Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Introducing Voodah! (Golfing-McCombs; 1945)








I couldn't tell you what Matt Baker planned with Voodah, the character who began his golden age career in Crown Comics #3 (Fall 1945), originally published by Golfing / McCombs. Baker was an African-American artist who specialized in good girl art (evident in this nice story too). Voodah was a jungle character, but while he was initially colored as a black man on the interior of the comic, subsequent issues of Crown Comics always had him "colored" as either white-skinned or very light skinned. In his first adventure he saves his N’risi tribe and his girl, Jano, from an escaped prisoner named Blake and his albino monkey Deem. At least the prolific Matt Baker got to see his new action star begin his adventures as the first black hero in comics.

Voodah stories ran until #19 of Crown Comics. The unrelated (and somewhat racist) cover for this issue is included as a perk. The Catacombs is grateful to Don "Zu-Gogo" Falkos for providing the scans for this story. Note: The copyright for this issue, its contents and artwork belong to the original publisher and/or creators and is reproduced here solely for entertainment purposes.

Enjoy!

1 comment:

Mr. Karswell said...

>subsequent issues of Crown Comics always had him "colored" as either white-skinned or very light skinned.

I was gonna say... never saw the black Voodah, cool story, Chuck. And thank Don too.