Black Like Lois

I found a full copy of the Lois Lane comic I Am Curious (Black), which was recently referred to on BoingBoing and am sharing it with you, since:

a) I love cheese

b) I’ve recently rediscovered my old love for comic books

Here’s the whole comic, stored as a set of JPEGs in a zip file [5.1MB zip file]. If you

have one of those programs that can read .cbz files (like CDisplay for Windows or FFView for Mac OS X), change the filename extension of the file to .cbz.

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Why can’t we all just get along? Lois Lane decided to do a story on

what it’s like to be black in Metropolis in 1970 (that’s when the comic

was published). She goes to Metropolis’ black neighbourhood, “Little

Africa”, where she finds that everybody steers clear of honky.

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Oh, that whitey!

Back in the seventies, before we had blogs, you had to find a nice

concrete block, stand on it and start ranting. “Look at her, brothers

and sisters! She’s young and sweet and pretty!” This guy says the exact

same thing Tony Pierce says in his blog!

(Of course, like me and unlike the dude above, Tony doesn’t mind the miscegenation thing.)

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Because we aren’t the woman for whom Superman has the super-hots, we

would probably have to take the boring tack by say, phoning up a

community leader or civil rights activist and schedule a phone

interview or invite them down to the Daily Planet and ask them about

the black experience. Or perhaps ask a black reporter to go cover the

story (assuming the Daily Planet had black reporters in 1970).

However, Lois Lane is that woman, so she has Supes take time out of his

busy schedule to fly her to the Fortress of Solitude (his base in

Antarctica) and put her in the race-changing machine that he oh-so-conveniently happens

to have.

You must remember that this was 1970, and we didn’t have the skill for

technobabble that we do now, several Star Trek televsion series later.

“Plastimold” and “Transformoflux Pack” just don’t have the same ring as

“Warp Core” or “Structural Integrity Field”.

Wait a minute…a machine that turns you black, invented by a scientist

named “Dahr-nel”? Did he have an assistant named “Mont-el” too?

This is just too painful. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the Wayans Brothers scripted this comic.

(The “El” surname is popular on Superman’s homeworld, Krypton. His birthname is “Kal-El” and his father’s name is “Jor-El”.)

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Supes takes black Lois back to Metropolis. She tries to hail a cab

driven by her friend Benny, but he passes her by, preferring to pick up

a white fare. One can imagine a young Lenny Kravitz reading this comic

and getting inspired.

(I think Lois looks much prettier as a black woman.)