Black Humor

By Andrew D. Arnold

Graphic novels used to be viewed as comic books--only bigger and more pretentious. Now that sales are booming, the medium is being embraced by artists as a hip way to tell challenging stories. The just released Birth of a Nation (Crown; 140 pages) by Aaron McGruder, creator of the controversial comic strip The Boondocks, and Reginald Hudlin, director of the 1990 movie House Party, began as a movie script that used race as the centerpiece of a political satire. "By the time we realized how difficult that would be to sell in Hollywood, we had already fallen in love with the idea, and we just wanted it to exist," McGruder says. "If you want to tell these stories where somebody's going to see them, you've got to find a different path."

Birth of a Nation imagines what might happen if the mostly African-American residents of East St. Louis, Ill., fed up with an electoral process that isn't working for them, seceded from the union and declared their city a sovereign state. Fred Fredericks, the mayor turned President of the newly named Blackland, must balance the country's utopian initiatives (adopting hitherto suppressed alternative-fuel technologies) with the difficulties of life in a rogue nation (where federal checks no longer come in). The satire is omnivorous, poking fun at the Bush Administration and Louis Farrakhan.

The book is affably illustrated by graphic novelist Kyle Baker. The comixcenti may sniff at its simple layout, but neophytes will appreciate its readability. And though it lacks the racial zings of, say, Dave Chappelle, it manages to land some clever social jabs. Hollywood is unlikely to have told this tale with more punch--if it told it at all.