Black comic book creators and characters showcased in new art exhibition

When Kimberly Jacobs, a curator for the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, first started putting together an exhibit featuring the work of Black comic book creators, she didn’t know much about comics. By the time the exhibit debuted on July 26, she found herself lost in stacks of reading that spanned classic Black Panther comics to recent works such as Bitter Roots.

She became a comic book fan, and the man behind the exhibit, Phillip Thompson, couldn’t have been happier to see it.

“Look at you!” Thompson says to her with a big smile, as she rattles off details from her reading to Pittsburgh City Paper at the exhibit.

Collections in Black: A Celebration of Black Comic Book Culture, which runs through Jan. 12, 2025, features an extensive, unprecedented collection of original artwork and other cultural artifacts.

Thompson, better known in the local music community as DJ Big Phill, filled the exhibit with primarily original artwork from Black comic book artists and comics featuring Black characters. It coincides with a yet-unreleased documentary about Black comic book culture, but the opening reception for the exhibit contained a screening of an abridged version. Much of the exhibit comes from private collectors, including Thompson's large collection of comic books and original art.

Black comics history arguably starts in 1930s Pittsburgh with two early transplants to the city: Jackie Ormes, credited as the first-ever Black woman to be a published cartoonist, and Matt Baker, the artist of It Rhymes with Lust, often considered the first-ever graphic novel. They are included in the exhibit, which covers decades of comics history to the present, featuring seminal works such as the early Black Panther comics of the '60s and '70s, all the way up to contemporary work from Black comic book artists such as Brian Stelfreeze.

“We have a heavy impact,” Thompson says. “There are so many unsung heroes in the comic industry, and there are some that have been pushed to the side, and there are some you don’t know because you just don’t know. During the Golden, Bronze Age, and Silver Age, before the internet, sometimes these guys didn’t even go to the office, so you didn’t even know these guys were Black.”
The exhibit has original editions of historic comic books, such as Ultimate Fallout #4 from 2011, which debuted the Miles Morales Spider-Man; vintage toys and collectibles; and other artifacts. However, the focus is on original artwork.

“This is the first time anything like this has been from a cultural perspective,” Thompson says. “There isn’t another exhibit showing anywhere that has Black comic book art where it’s all original artwork.”

One particularly striking page in the exhibit comes from the 1972 Avengers #105, following a brief period during which Marvel Comics made T’Challa choose to go by Black Leopard to distance the character from the real-life political group. In the pages of the comic, T’Challa explained to his fellow Avengers that he didn’t want his personal goals to be conflated with that of others but decided to reprise his original superhero moniker. “I am not a stereotype,” T’Challa says. “I am myself. And I am – the Black Panther!”
Comic book artwork is typically created in a multistep process often passed from one artist to the next, starting with pencils, then inks, then colors. The exhibit mostly displays the original pencils or inks. Thompson loves closely observing the artwork and recommends attendees return to the exhibit to give the images more than a cursory first glance.

“When you come back, and you’re like, okay, I know what this is, and then you study a little more, and then you delve and then it turns into a whole other appreciation for what it is,” Thompson says.

Over time, original comic artwork will become rarer because many of today’s comic artists work entirely digitally, out of convenience. Inks and, especially, colors are rarely done physically in the mainstream comics industry anymore, and many modern comic artists never even pick up a pencil.
Thompson hopes the exhibit will appeal to dedicated comic nerds and the general art-loving public. Comic book artwork rarely graces the inside of fine art spaces, but Thompson doesn’t see a distinction.

“It was important for me to do the exhibit because I also wanted people to understand that this is fine art,” Thompson says. “This isn’t some scribble-scrabble, some bullshit, this is fine art, and these artists need to be respected.”

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Collections in Black: A Celebration of Black Comic Book Culture. Continues through Jan. 12, 2025. August Wilson African American Cultural Center. 980 Liberty Ave., Downtown. Free. awaacc.org