Angela Davis, Time Magazine, 31 August 1970, page 12
Even at the time, perhaps particularly at the time, writing
a story like this risks trivialising the lives and experience of black people. Ideally,
a black writer and artist, people who have experienced racism, would
communicate directly to the audience, unmediated by a 55- year old white guy (Kanigher was born in 1915). You
wonder how someone like the Black Panthers’ Angela Davis, on the run at the
time of publication, accused of (abetting) murder, would have viewed this
comic.
So how could a superhero comic book aimed at 12 years olds
ever hope to even come close to a treatment of racism that’s going to help? Yet
in its own simple, relevant, way, ‘I Am Curious Black’ deals directly with
racism in
a way which modern mainstream comics don’t really attempt, even while we
live in sadly, similar, times.
The story is confrontational from the get-go splash page where a black Lois asks Superman if he would marry her ‘just the way I am?’, now that she is black and he is white. Right away you understand that this story is aimed at a white readership. Kanigher had introduced DC’s first black character Jackie Johnson in Our Army at War # 113 (December 1961, publication date 3 October 1961) and then (with Nick Cardy) Mal Duncan (Teen Titans # 26, Mar/April 1970, publication date 15 January 1970). DC was only just starting to introduce black characters and the vast majority of its readership would have been white*.
Now transformed to being black for a day by the Plastimold machine, Lois feels the rejection, distrust, confusion, she felt as a white woman all over again, as a black woman.
She meets a black woman and is invited into her apartment and sees how others live. She is touched by someone who has very little but who still wants to give.
The effect of the story is uplifting. It ends on a simple
moment of hope and unity, one personal connection by two imperfect people who
have been transformed just enough to begin to hear each other. You could never
pretend that Lois Lane # 106 is a sophisticated commentary on racism but
neither is it just a dated time capsule. The difficult, reportedly egotistical,
tyrannical Kanigher, who could be abusive to his National/DC colleagues managed
to display the very personal qualities he lacked, in his art, empathy,
patience, curiosity. The world of the young National/DC reader of 1970 was the
better for it. Fifty years later, so are we.
* Demographic studies of black readership of comics are hard
to find. I did find a 2017 Bleeding Cool report (see below) quoting NPD Bookscan’s
breakdown showing that in the US African-American readers made up 13 per cent
of the market (61 per cent were white) and worldwide, 14 per cent of readers
are black (71 per cent are white). Given the relative paucity of black creators
and characters in 1970 compared with relatively greater diversity now, I think
it’s a safe assumption to make that in 1970, the number of black readers was even
smaller as a percentage of overall readers of comics. If you have links to
studies of comic book reader demographics please post them in the comments field
below.
Hudson, Laura, Wired, It’s
Time to Get Real About Racial Diversity in Comics
Johnston, Richard, Bleeding Cool, Report:
63 % Of Comics Bought By Men, 37 % By Women
The story of money exploiting talent, product trampling art, is as old as human nature. The storyteller creates the concept, the stories, th...
