Literally Graphic reviewed Black [AF] by Vita Ayala
Review of 'Black [AF]' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
On my TBR for a long time, due to my inability to get myself to read both comics I own and digital comics. The art and other technicals that went into this comic are really solid and so I wasn't surprised to find out that everyone who contributed to the comic has indeed been involved in comics for a very long time. My personal taste is not generally for comics that use grey washes and gradients, preferring straight up black and white instead, but the line work and inks are so incredibly strong that my personal taste was satiated. The framing and page layouts are easy to follow but dynamic and very interesting.
With a title like Black, race is unsurprisingly a central focus of the story, and there's a strong theme of showing just how horribly black people are treated in so called U.S.A. with the twist that Black …
On my TBR for a long time, due to my inability to get myself to read both comics I own and digital comics. The art and other technicals that went into this comic are really solid and so I wasn't surprised to find out that everyone who contributed to the comic has indeed been involved in comics for a very long time. My personal taste is not generally for comics that use grey washes and gradients, preferring straight up black and white instead, but the line work and inks are so incredibly strong that my personal taste was satiated. The framing and page layouts are easy to follow but dynamic and very interesting.
With a title like Black, race is unsurprisingly a central focus of the story, and there's a strong theme of showing just how horribly black people are treated in so called U.S.A. with the twist that Black people in this universe are the ones with super hero powers. The one thing I would have liked is for these powers to not have been such a secret at the start, as this kind of pulls back on the speculation aspect, but they've now published a few more books in the universe (and are aiming for more) so that problem is probably already solved.
As far as gender goes, there's a fair amount of representation on both ends of the binary. Nothing really outside that, or sexuality wise, but that's as much as I have noticed so far. A very action centred comic there's a lot of things that we are left not knowing about the team. That said, for a comic that sort of just dumped us down in the middle of the action (via one person's origin story) I did feel like they differentiated the characters very well and offered us enough about each person to see them as a person.
Disability, unless I missed something, was not represented in this volume.
Very much a comic of its time, sadly the subject matter is only becoming more pertinent. I do feel like race consciousness in comics, alongside diverse creators, has increased at least somewhat. Although that might just be me and my developing reading habits.