Comic Books

It was a great strip and Will Eisner was a great artist, but in the 1970s and 1980s when reprints first appeared, modern audiences got to see the strip's humorous supporting character, Ebony White, a black boy drawn in the manner of cartoonish blacks as they were often portrayed in comics in the 1940s. Eisner was embarrassed by this and his only excuse was that this was the accepted standard in the 1940s. There are 1940s movies which feature black stereotypes and old Tarzan movies feature black natives as violent savages. It was commonplace. There is a Donald Duck cartoon (which is not available on Disney Plus but is on Youtube) called "Tea For 200" about Donald Duck's picnic invaded by ants, black ants, and they are all portrayed like 1940s movie African natives. Every original Spirit strip was reprinted in some 30 hardcover volumes by DC Comics in the 1990s. It's the kind of thing where one looks at the character and goes, "Oh, dear. . . "