more rainbow (sort of)

After wondering about Rainbow recently I went on a scout to see if much had been written about people of colour in early 20th century British comics (we know what the Americans did, and it was no prettier). I didn't find much, but it was an interesting journey I guess. There is something called The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics which included (in 2010, the first article in the first issue) an article by one Paul Gravett called 'From Iky Mo to Lord Horror: representations of Jews in British comics' which is obviously not the same thing but you'd think there would be some pointers or commonalities or something in there. It didn't really suit my purposes though it was quite interesting, a scenic tour of all kinds of examples of representations of quite another minority (I guess when it comes down to it black people were much much more of a minority in early C20 Britain than Jews who, according to Gravett, made up 1% of the population). A quick look through my Penguin Book of Comics and another book I haven't looked at for a yonk, The World Encyclopedia of Comics (ed. Maurice Horn) didn't want to go there (although to be honest I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for, but the Penguin BOC for instance was not up for some kind of expose of racism as far as I can tell. (Neither of them listed Marzipan as a character, the PBOC does have quite a bit to say about Tiger Tim, though.)

It doesn't matter in a way because I'm less interested in what was published and more interested in what it meant at the time, and I guess those kinds of books aren't going to tell us that (and also, eye of the beholder, etc). 

I did discover that Marzipan (originally 'Marzi-Pan') was drawn by one Ernest Webb but just like the comics historians of the 1960s-70s, (btw: not real historians) the current enthusiasts/collectors just don't have any real interest in the social history of these publications, and I'm not equipped to do much of that study myself. 

I just looked through all the issues of The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics which is actually a pretty fine looking publication though not much of it really clicks with me (I could not care less about superhero comics, for instance). They have evolved from running articles about Alison Bechdel in successive issues to actually finding a niche I think and even expanding to 6 issues a year (though it seems there were only 4 this year - so far, anyway). I downloaded a couple of articles for later perusal. I think this might be the place to put a Colonel Pewter article at any rate. 

And that clearly will present a whole lot of extra problems when it comes to representation of colonialism because if you can't even figure out what 'Eggs for Char, George?' means (was it a catchphrase from radio? Something from a film??) what business do you have trying to write with authority about... anything? (British newspapers, it would appear, listed 'eggs' and 'char' in the same sentence four or five times in the late 19th century; I know that 'char' is a kind of British slang term for 'tea' but I don't know if it only means/meant tea the drink or if it can/could also mean tea the meal. However, I think that whatever it means the joke here in this frame from Colonel Pewter as published in the Melbourne Age 31 July 1953 is that an 'uncivilised' and certainly 'non-western' black man in 'traditional' garb is saying something ridiculously British-vernacular. Back to square one, although I still think the point of Marzipan's language was not that it was funny that a black man could wander round anytown, UK with a big magic candy cane in his pocket being treated with complete civility by everyone around him, but that black people were simply visually recognisable 'types' about whom nothing more be said or understood.