The last piece on The Colored Negro Black Comic Book by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. Yes, I know it’s Monday, but if Kelly Brown can do Weird Thoughts Monday on Tuesday, and her husband Lefty can do Friday Three Questions on Saturday, who am I to be a purist?
Note: in the comic strip tradition all the words in the strip are in capitals, but for readability, I’ve deigned to write in standard English. Also the words that are in bold in the strip are in red in this text.
“B.S.”, a 4-page reply to “B.C.”
Page 1:
White caveman (sharpening spear): What are you doing?
Page 2, Panel 1:
Black caveman (holding arrow): I am inventing something called the wheel…
Page 2, Panel 2:
Black caveman: What are you doing?
Page 3:
Page 4:
Both cavemen dead, one from spear, one from arrow.
Cave boy: What did they do?
Father: They just invented brotherhood!
All they were saying was, “Give peace a chance.” There were a lot of songs about getting along at the time, notably “Friendship Train” by Gladys Knight and the Pips: “Unrest between races must come to an end.” That song was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, who wrote a number of “message” songs for the Temptations.
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“Brother Blackberry”, a 1 page parody of “Brother Juniper”, not in Toonopedia, but in my local newspapers when I was a kid.
Well, if God did make us in His/Her/Their image… There are lots of pictures of black Jesuses in black people’s homes I visited, even to this day.
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“Likriss Sikniss”, a 1-page reflection of “Dennis the Menace”
Some things that one wants to avoid have no race.
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“Believe It or Watts!”, a 2-page riff on “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”
Page 1:
Page 2 (left side)
Nude man sitting in steamy area:
Narrative: This black man has slept in a hot coal bed for fifteen years!! (Before that, he was an idiot albino from Kalamazoo!)
Page 2 (right side):
Tree carved with word “black”.
Markings found on a white birch in Caucasia, Pa. The tree is owned by Mrs. Fiona Black, whose son carved his name into it.
(In arrow): Look what can be done with Sidney Poitier’s name:
which involved the words Hi, Doris Day (from the D and O in his name), plus Rosh Hashona, apple, Ship, parsley, Altoona, Nipsey, CORE, and NAACP in crossword form
The first page was a pretty OK piece, but the second generated a Huh? from me.
And that’s it, except for these final thoughts:
Thanks to the anonymous correspondent who identified the Little King as the antecedent for “King Coal” a couple weeks ago. It has been rectified in the original posting.
The book publisher, Price/Stern/Sloan, also put out other books at the time, including You Were Born on a Rotten Day, The Power of Positive Pessimism and my favorite, the Wit and Wisdom of Spiro T. Agnew, which was a title page, followed by a bunch of blank pages.
It was great to find something that the comic book fans, which I (marginally) still am, would appreciate.
