Sunday, February 12, 2012

Fawcett's Negro Romance 2: "Possessed" (new scan)

Fawcett's now celebrated Negro Romance 2 was last year the subject of a History Detectives investigation by Gwen Wright, answering Washington University's Gerald Early's questions about the comic book:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/african-american-comic-book/

The video features an appearance by Sequential Crush author, Jacque Nodell, and the website also provides scans of the first story in the book. The episode, very importantly, identified the author of the book as Roy Ald, then an editor at Fawcett, and the artist as Alvin Hollingsworth. Alvin Hollingsworth was African American and, following his career in comics, went on to become a recognized representational and abstract artist and art teacher, before passing away in 2000. The particular copy used in the video had the art slightly defaced by the original owner. Presented here is a scan of "Possessed" from a different (but also coverless) copy of this rare and important book. Over the next few days the other two stories in the issue will be posted here, to mark a return to the blogosphere of Out of This World and to celebrate African American History Month 2012, which focuses on Black Women in American Culture and History. This early 1950s romance comic was written and drawn for a female African American audience, and depicts black women in the kind of romance narrative that was common to all books of that genre at that time. So here's the new scan, same story as the old scan that's out there, but without the pink colored pencil additions that adorn the book used in the History Detectives video:














Once the three stories are posted on Out of This World, the whole (coverless) comic will be submitted to the Digital Comic Museum. I'll post the link to that when it is added to the DCM archive.

5 comments:

  1. WOW!!!! Great stuff! The artwork has a similar look to Matt Baker's. Can't wait for the next installment.

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  2. Glad you enjoyed that first story, and I appreciate you looking in. Both the other stories are good too, only one more by Holligsworth, though.

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  3. If you don't mind, I'd like to re post these great stories on Reginald Hudlin's forum.

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  4. KR Style: be my guest - this material is public domain, plus due to its significance in African American history it needs to be disseminated as widely as possible, IMO.

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