Winner, 2021 Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award, given by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Winner, 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Honorable Mention, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association Winner, 2020 Charles Hatfield Book Prize, given by the Comic Studies Society Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship in the United States, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries. The Content of Our Caricature urges readers to recognize how the wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States. Historically, white artists have rendered white caricatures as virtuous representations of American identity, while their caricatures of African Americans are excluded from these kinds of idealized discourses. Employing a rich illustration program of color and black-and-white reproductions, Wanzo explores the works of artists such as Sam Milai, Larry Fuller, Richard "Grass" Green, Brumsic Brandon Jr., Jennifer Crute, Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, Ollie Harrington, and George Herriman, all of whom negotiate and navigate this troublesome history of caricature. The Content of Our Caricature arrives at a gateway to understanding how a visual grammar of citizenship, and hence American identity itself, has been constructed.

Some comics fans view the industry’s Golden Age (1930s-1950s) as a challenging time when it comes to representations of race, an era when the few Black characters appeared as brutal savages, devious witch doctors, or unintelligible minstrels. Yet the true portrait is more complex and reveals that even as caricatures predominated, some Golden Age comics creators offered more progressive and nuanced depictions of Black people.    Desegregating Comics assembles a team of leading scholars to explore how debates about the representation of Blackness shaped both the production and reception of Golden Age comics. Some essays showcase rare titles like Negro Romance and consider the formal innovations introduced by Black comics creators like Matt Baker and Alvin Hollingsworth, while others examine the treatment of race in the work of such canonical cartoonists as George Herriman and Will Eisner. The collection also investigates how Black fans read and loved comics, but implored publishers to stop including hurtful stereotypes. As this book shows, Golden Age comics artists, writers, editors, distributors, and readers engaged in heated negotiations over how Blackness should be portrayed, and the outcomes of those debates continue to shape popular culture today.

Winner, 2021 Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award, given by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Winner, 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Honorable Mention, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association Winner, 2020 Charles Hatfield Book Prize, given by the Comic Studies Society Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship in the United States, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries. The Content of Our Caricature urges readers to recognize how the wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States. Historically, white artists have rendered white caricatures as virtuous representations of American identity, while their caricatures of African Americans are excluded from these kinds of idealized discourses. Employing a rich illustration program of color and black-and-white reproductions, Wanzo explores the works of artists such as Sam Milai, Larry Fuller, Richard "Grass" Green, Brumsic Brandon Jr., Jennifer Crute, Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, Ollie Harrington, and George Herriman, all of whom negotiate and navigate this troublesome history of caricature. The Content of Our Caricature arrives at a gateway to understanding how a visual grammar of citizenship, and hence American identity itself, has been constructed.