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This month is Black History Month and in celebration of the legacy African-Americans and other members of the African diaspora have made in our country, I decided to look at the legacy of Blacks and African-Americans in the history of comics.

Even into the forties Blacks were portrayed as crude stereotypes. For example, Walt Kelley’s Our Gang comic (the print form of The Little Rascals), portrayed white and black kids as equals, but the black children were drawn in a stereotypical style.

When the Silver Age of comics occurred around the 1960s, Marvel and DC tried to pull out of this racist past. I don’t know if they necessarily did.

Marvel:

Black Panther — T’Challa is the king of the hidden African Kingdom of Wakanda. His society is far more advanced than the Western world and their technology is decades, probably centuries, ahead.

Luke Cage — While in prison he was experimented on and given super powers by mistake. Now he lives in a ghetto, recently separated from his “baby’s mama” and beats up crack dealers. Marvel has invested a lot of story into this character in the past few years.

Storm — A former X-Man and wife to Black Panther, she was worshipped by her tribal village as a god due to her mutant ability to control weather.

Blade — When he was first introduced in the pages of Tomb of Dracula, he was portrayed as a Shaft-like Blaxploitation character. He had an afro and an orange pleather jacket.

DC:

Black Lightning — Jefferson Pierce was an Olympic medal-winning athlete. He also protects his urban environment from gangs. He is currently in the Justice League of America.

Green Lantern — John Stewart is one of the more notable figures in the DC Universe, his early comic forays dealt with African-American politics.

The white Lantern, Hal Jordan and Green Arrow were approached by an elderly black man who asked, “I hear how hard you been working for the blue skins, and how you helped out the orange skins, and you done considerable for the purple skins! Only there’s skins you never bothered with ... the black skins! How come? Answer me, Mr. Green Lantern?”

The team was probably stopping aliens from destroying the entire planet, actually, but for the political minded, this was a progressive moment in comics.

Incognegro (Vertigo/DC) — “I am Incognegro. I don’t wear a mask like Zorro or a cape like The Shadow, but I don a disguise nonetheless. My camouflage is provided by my genes; the product of the Southern tradition nobody likes to talk about. Slavery. Rape. Hypocrisy. Since White America refuses to see its past, they can’t really see me too well either.” When a boy, writer Mat Johnson was African-American but looked white. He pretended to be a spy in a race war, and his fantasy was not far from fact — former NAACP leader Walter White did just that. Incognegro is based on this story. Zane Pinchback is a journalist, a black man who looks white; he goes into the South to investigate lynchings. This graphic novel was just released and it is a powerful statement about racism and a black hero operating in the past.