The Press: Ace Harlem to the Rescue

What does a striker on the picket line think about? Orrin Cromwell Evans thought about comic strips. Evans was one of the Newspaper Guildsmen whose strike against J. David Stern’s Philadelphia Record ended in the Record’s collapse (TIME, Feb. 10). He was the only Negro reporter on the staff. As he walked the picket line, he thought hard about a complaint frequently heard among his people: Negroes are usually ridiculed and their way of life distorted in comics drawn by white men.

When the Record died, Guildsman Evans took his idea to Harry Saylor, who had been the Record’s editor. Saylor was enthusiastic.

This week Evans and his partners (Saylor and three other Record men) brought out All-Negro Comics, a 48-page, 15¢ monthly, the first to be drawn by Negro artists and peopled entirely by Negro characters. Its star: “Ace Harlem,” a Dick Tracy-like detective. The villains were a couple of zoot-suited, jive-talking Negro muggers, whose presence in anyone else’s comics might have brought up complaints of racial “distortion.” Since it was all in the family, Evans thought no Negro readers would mind.