ALL-NEGRO COMICS: America's First Black Comic Book, wonderful anthology that's a 2025 WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD

ALL-NEGRO COMICS: America's First Black Comic Book
CHRIS ROBINSON (created by Orrin C. Evans)
Image Comics (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD • The first comic ever created by African Americans, for African Americans.

Three quarters of a century ago, Orrin C. Evans lead a team of cartoonists to create the first comic book anthology of original Black characters created by Black talent, with the expressed purpose of entertaining while rejecting harmful stereotypes and pushing boundaries in the industry. This was only 8 years after Action Comics #1, 6 years after Captain America #1 and a whole 19 years before Black Panther hit the pages of Fantastic Four.

All-Negro Comics #1 should be among those revered moments in comic book history, but the original print run was quickly removed from newsstands and faded into obscurity, remaining largely unknown for 75 years. . . until now.

All-Negro Comics 75th Anniversary Edition (an Eisner Award-winning collection) preserves that history for generations to come, containing All-Negro Comics #1, in full and digitally remastered for clarity, several essays for historical context and contemporary reflection, as well as new stories by Black writers and artists of today, featuring the original characters.

This award-winning volume includes:

• The complete single issue from 1947, digitally remastered! Consistent colors, crisp text, and no damage! • Contemporary comics and prose stories, featuring the All-Negro Comics characters, written by notable Black creators of today • Essays that provide historical and cultural context to deepen your reading experience • A discussion guide and resource list

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I had no inkling (!) this series of comics ever existed. Which is the point of banning and suppressing books: If you don't see yourself in popular culture, you have no reason to think you belong in it. I myownself, standing on an already enormous mountain of white male privilege, was also given the gift of growing up after Stonewall...I know exactly how important it is to see your Self, your identity and looks, your behavior and thoughts, in the culture around you.

I can't even imagine how much more important it is today, and certainly was in the past, to Black children...adults, too, but comics reach both groups.

The Eisner Award has never been given more thoughtfully and necessarily than to honor these groundbreaking creators, ignored far, far too long:

I liked seeing the cover art, just as art, without the usual impedimenta to get in the way of its kinetic design. It's easier to enjoy as art:

In my defense of personal ignorance about this comic book's existence, I offer the fact I never read a comic book in my life until I was almost ten. I got books whenever I wanted, bought for me or from the library, so I never developed the interest or formed the habit. Of course, no one pitched them to me like Orrin C. Evans pitched these comics:

Silver-tongued devil, no?

So your comics maven will enjoy the Eisener winner part, your Black history maven will enjoy the recovered history and the prescience of Orrin C. Evans in doing it at all, and it looks lovely on the tablet if you've got an ereader! Now, enjoy some of Ace Harlem's adventures:

#ReadingIsResistance

BLACK, QUEER, AND UNTOLD: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, and Trailblazers, a beautiful object that's very informative

BLACK, QUEER, AND UNTOLD: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, and Trailblazers
JON KEY
Levine Querido (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$35.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Growing up in Seale, Alabama as a Black Queer kid, then attending the Rhode Island School of Design as an undergraduate, Jon Key hungered to see himself in the fields of Art and Design. But in lectures, critiques, and in the books he read, he struggled to see and learn about people who intersected with his identity or who GOT him. So he started asking himself, What did it mean to be a graphic designer with his point of view? What did it mean to be a Black graphic designer? A Queer graphic designer? Someone from the South? Could his identity be communicated through a poster or a book? How could identity be archived in a design canon that has consistently erased contributions by designers who were not white, straight, and male?

In Black, Queer, & Untold , acclaimed designer and artist Jon Key answers these questions and manifests the book he and so many others wish they had when they were coming up. He pays tribute to the incredible designers, artists, and people who came before and provides them an enduring, reverential stage—and in doing so, gifts us a book that immediately takes its place among the creative arts canon.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A man whose way to view the world is through the lens of visual design is a rare soul, one of a tiny brotherhood who embrace this view.

Now imagine knowing this about yourself, then running into a wall erected to exclude you because you're Black. Overcoming that hurdle, if you do, only now to realize you still must jump the huge hurdles placed in both directions for you because you're Queer.

That's Jon Key's life. In putting his experiences as a Black, Queer, creative man into context, he's offered us beautiful images, lovely descriptive words for them that are both evocative and analytical, and details about them, their creators, and the milieu in which they were created.

No matter where you go, there we are.

An example of the page design.

Text from the period, nineteenth century America; illustration of Mary.

What Author Key does with this beautfully designed and carefully considered book is show and tell us, from our variety of privileges, how far we have—and have not—come as a society.

I cannot imagine this performer's act would be possible to present in the 21st century. Loss, or gain?

I don't know if these images will convey to you the visual and cultural richness of the read. As expected for a book by a very visual author, it is a beautiful object. I'm also deeply glad I now know so much more about Queer, and Black Queer, life through the US's history of multiple oppressions.

A book to have on your shelves for inspiration, edification, and uplift.

A SHORT HISTORY OF BLACK CRAFT IN TEN OBJECTS, beautiful gift object as well as solid primer on crafts-as-art

A SHORT HISTORY OF BLACK CRAFT IN TEN OBJECTS
ROBELL AWAKE (illus. Johnalynn Holland; afterword by Tiffany Momon)
Princeton Architectural Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Ten beautifully illustrated essays tell the stories of handcrafted objects and their makers, providing inspiration and insight into Black history and craftsmanship.

Black artisans have long been central to American art and design, creating innovative and highly desired work against immense odds. Atlanta-based chairmaker and scholar Robell Awake explores the stories behind ten cornerstones of Black craft, including:

The celebrated wooden chairs of Richard Poynor, an enslaved craftsman who began a dynasty of Tennessee chairmakers.

The elegant wrought-iron gates of Philip Simmons, seen to this day throughout Charleston, South Carolina, whose work features motifs from the Low Country.

The inventive assemblage art and yard shows of Joe Minter, James Hampton, Bessie Harvey, and others, who draw on African spiritual traditions to create large-scale improvisational art installations.

From the enslaved potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, to Ann Lowe, the couture dressmaker who made Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding dress, to Gullah Geechee sweetgrass basket makers, to the celebrated quilters of Gee's Bend, A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects illuminates the work of generations of Black craftspeople, foregrounding their enduring contributions to American craft.

BLACK CRAFT AND AMERICANA: Delving into the history of Black skilled artisans, estimated to have outnumbered white artisans five to one in the southern United States in the late 1800s, this unique art history book celebrates handcrafted objects that reflect the dynamic nature of Black culture.

DYNAMIC ILLUSTRATED ESSAYS: Luminous color illustrations by artist Johnalynn Holland highlight beloved craft objects and their makers, creating a fascinating volume to study and treasure.

ART HISTORY EXPERTISE: Author Robell Awake is a notable furniture maker, artisan, and educator whose work has been featured in the New York Times and in group shows at Verso Gallery in New York City and the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC. Dr. Tiffany Momon, who contributes an afterword, is the founder and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive and a leading scholar of Black history and African American placemaking throughout the southeast.

BEAUTIFUL GIFT BOOK: The gorgeous design is ideal for art collectors and craft enthusiasts, as a keepsake reminder of Black heritage, for Black History Month and beyond.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There's a lot to love about Black History Month. One big thing is its use as a goad to look out for Black creators, and creativity centering Black life and experiences, in my otherwise very, very white life. I am an old white man and really appreciate the push to look out for ideas and art I don't see on the regular.

I think you're going to like it. Look:

Laying out the course we'll follow.

So beautiful, the evocation of the spirit of the quilt.


They're stunning as art; they're vital as cultural documents.

This kind of pottery makes my hairs stand up. Such a shot of Truth! It's a personality, it's a real Presence, an avatar of interiority.



Speaking real, home truth there, Dave.


It's a bureau that, as I look at it, is exactly like one Mama had; I wonder if that one was made by a Black craftsman, and I have no way to know....

A beautiful object about beautiful objects. An adornment for the coffee table. The essays aren't exactly stunning prose, or hugely academic; they're tonally appropriate enhancements of one's existing, or good seedstock for one's entirely absent, knowledge base of the long, long tradition of Black art in the craft sphere. Can't quite give it that full fifth star because it's doing its job but not stretching me as a reader; it will others, though.