For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.
I've not read the seminal Sabre graphic novel, ostensibly the first such publication in the modern era, so I did a bit of background reading. It didn't help much, as I didn't want to spoil too much for myself, so I'm not exactly sure how Sabre and his pals have ended up in captivity by the totalitarian regime that has taken over the U.S.
Isn't it amazing how many pieces of fiction, from throughout the last hundred years or so, have warned of just this thing?
Today's featured creator, Billy Graham, has been dead longer than my kid has been alive. It's not a shocking thing, by any means, but it does give a nice sense, for me at least, of the historicity that is involved in considering the contributions of Black artists to the comics medium. As with many artists in the 70s, Mr. Graham cut his teeth on Warren's black and white magazines, illustrating a number of pieces in the original run of Vampirella. I've got a collection of the first 12 issues on my shelf, and I'll have to remember that Mr. Graham is in there when I get around to reading it. His work in this issue of Sabre is fucking brilliant. From a dream narrative to a government office to a dank dungeon, every page captures the atmosphere that one would expect to find in such a setting, and the characters react in very believable ways to their situations. I've a couple more issues of this series in the collection, and I really ought to get off my butt and get the rest of the series. It's really good.
I also would like to just take a moment to mention Don McGregor. I've been intrigued by his comics for a while, and he's one of the names to come from 70s Marvel that, along with my fave Steve Gerber, is hailed as a deft and original comics writer. But Mr. McGregor, through his comics, is also demonstrating something that I think is really important, especially given the time in which a lot of his work was published: he's a good ally. Just in this series, we have a Black leading character, a homosexual couple, and, according to sources, the first gay kiss in mainstream comics. Beats out Apollo and the Midnighter by a few decades. This comic is dedicated to Mr. McGregor's son, with the epigraph reading, in part, "with the hope that the fight for dignity and honor will be easier in the future." Given the characters populating this series, the ideas of dignity and honour carry slightly more weight than they might in a comic featuring a team of monochromatic superheroes. Have a look at Mr. McGregor's output over the course of his career, and I think you'll see that this is someone who pushed for diversity and representation in his work right from the very beginning, and really we shold be considering him an important role model for the comics community.
More to follow.
Further Reading and Related Posts
I don't have any other Billy Graham-related articles on the blog, but here's a couple more about Don McGregor's work. His Killraven is totally worth checking out.
And having mentioned the gay couple in Sabre, I'll always take an opportunity to talk about queerness in comics.
No comments:
Post a Comment