Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Black History Month? Valentine's Day? Why choose only one?

While perusing the web in search of something to write about for Valentine's Day, I came across this pair of series that possessed the same title:



The first image is of a 1955 comic from Charlton, the publisher who gave us Blue Beetle and Captain Atom; it's actually a reprint from the a series from 1950 Fawcett -- original publisher of the Billy Batson Captain Marvel, of course -- depicted in the second image (albeit a different issue.) And while it may cause us to cringe in our self-consciously open-minded era, it does raise questions about the state of race and culture in the current mainstream comics industry.

You can read more (but only a little, because these comics are expensive and obscure) here at the blog Black Superheroines! Check it out.