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RACE AND ETHNICITY. Th e history of comics has been complicated by authors’

considerations of racial and ethnic identity at least since the many 19th-century
depictions of African slaves in English and American abolitionist cartoons. However,
caricatures of African physiognomy that portrayed blacks as ignorant savages quickly
became more common in European humor magazines and early American com-
ics created by artists like the German cartoonist Wilhelm Busch and the Americans
Richard Outcault, Frederick Burr Opper, and Winsor McCay. Th ese authors’ black
characters prepared the ground for hundreds of later African and African American
stereotyped comics characters whose history bears remarkable similarities to the evolu-
tion of American minstrelsy. Th e swollen lips, enlarged eyes, simply drawn faces, and
predisposition to slapstick that distinguish characters like Sambo Johnson, Mickey
Mouse, and Felix the Cat were also customary features of the minstrel stage from the
late 18th century on. Many 19th-century British newspapers employed minstrel refer-
ences to depict the Irish as a race of savage, subhuman degenerates, while American
political cartoons expressed anxiety about increasing immigrant populations through
exaggerated portraits of Italian, Jewish, and Irish citizens. Th ough many more recent
artists have sought to undermine these and other ethnic stereotypes through complex
characterization and socially conscious storylines, several mainstream publications
continue to include few or no non-white characters.
Comics have engaged with the intersection of modern racial and political issues
since 1932, when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman for Action Comics.
Like many other Jewish American artists of the early 20th century, especially those
working in fi lm and theater, Siegel and Shuster espoused popular social views in
their creative work. Such affi liations with the public imaginary served as a tool of