. To this comic’s sole speaker, the police officer with the smoking gun, a Black body is a dead body.
There is quite a bit of presuming one has to make with this comic. We never see the police officer, yet we know the sole speaker of the comic is a police officer. Each panel’s first sentence mirrors the beginning sentence structure of Miranda Rights. It alternates between “You have the right…” and “I have the right…” Other textual clues, such as the “my police chief” of the top right panel and the “I have the right to be investigated by people I work with” (see Fig. 2) insinuate this character’s profession, it is the parroting of the Miranda Rights that is most telling of this figure’s authority. Like in Captain Confederacy and (Forever Free): Dress Your Best, this white figure commands authority despite being merely omnipresence and never fully embodied for the reader. However, in Knight’s work, that authority is heightened by the fact that the character is presumably alive while the black body is dead. Seeing this police officer murder a Black body, yet speak to it in the same manner as if the body were alive -- the lack of individual distinction between a living Black body and a dead Black body -- is chilling. The fact that those words are about rights is haunting.
And what of the black body in this scene? We know it is a body of a man of color because his hand is colored more darkly than the officer’s (see Fig. 1). The body lies face down, back containing three holes presumably from bullets fired by the smoking gun. Despite the rightful assumption that the Black body is dead, the corpse contains one of the only visual movement throughout the comic. Whereas the smoke of the gun and the dialogue in the speech bubbles imply movement, the comic becomes a comic -- it shows sequencing -- through the increasing amount of blood seeping through the bullet holes from panel-to-panel (compare Fig. 1 to Fig. 2 to Fig 3). Warhol used an image of a real, living Black man being attacked, yet Knight’s cartoon representation of a Black male is more violent than Warhol’s. Warhol’s darkening of the image and removal of its context took away the humanity. As such, the violence to that Black man is not as troubling -- the viewer can gaze upon that image with relative comfort. Knight’s Black body is a simplified symbol of a Black body. Like Warhol, we can also not see this character’s face. And yet, the Black man here is so much more human and effective.This is possibly because of the character’s lack of realism. Scott McCloud calls this “amplification through simplification”: “[b]y stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning,’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.” (McCloud 30). By reducing the Black body to two distinguishing physical features (darker skin and curly hair) and a sociopolitical one (police brutality towards Blacks), Knight humanizes and elicits strong emotions from a Black cartoon. Knight’s comic relies on the reader’s understanding of 2015 American politics and history to understand the comic. There is less visual narrative help and more reliance on the reader’s knowledge and presumptions. This pays off in creating a comic that has the reader see and feel for the brutalization of and indifference towards Black bodies.