All-Negro Comics

All-Negro Comics

Black comics

"All-Negro Comics" is an all black comic book that showcases a range of black talent through adventurous storytelling. Created in 1947, the founder Orin C. Evans began cultivating this item in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This comic praises black writers and artists, countering the downfall of black literature after the effects of the Great Depression debilitated the literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance. From the beginning of comic creation, people of African descent have had limited representation. When they were illustrated, mediums portrayed them as the subject of controversy and surrounded them with motifs of violence. The integration of black characters in mainstream media and superhero comics has endured outstanding challenges; critics note that black men and women are repetitively stereotyped as barbaric or ghetto. It is this racist, demeaning notion that makes "All-Negro Comics" a profound work of literary art. After the downturn of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s, Evans recognized the necessity to produce a work that dissembled the negative connotations of black people within media. All-Negro Comics is filled with diverse representations of black culture. Through each persona and story, Evans speaks to a different mode of black individuality. His curation of "All-Negro Comics" pathed a way for afro-centric art to be celebrated while working to dethrone divisive ideologies that separated black and African people in Philadelphia.

Orin C. Evans

Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

All-Negro Comics, Inc.

June 1947

Orin C. Evans

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Printed on paper.

English

Comic book