Fawcett's Negro Romance 2: "Love's Decoy"

The third story in Fawcett's Negro Romance 2 is "Love's Decoy", again written by Roy Ald, with art by deservedly, but posthumously and belatedly, celebrated African American comic book artist Alvin Hollingsworth.

Of interest in this particular story is the setting - the Cafe Ebonia, a segregated, African American night club, and its line of African American chorus girls. Otherwise this is standard romance comic material, with a crooked night club owner trying to use the female protagonist to destroy the undercover cop, who ends up being the leading lady's love interest. It's great stuff! The nightclub owner typically (for this kind of story, and in some real life situations) takes multiple advantages of the young girl trying to make it in showbiz, including attempting some unsolicited sexual advances that she has to fend off.

 

 

For the sake of (almost) completeness, there's a two page text story in the comic that Out of This World is pleased to post below. The entire comic (minus of course the cover) has been submitted to the Digital Comic Museum and can be accessed here if you want to download the cbr file.

Fawcett's Negro Romance 2: "Forever Yours"

The second story in Fawcett's Negro Romance 2 is "Forever Yours", and features art by Rudy Palais. The story was again written by Fawcett editor Roy Ald. In this typical romance tale, everything is heading towards 'happily ever after' for this middle class couple, when Edith's whole vision of the future is changed as she learns she has an unspecified, difficult to treat, fatal illness. Faced with the prospect of a mere two years remaining, she switches to party mode, to squeeze out as much enjoyment as possible from the life she has left. Unfortunately this all-out hedonistic pursuit blinds her to the real treasure she has in Don's love, and she even ditches him to go dancing with some random guy who hits on her. Eventually Edith's illness overcomes her, the truth is out, and she finally gets the treatment she needs. It will be a long journey back to good health, but with Don by her side Edith feels sufficient strength to see it through. It is not clear why she didn't start treatment as soon as she learned of her illness, but then we wouldn't have had that section of the story where she loses the plot. So this story falls right in line with the mood and approach taken by Fawcett's other romance titles from the period.

 

There are no white people in the story (or in the whole comic) and so we get a glimpse of the other half of segregated America in the early 1950s. There is nothing in the way of negative stereotyping of African Americans here - the characters in the story are handsome, well-dressed, obviously have a decent income, etc. So the story simply acknowledges and accepts segregation as an existing condition, and does not interrogate or analyze it. Inasmuch as the characters are not depicted as in any way inferior to whites, it could be argued that it is demonstrative of the separate but equal ideal of some pro-segregationists. But the mere fact that Fawcett printed a comic specifically for a black audience (and partly drawn by a black artist) indicates that Negro Romance is really acknowledging the existence of the African American community, who are absent in the vast majority of other comic books. Had African American women of the early 50s been 'looking for a face like theirs', as did Prof William H. Foster III when he read comic books in the 1960s, they would have found what they were looking for in Negro Romance. But clearly the title was not a commercial success, as it folded after issue 3. Rare beyond belief, Negro Romance is nevertheless a true milestone in comic book history. It is actually the first title published by a mainstream comic book company featuring only black characters, in addition to being one of the few comics that featured African Americans in non-stereotyped, non-demeaning imagery from the middle decades of the twentieth century.

One thing I noticed as I continued to scan the book was the absence of ads. If there had been any, they would have to have been on the cover (back and inside), which alas I don't have. I'll have to check to see if that was the standard layout for Fawcett romance comics from that time.

Fawcett's Negro Romance 2: "Possessed" (new scan)

Fawcett's now celebrated Negro Romance 2 was last year the subject of a History Detectives investigation by Gwen Wright, answering Washington University's Gerald Early's questions about the comic book:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/african-american-comic-book/

The video features an appearance by Sequential Crush author, Jacque Nodell, and the website also provides scans of the first story in the book. The episode, very importantly, identified the author of the book as Roy Ald, then an editor at Fawcett, and the artist as Alvin Hollingsworth. Alvin Hollingsworth was African American and, following his career in comics, went on to become a recognized representational and abstract artist and art teacher, before passing away in 2000. The particular copy used in the video had the art slightly defaced by the original owner. Presented here is a scan of "Possessed" from a different (but also coverless) copy of this rare and important book. Over the next few days the other two stories in the issue will be posted here, to mark a return to the blogosphere of Out of This World and to celebrate African American History Month 2012, which focuses on Black Women in American Culture and History. This early 1950s romance comic was written and drawn for a female African American audience, and depicts black women in the kind of romance narrative that was common to all books of that genre at that time. So here's the new scan, same story as the old scan that's out there, but without the pink colored pencil additions that adorn the book used in the History Detectives video:

Once the three stories are posted on Out of This World, the whole (coverless) comic will be submitted to the Digital Comic Museum. I'll post the link to that when it is added to the DCM archive.

Crossing the Divide: Joe Louis (1)

One of the stages in racial integration and desegregation in the United States was the period in which famous African American sports personalities became widely accepted for their achievements thus 'proving' racial equality. Although in one sense it is deplorable that such 'proof' should be required, it is nevertheless undeniable that this phenomenon occurred, and it is reflected in comic books of the period. In boxing this goes back to the early 20th Century heavyweight champion Jack Johnson (champ from 1908-1915). Society was so racially charged at that time that the famous author Jack London called for a 'great white hope' to come forth and defeat Johnson. It wasn't until Joe Louis became champ from 1937-1949 that an African American boxer was admired by all regardless of race. Louis's undermining of Hitler's 'Master Race' theory by defeating Max Schmeling was certainly influential in this regard.

Sports comics as a genre tend to simply report the achievements of great sports stars, and the comic book series featuring them inevitably run out of material, the one example I can think of that doesn't follow this format being the Harlem Globetrotters Gold Key series of the early 1970s based on the Hanna Barbera TV cartoon. Because they are seen as sports memorabilia, sports comics are collected by sports fans, irritatingly driving the price up for comic book collectors. Here's one that I managed to get for a 'reasonable' price, Fawcett's Joe Louis Champion of Champions 2. In the early 1950s Fawcett seemed very serious about breaking into the African American comics market. They published Negro Romances (3 issues) and a variety of sports comics featuring African American sports personalities (e.g. Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson). Unfortunately none lasted long, and it must mean that poor sales caused them to cancel publication. Whether racist distributors were the reason for the poor sales (as happened with Dell's Lobo in the 1960s) I don't know, but at least Fawcett made a significant effort to change the comic book landscape and introduce diversity in a bigger way at the time than any other comic book company. So here's the Joe Louis story from Joe Louis 2. I've uploaded the entire comic to the Digital Comic Museum and you can download it from http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=14202

Out Of This World will be featuring some more examples of African Americans in sports comics in the future, so watch this space!