https://www.comics.org/issue/241535
Literature Review
Mr. Evans was born in 1902 in Steeleton, Pennsylvania, the eldest son of George J. Evans Sr, and Maude Wilson Evans. Mr. Evans Sr was employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, his wife was the first black to graduate from the Williamsport Teachers’ College, and the family lived in white neighborhoods. However, despite this stable home life the every day realities of Northern racism were never far from their door. Mr. Evans Sr passed for white in order to provide a better living for his family than the menial jobs available to blacks would allow, but this forced him to carry the pretense to the inevitable ends of hiding the darker skinned Orrin in a back room while Maude donned an apron and pretended to be a maid when friends from his work dropped by. On other occasions, his father was not able to acknowledge Orrin at his workplace. Years later Orrin was visibly moved when relating these episodes
His first job was on the Sportsman’s Magazine at age 17, and his first real newspaper experience was with the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest black paper in the country. From there, in the early nineteen-thirties, he decided to break the color barrier and landed a writing position on the Philadelphia Record, becoming the first black writer to cover general assignments for a mainstream white newspaper in the United States. In 1944 at the Record he wrote a series of articles about segregation in the armed services, which were read into the congressional record, and helped end the practice. He won an honorable mention in that year’s Hayword Hale Broun award, but also drew some unwelcome attention. To criticize the government during wartime, even to point out the obvious hypocrisy of segregating troops putting their lives on the line to defend a country where democracy supposedly makes all men equal was considered treasonous by some and he and his family received death threats. His daughter Hope remembers their house being protected in a 24 hour a day vigil by a congregation of Orrin’s friends, both black and white, until the threats subsided.
This was not the only time Orrin was threatened because of his color and position. Once at the Philadelphia Police Precinct at 55th and Pine a police sergeant pulled his revolver and ordered him out of the station, not believing a black man had any legitimate place on the front side of the bars, and the national hero and Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh once held up a press conference during the infamous kidnapping of his son to have Orrin ousted because he was black.
Shortly after the war, the Record was hit by a strike and management decided to shut the paper down rather than settle the labor issues. Orrin was out of a job and looking for something to do. He had always loved cartoons. His daughter Hope, a teacher like her grandmother, mother, and aunt remembers her father reading the comics to her, and particularly enjoying The Katzenjammer Kids and Lil Abner. At work he liked to walk through the art department and watch the staff cartoonists work.
All Negro Comics # 1 carries a cover date of June 1947. No information about the press run or distribution remains, but it is believed that the comic was distributed outside of the Philadelphia area.
A second issue was planned and the art completed, but when Orrin was ready to publish he found that his source for newsprint would no longer sell to him, nor would any of the other vendors he contacted. Though Orrin was unyielding in his support of integration and civil rights he was moderate in his methods of achieving these goals. He believed in the general fairness of the system he had been born into. He was not a man given to conspiratorial thinking, but his family remembers that his belief was that there was pressure being placed on the newsprint wholesalers by bigger publishers and distributors who didn’t welcome any intrusions on their established territories.
Race and economics have always been emotionally charged rallying points and from this date we can only look to the model of history and judge for ourselves. Surely the mainstream publishers had an interest in cultivating the black market. Parent’s Magazine published two issues of Negro Heroes, dated Spring 1947 and Summer 1948, featuring reprints from their Calling All Girls, Real Heroes and True Comics. Fawcett published three issues of Negro Romance, the second issue being reprinted by Charlton as Negro Romances number four, dated June through October 1950 and May 1955 respectively, as well as a series of sports hero comics about 1950 that included short runs of books starring Jackie Robinson and Joe Lewis. White companies also designed and distributed tabloid sized inserts of comics and general interest material to be inserted into black newspapers, but All Negro Comics was not only the first comic of original material to be marketed to blacks, it was the only comic book produced by blacks, and the only comic book featuring black characters in lead heroic roles. After this, with the very obvious exception of several anti-racist EC stories, blacks disappeared from comics except for background in the jungle books, where the day was always saved by white jungle kings. Blacks were never seen in street scenes, never anguished over lost romances or romped in teen aged innocence. Probably the next time a black appeared in a comic book was Spiderman 18, November 1964, where a black cop is depicted. There were exceptions to prove the rule: some romance comics with photo covers used occasional pictures of relatively darker girls, but with straight hair and generally Caucasian features, and there’s a solitary black on a mid 1950s Charlton cover about the time they reprinted Negro Romances. Gabe Jones of Sgt Fury’s Howling Commandos debuted with a May 1963 cover date, but in true comicbook fashion, the series depicts integration of the armed services at a time when there was none, while comics in general made no mention of a contemporary issue. Blacks were never seen in their true percentage of the population until after this first appearance in Spiderman. The first silver age black hero, the Black Panther was created by Lee and Kirby and debuted in Fantastic Four 52, July 1966. A series of black history comics were released under the general title of Golden Legacy, between 1966 and 1972. There were sixteen issues published with most titles reprinted in 1976, and again in 1983. The last American edition of Classics Illustrated, number 169 was Negro Americans The Early Years published in 1969. The second issue of All Negro was never published.
Ace Harlem was the first Black Detective to be featured in a comic book.
Ace Harlem was written by John Terrell and published by Orrin Cromwell Evans in the 1947 All Negro Comics #1 comic book.
Ace Harlem is a detective story is set in Harlem, USA that fuses the good, the bad, the innocent and the victim, depicting life during the 1940s.
The Ace Harlem Story:
- Famed Black Detective
- Represents the fearless, intelligent Black police officers engaged in the constant fight against crime
- Regards all criminals as cowards
Ace Harlem is a top-notch, two-fisted detective. He demonstrated a great power of observation and deduction.
He’s a charismatic man, respected by Harlemites. Between this trust and his detection skills, he excels at finding locals who do not want to be found.
To examine potential clues, our hero distinctively uses a jeweller’s eyepiece. Our game stats assume a 10x magnification. He also carries a flashlight.
One assumes that he’s armed. Back then he would have packed a regulation S&W Model 10 or Colt Official Police revolver, chambered in .38 Special. But Ace doesn’t produce a weapon during the story, even when attacked.
Mr. Harlem drives an ordinary car.
https://www.writeups.org/ace-harlem-all-negro-comics-john-terrell
Lion Man only appeared in the single published issue of All-Negro Comics #1 (1947). Lion Man was co created by journalist Orrin Evans, his brother George J. Evans, and John Terrell. “American-born, college educated, Lion Man is a young scientist, sent by the United Nations to watch over the fearsome ‘Magic Mountain’ of the African Gold Coast. Within its crater lies the world’s largest deposit of Uranium enough to make an atom bomb that could destroy the world. Lion Man’s job is to report on the doings of any treacherous nation that might seek to carry away any of the lethal stuff for the purpose of war.“ Lion Man only appeared in the single published issue of All-Negro Comics #1 (1947). Lion Man was co created by journalist Orrin Evans, his brother George J. Evans, and John Terrell. “American-born, college educated, Lion Man is a young scientist, sent by the United Nations to watch over the fearsome ‘Magic Mountain’ of the African Gold Coast. Within its crater lies the world’s largest deposit of Uranium enough to make an atom bomb that could destroy the world. Lion Man’s job is to report on the doings of any treacherous nation that might seek to carry away any of the lethal stuff for the purpose of war.“
“Once suppliers learned what Evans was doing, they refused to sell paper and ink to the newsman,” write Frances Gateward and John Jennings in the introduction to The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. “Nevertheless, All-Negro Comics demonstrates what black writers and artists can produce when allowed agency, access, and freedom of expression.”
That his groundbreaking publication was strangled at birth can’t have hugely surprised Evans. As both journalist and American citizen he had experienced racism in its cruelest, most overt forms his entire life. He was born in Steelton Pennsylvania, four miles from Harrisburg, in 1902, growing up when racial prejudice was the suppressive atmosphere in which most of America broiled.
References:
https://www.writeups.org/ace-harlem-all-negro-comics-john-terrell