Authors: Shauri Thacker
Mentors: Nicole Dib
Insitution: Southern Utah University
The representation of Black narratives within the medium of comics and graphic novels has been and continues to be sparse compared to the focus on white characters and stories. In recent years, however, a new paradigm of Black representation has been appearing in comics and comics studies. Emerging from Black Lives Matter movement discourse about police brutality and taking a new angle on the “organic black protest tradition” is Victor LaValle and Dietrich Smith’s 2017 graphic novel Destroyer. Their visual narrative follows the last descendant of Frankenstein—Dr. Josephine Baker—and her endeavors for justice after the murder of her son Akai as her plotline weaves with the original Frankenstein creature’s quest to subdue humanity (Rickford, 35). In this paper, I will perform a close reading of this work using the theoretical lens of critical race theory and its intersection with feminist theory. My reading will prove that LaValle and Smith’s comic—though it does not have the intent of treating Black women as a “unitary and monolithic entity”—increases a reader’s focus on mother and doctor Josephine Baker in order to portray her rage and grief over Akai’s death at the hands of a police offer (Nash, 8). This analysis of Dr. Baker’s character, combined with LaValle’s usage of allusions and intertextuality, subverts the stereotypically white comic narrative by portraying the lived reality and precarity of many Black individuals within the United States. Through this reading, I will demonstrate that the medium of comics allows for a multifaceted depiction of Black narratives and a new form of literary activism.