This February, Image Comics celebrates Black History Month with illustrated tales authored by diverse creators from their expansive catalogue, exploring themes of identity, community, and magic in full color. Image Comics, home to smash hits The Walking Dead, Saga, and Kick-Ass, presents “Essential Comics to Read for Black History Month” with a selection of the publisher’s best-selling comic books and graphic novels from creators of color including Johnnie Christmas, Chuck Brown, and Tee Franklin. Among the titles readers will find are the acclaimed science fiction series, Tartarus, the Harlem-based monster hunters of Bitter Root, and Black History in its Own Words from writers, artists, and musicians ranging from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Zadie Smith.
Comic books, the stomping ground of colorful heroes, scheming villains, and inconceivable realities come to life on the digital and printed page, have played a significant role in the advancement of black voices and heroes of color. While progress on the issue of racial disparity began gradually in the comic book industry, it gained momentum and potency with the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of Black Power activists, and the push for Women’s Rights, as well as with changes in American society over the past six decades. The single-issue omnibus, All-Negro Comics, was the first comic of the Twentieth Century to be written and drawn exclusively by African-American writers and artists, selling for a mere 15¢ in 1947. It wasn’t until the 1966 appearance of the T’Challa, the Black Panther and King of Wakanda, a secretive and scientifically-advanced African nation, in the pages of Marvel’s Fantastic Four #52, that the first Black superhero was drawn into a mainstream comic. Marvel Comics followed the Black Panther with the high-flying Falcon in 1969, and DC Comics introduced Black Racer from Jack Kirby’s New Gods in 1972, and a surrogate Green Lantern. Meanwhile, the first two mainstream titles to star a Black superhero came in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire and Black Lightning, bookending the 1970s from Marvel and DC respectively.
Since the Silver and Bronze Ages of comics, the ranks of African American heroes have expanded in magnitude and consequence with familiar characters like Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Storm and Bishop of the X-Men, Cyborg of the Teen Titans and Justice League, Goliath, War Machine, Cloak, of supernatural investigators Cloak and Dagger, and the indefatigable Robbie Robertson, J. Jonah Jameson’s editor-in-chief at the Daily Bugle. This February, Image Comics invites reader to celebrate African-American writers and artists with the publisher’s collection, “Essential Comics to Read for Black History Month.”
To celebrate Black History Month, Image Comics presents essentials from its vast collection to highlight creators of color and marginalized perspectives with titles such as Tartarus, Bitter Root, Farmhand, and Black History in its Own Words. Tartarus, a new monthly from Image Comics from writer Johnnie Christmas promises a “sci-fi drama of Breaking Bad set in Mos Eisley!” In Bitter Root, from David F. Walker and Sanford Greene, the team behind Power Man and Iron Fist, and Chuck Brown, of Trench Coats and Cigarettes and Shotguns fame, the greatest monster hunters of all time, the Sangerye family fights adversity and a new breed of monsters in the 1920s, during the Harlem Renaissance. Eisner Award-winner Rob Guillory seeds a tale of agricultural organ-harvesting in Farmhand that yields venomous fruit when the something sinister takes root on the Jenkin’s family farm. DC/Vertigo, Marvel, and Dark Horse artist, Ronald Wimberly provide illustrations for Image Comics’ hardcover anthology, Black History in its Own Words, featuring compelling citations and captivating anecdotes from Angela Davis, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Zadie Smith, Ice Cube, Dave Chappelle, James Baldwin, Spike Lee, and more. Image Comics describes Black History in its Own Words as “a look at Black History framed by those who made it” and accentuates actors, artists, and activists known for their contributions to both the African American community and to the entirety of society. Find inspiration this February with Image Comics’ “Essential Comics to Read for Black History Month."
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Source: Image
