The books here are a selected representation of what is available. Search the library catalog to discover more!
The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art
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The Blacker the Ink is the first book to explore not only the diverse range of black characters in comics, but also the multitude of ways that black artists, writers, and publishers have made a mark on the industry. Organized thematically into "panels" in tribute to sequential art published in the funny pages of newspapers, the fifteen original essays take us on a journey that reaches from the African American newspaper comics of the 1930s to the Francophone graphic novels of the 2000s.
Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation
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Black Comics is an analytic history of the diverse contributions of Black artists to the medium of comics. Covering comic books, superhero comics, graphic novels and cartoon strips from the early 20th century to the present, the book explores the ways in which Black comic artists have grappled with such themes as the Black experience, gender identity, politics and social media.
Black Women in Sequence: Re-inking Comics, Graphic Novels, and Anime
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Black Women in Sequence takes readers on a search for women of African descent in comics subculture. From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character the Butterfly" - the first Black female superheroine in a comic book - to contemporary comic books, graphic novels, film, manga, and video gaming, a growing number of Black women are becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art.
Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels
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This book presents a wide ranging survey of the ways in which comics have dealt with the diversity of creators and characters and the (lack of) visibility for characters who don't conform to particular cultural stereotypes.
Black Images in the Comics: A Visual History
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Provides a chronological survey of the image of blacks in comic strips from the antebellum period to the present, looking at American and European respresentations of black people, as well as works from Africa, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates.
Encyclopedia of Black Comics
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The Encyclopedia of Black Comics, focuses on people of African descent who have published significant works in the United States or have worked across various aspects of the comics industry. The book focuses on creators in the field of comics: inkers, illustrators, artists, writers, editors, Black comic historians, Black comic convention creators, website creators, archivists and academics.
Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics
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Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics explores how fantasy-especially superhero comics, which are usually derided as naïve and childish-is a catalyst for engaging the black radical imagination. Such engagements prompt 'fantasy-acts' against antiblackness, a transgressive way of 'reading' beyond the comic-book page to envision and to experience alternate, and potentially more just, realities. Fantasies about superhero characters are not just or even primarily forms of escape, the author argues, but are active reshapings of readers and their worlds. This book offers a rich meditation on the relationship between fantasy and reality, and between the imagination and being, as it weaves Scott's personal recollections of his encounters with superhero comics with interpretive readings of figures like the Black Panther, Luke Cage, Nubia, and Blade, and theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, Saidiya Hartman, and Gore Vidal
Nelson Mandela: the Authorized Comic Book
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A graphic biography, which relays in picture form the life story of Nelson Mandela, moral and political hero--from his boyhood in a small South African village to his growing political activism with the ANC, his twenty-seven-year incarceration as prisoner 46664 on Robbens Island, his dramatic release, and his triumphant years as president of South Africa.
Jackie Ormes: the First African American Woman Cartoonist
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In the United States at midcentury - a time of few opportunities for women in general and even fewer for African American women - Jackie Ormes (1911-85) blazed a trail as a popular cartoonist with the major black newspapers of the day. Ormes's work provides an invaluable glimpse into American culture and history, with topics that include racial segregation, U.S. foreign policy, educational equality, the atom bomb, and environmental pollution, among other pressing issues of the times.
March: Book One
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March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.
Floyd Norman: an Animated Life
Animator. Storyman. Troublemaker. At 80 years old, see how Disney Legend Floyd Norman, the first African-American artist and storyman at Disney, continues to impact animation and stir up his own brand of 'trouble,' in this award-winning documentary.
Wake Up and Live: The Life of Bob Marley
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Wake Up and Live is a bold graphic novel depicting the life of Jamaican reggae singer, songwriter and musician Bob Marley. As a committed Rastafari, he became a symbol of Jamaican culture and identity, a harbinger of peace and truth who resonated with audiences worldwide.
Billie Holiday
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Born in Baltimore in 1915, and dead too early in New York in 1959, Billie Holiday became a legendary jazz singer. With her voice even now managing to touch so many people, we follow a reporter on the trail of the artist on behalf of a New York daily. Through this investigation, Sampayo and Muñoz trace, through the undertones of racism, and in the wake of the blues, the slow drift of a singer who expressed the deepest emotions in jazz.
Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow
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Satchel Paige began his baseball career in the Negro Leagues in Alabama in the 1920s. For years, Jim Crow laws, which segregated blacks and whites, kept him out of the major leagues. But they couldn't stop him from becoming a world-class athlete. This is a fictionalized account of a real-life sports hero.
Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White
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The creator of the greatest comic strip in history finally gets his due--in an eye-opening biography that lays bare the truth about his art, his heritage, and his life on America's color line. A native of nineteenth-century New Orleans, George Herriman came of age as an illustrator, journalist, and cartoonist in the boomtown of Los Angeles and the wild metropolis of New York. Appearing in the biggest newspapers of the early twentieth century--including those owned by William Randolph Hearst--Herriman's Krazy Kat cartoons quickly propelled him to fame.
It Rhymes with Lust
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It Rhymes with Lust is an illustrated book, originally published in 1950, considered one of the most notable precursors of the graphic novel. Called a "picture novel" on the cover and published by the comic book and magazine company St. John Publications
Nat Turner
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In graphic novel format, depicts the life and times of the self-educated African American preacher who led a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831, believing that God wanted him to free the slaves.
Messiah War
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Black Panther
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A Nation under our feet" is a story about dramatic upheaval in Wakanda and the Black Panther's struggle to do right by his people as their ruler. The indomitable will of Wakanda--the famed African nation known for its vast wealth, advanced technology, and warrior traditions--has long been reflected in the will of its monarchs, the Black Panthers.
Big Kids
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The debut graphic novel from a dazzling newcomer with a singular, idiosyncratic style. Big Kids is simultaneously Michael DeForge's most straightforward narrative and his most complex work to date. It follows a troubled teenage boy through the transformative years of high school as he redefines his friends, his interests, and his life path. When the boy's uncle, a police officer, gets kicked out of the family's basement apartment and transferred to the countryside, April moves in.
Nelson Mandela: the Authorized Comic Book
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A graphic biography, which relays in picture form the life story of Nelson Mandela, moral and political hero--from his boyhood in a small South African village to his growing political activism with the ANC, his twenty-seven-year incarceration as prisoner 46664 on Robbens Island, his dramatic release, and his triumphant years as president of South Africa.
Krazy and Ignatz 1931-1932
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Krazy Kat is a love story, focusing on the relationships of its three main characters--Krazy Kat, Ignatz Mouse, and Offisa Pup.
Luke Cage Noir
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A lot can change in ten years. And rarely for the better. Local legend, Luke Cage, invincible, unstoppable, unflappable, finds that out the hard way when he returns to the mean streets of Prohibition-era Harlem after a ten-year stretch in Riker's Island.
Black Lightning: The Complete 1995 Series
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Revival of DC's 1970's hero - Jeff Pierce is back, but this time with REAL electro-powers!
Bayou
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Lee Wagstaff is the daughter of a black sharecropper in the depression-era town of Charon, Mississippi. When Lily Westmoreland, her white playmate, is snatched by agents of an evil creature known as Bog, Lee's father is accused of kidnapping. Lee's only hope is to follow Lily's trail into this fantastic and frightening alternate world.
Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History
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Uncelebrated narratives from Black history is a collection of stories from African American history that exemplifies success in the face of great adversity. This unique graphic anthology offers historical and cultural commentary on nine uncelebrated heroes whose stories are not often found in history books.
Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History
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Uncelebrated narratives from Black history is a collection of stories from African American history that exemplifies success in the face of great adversity. This unique graphic anthology offers historical and cultural commentary on nine uncelebrated heroes whose stories are not often found in history books.
Hip Hop Family Tree
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The lore of the early days of hip hop has become the stuff of myth, so what better way to document this fascinating, epic true story than in another great American mythological medium — the comic book? Encyclopedic history of the formative years of the music genre that changed global culture.
Incognegro a Graphic Mystery
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Nat Turner
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In graphic novel format, depicts the life and times of the self-educated African American preacher who led a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831, believing that God wanted him to free the slaves.
Bayou
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Lee Wagstaff is the daughter of a black sharecropper in the depression-era town of Charon, Mississippi. When Lily Westmoreland, her white playmate, is snatched by agents of an evil creature known as Bog, Lee's father is accused of kidnapping. Lee's only hope is to follow Lily's trail into this fantastic and frightening alternate world.
The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century (Second Edition)
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Our story begins in the squalid corridors of a maximum-security housing project, where a young girl will rise from the war-torn streets of Chicago to battle injustice in a world insane with corruption. She will be called a hero, a traitor, and nearly everything in between, but all along the way, her courage, her integrity, and her unwavering commitment to that most valuable of right - liberty - will inspire a movement that will never surrender.
Black Panther
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A Nation under our feet" is a story about dramatic upheaval in Wakanda and the Black Panther's struggle to do right by his people as their ruler. The indomitable will of Wakanda--the famed African nation known for its vast wealth, advanced technology, and warrior traditions--has long been reflected in the will of its monarchs, the Black Panthers.
Luke Cage, Hero for Hire
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Collects the early adventures of Luke Cage, the foremost African American superhero of the 1970s, who was transformed from an ordinary man to a superhero by a medical experiment gone awry. Originally published in 1972-1975.
Truth: Red, White & Black
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Story of the African American men involuntarily subjected to the U.S. War Department’s zsuper soldiery project, in a race to develop a serum that might turn the tide against the Axis powers. An epic spanning the time just before the attack on Pearl Harbor into the present day, Truth finally reveals the tragic sacrifice that a black infantry unit made for its country—and what those sacrifices meant to a white man named Steve Rogers.
Saga
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"The sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the universe. When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old world"
Shazam!
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DC's Captain Marvel was reimagined as a 15-year-old teenager--one who is fated to grow up much faster than he'd hoped. Arrayed against him are some of the most menacing villains the world has ever seen: Dr. Sivana, a scientific genius as evil as he is intelligent; Captain Nazi, an Aryan übermensch bent on building a new American reich; and Black Adam, a 5,000-year-old tyrant with the same powers as Captain Marvel and the cold-hearted ambition to rule the world!
Cage!
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The award-winning animator behind Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack and Hotel Transylvania brings his visionary talents to Marvel! On the mean streets of Harlem, shoes are big, shirts are large, bottoms are belled and crime is rampant! But in the heart of the city, the world's hardest-working, smack-talking, chain-wearing super hero is on the streets and on the case! And his rates are reasonable! He's Cage! Dig it!
Afrodisiac
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Afrodisiac first appeared in the final installment of Rugg and Maruca's popular indie comics series Street Angel, about a homeless skateboarder and girl hero. Incarnations followed in Project Superior, Adhouse's showcase for superheroes by indie artists, and in exhibits like a Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators show. Bigger stages eluded Afrodisiac until Chris Pitzer, head of Richmond, Va.-based Adhouse, suggested a book-length collection.
X-Force: New Beginning
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Contains material originally published in magazine form as X-Force #116-120.
Tom Strong
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Sent off to be raised by a robot nanny on the isolated island of Attabar Teru by his father, who is determined to create the perfect son, and later adopted by the Attabar Teru tribe, Tom Strong becomes a super hero in Millennium City.
Habibi
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Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the tale of Dodola and Zam, refugee child slaves bound to each other by chance, by circumstance, and by the love that grows between them. We follow them as their lives unfold together and apart; as they struggle to make a place for themselves in a world (not unlike our own) fueled by fear, lust, and greed; and as they discover the extraordinary depth-- and frailty-- of their connection.
100 Bullets
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What would you do if you were given the opportunity and the means to get away with murder, scot-free? That's the question posed in 100 Bullets, combining elements of hard-boiled crime stories and paranoid espionage thrillers. The mysterious Agent Graves offers his clients a gun and immunity from prosecution, enabling them to get revenge against those who ruined their lives.
Luke Cage Noir
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A lot can change in ten years. And rarely for the better. Local legend, Luke Cage, invincible, unstoppable, unflappable, finds that out the hard way when he returns to the mean streets of Prohibition-era Harlem after a ten-year stretch in Riker's Island.
The Multiversity
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The biggest adventure in DC's history is here! Join visionary writer Grant Morrison, today's most talented artists, and a cast of unforgettable heroes from 52 alternative Earths of the DC Multiverse.
Black Lightning: The Complete 1995 Series
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Revival of DC's 1970's hero - Jeff Pierce is back, but this time with REAL electro-powers!
Astro City: The Dark Age
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Two brothers take very different paths, one, becoming a hero, and other, becoming a villain, as their experiences growing up provide some explanation.
The Silencer
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Super-strong, highly trained, armed with devastating and stealthy metahuman abilities, the Silencer is virtually invincible. Or at least she was. After decades as Leviathan's chief assassin, Honor Guest put in her time and managed to get out with her skin intact. Now she lives a normal life with a normal family in a normal house on a normal street. But the past has come back to haunt her in the form of her old employer and a deadly new mission...and Talia al Ghul won't take no for an answer.
Static Shock - Supercharged
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The first adventures of New York City teenaged superhero Virgil Hawkins, whose battle against pharma-mutated thugs reveals to him just how powerful he is.
Weird Fantasy: Volume 3
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