28 February 2018

In The Days Before The Panther Ruled

When it comes to oddly unique stories, the coolest tale for Ebon doesn't appear on the pages of the comic. Cover-dated 1970, Ebon was published in December of 1969 in San Franciso when the undergrounds were in full bloom.


Larry Fuller had a desire to tell the story of an authentic black super hero, an idea that started a few years earlier, while he was still serving in the Air Force. After returning to civilian life and moving to San Francisco, he ran into what might seem like an insurmountable problem to any other man. He couldn't find an artist for the book. He did, however, have the G.I. Bill, which provided for college education for service veterans. So to accomplish his dream, he used it to go to art school and learn to draw the book - both pencils and inks.

While the comic suffers for the lack of a more experienced and polished inker, it's amazing to think it was created by someone who hadn't the skills to even attempt it only a 2 or 3 years before that point. The book stands as a testament to what ambition and drive can accomplish when a man has a vision and the will to achieve it.

The entire story runs 26 pages, so we'll be trimming a bit for length -


 Our hero is taken up to the ship, and learns of Oju and his people - a once fearsome warrior race now dedicated to the prevention of destruction and violence. He explains that centuries ago "our greatest explorer, Jom, came here and found life!"


Jom's Heart acts as a catalyst, foreshadowing the Inhuman's Terrigenesis in later Marvel comics, and is rendered comatose. Oju's machines tend to Valentine while he undergoes his metamorphosis, and soon...


 The book was published by Gary Arlington, a San Francisco comic shop owner, and it had exceedingly low distribution - fewer than 100 copies were sold.


Without being able to generate the necessary audience, issue 2 was never produced. Last i knew, Fuller still had designs on continuing the character, and mentions intent to do so on his website. However, it doesn't seem to have been updated in this century, so there's no telling there.

Quite interestingly, Fuller later wound up working together with Grass Green - the creator of Super Soul American from our previous post. As yet, i've been unable to find copies of those comics. Damn.

A little over a year later, another small publisher produced an even harder to find comic:


Written and published by Tom Floyd, with strong artwork from Eric O'Kelley, the book starred Steven Thomas who is transformed by a fairly generic laboratory accident into the Soul Wonder Of The World, with powers of Strength, Invulnerability and Flight. Leader Comics operated out of Indiana, which likely didn't help the distribution.

As we've seen above, distribution was a big problem for the independent publisher. There was, however, one black hero who got his own title from a major publisher way back in 1965...


We'll talk about Lobo next time...

The Road To Wakanda

The Black Panther, like T'Challa, is King these days - ruling the box-office world. While he made his debut in 1966, it wasn't until 1977 that he finally got his own title. That slow start is fairly indicative of the rough ride getting here to mass market star. If we had over 8000 folks so intimidated by the idea of a black hero that they were voting against the film before they could even have seen it, just imagine what it was like a half century back. It was a struggle to even get the idea of a black hero out there, in any form.

There were other attempts to do a black hero in comics - some savage social parody, some straight-up heroes, and some a mix of both. But - damn. It's been a bumpy road...




With the way of underground comics of the time, one often could expect to find conventions subverted and cultural norms toppled. It wasn't too surprising to find the "hero" of a story (or comic) to be more villain in perception, and so our hero in the second issue of Captain Guts appears as the villain -

 NOTE: This tale, and one page in the story below, contain nudity and such,
and have been moved to our back room for adult content.



Their main confrontation occurs in chapter two -





It was his comic, however, so he eventually drank more beer, got over it, and came back to screw her white. (seriously)

On very rare occasion, a black hero even got his own book. Back in 1972, the same year Luke Cage became the first black hero to headline his own book at Marvel, strange things were afoot over at Kitchen Sink -


This one was quite the odd mix. It's parody, sort of, with an underpining of dark social commentary - but not all outwardly directed. Richard "Grass" Green had a unique blend here that's tightly bound to the time of its creation.


Page Omitted for nudity as our hero meets a naked woman who's never
been to bed with a superhero and wants to fix that problem... 



Despite any proclamations above, nobody on this page was ever seen again to my knowledge.

Next post, we'll look at a few heroes more serious in tone.


Ace Of Spades from Up Your Nose #1, Afro Boy from Pervert Comix #1, other strips from the comics indicated in the provided covers (1969-1972)