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BLACK CARTOONISTS TO TAKE A STAND: 'Comics Page Sit-In' hopes to prove that all minority comics are not alike.
*Next month, several minority cartoonists will each draw a version of the same strip as a jab to editors who make hiring decisions based on the belief that all black comic strips are alike.
Dubbed "Cartoonists of Color Comics Page Sit-In," the demonstration aims to thwart the practice of editors denying the addition of a black cartoonist or minority-themed strip because they already have one.
"I just thought, enough is enough," Darrin Bell, creator of the strip "Candorville," tells Newsweek in its latest issue. "When one of my cartoons gets added to a page, I dread asking my syndicate what I replaced because it's too often one of the other 15 'black' strips, even though they have nothing to do with mine thematically. Many of us have even been told: adding one means cutting another."
"Salespeople know editors can take biased shortcuts when evaluating comics. They often view strips that have certain characters (dogs, children, family, students, minorities) as similar in theme, even though they rarely are, and therefore they see the strips as interchangeable," says Karisue Wyson, the Marketing, Licensing and Sales Manager for the Writers Group, which syndicates a number of comic strips. "And an editor's argument that their readership doesn't contain a minority audience only advances the fallacy that minority strips are only meant to be read by minority readers."
The "Comics Page Sit-In" is scheduled to take place on Feb. 10 with participants Bell, Cory Thomas (Watch Your Head), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha), Steve Bentley (Herb and Jamaal), Jerry Craft (Mama's Boyz), Charlos Gary (Working It Out and Café Con Leche), Keith Knight (K Chronicles), and Stephen Watkins (Housebroken).
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