Comics and Black America
Add race to the story of comics, and things get very interesting indeed.
July 30, 2021
More by Clifford Thompson
Peanuts and the Absurd Art of Growing Up
Who is winning the old nature-versus-nature debate? Which of these influencers has the upper hand? Are we mostly preprogrammed, acting out what has been inside us since Day One, or do we go in the direction life blows us?
Connecting Flights
As I write this essay, I am listening to Bird’s records. I love the inventiveness, the breakneck pace, and the flights of fancy of his melodies. I admire his daring and ingenuity, just as I do the Wright brothers’ daring and ingenuity: over a century after they occurred, it is thrilling to read accounts of their first successful powered flights.
Thank You, Lt. Uhura, for Your Starship Service
Nichelle Nichols, aka "Star Trek"'s Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, represented a miracle. In a decade that saw Black people beaten, jailed, and killed for wanting to vote, when laws effectively recognizing husbands as their wives’ bosses were still on the books in some states, what reason was there to think a Black woman would show up on TV as the equal of her White male colleagues? And yet there she was. There she is, always.
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Three on a Match, or How the Other Two Die
Though their lives wound up linked, these three men could not have been more different. Perry Smith was as poor as used-up dirt. Truman Capote sparkled like diamonds and partied with stars: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra…. Philip Seymour Hoffman landed in the shy middle, living off his talent as simply as one can in New York. What they shared was a sensitivity too raw to hide, and pain that sent them running.
Inside the Crafted and Creepy Culture of Dolls
The tradition is an ancient one: long before people even learned to write, they were spontaneously crafting dolls from papyrus, straw, wood, leather, or etched stone, bone, or ivory. Along the way, there were dolls of rubber, papier mâché, glued sawdust, and always, stuffed cloth—first dressed in simple rags, later in satin and lace. Dolls became elaborate, became art. But all that really mattered was a limbed body with a suggestion of face.
Recipes for Rascals
The ginger nut (and by association other cookies of its type, such as those made with black peppercorns) has an aggressive presence but offers scant sustenance. It is meant to aid digestion of other things, to have a warming effect in winter, to relieve boredom, and perhaps to remind us we are alive in the sometimes dry, husky business of life.