Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon

8. Bad Brother Man: Black Folk Figure Narratives in Comics

eight bad brother man: bLaCk foLk figure narratives in ComiCs James Br a xton Peterson a Litany of Badmen recent scholarship in africana studies has revisited the “badman” folk figure inafricanamericanculture.Muchofthisscholarship (perry 2004, cobb 2006, and ogbar 2007) has reengaged this classic black folk figure in order to explicate similar characters emerging in the lyrics and music videos of hip hop culture. in this essay i will extend these new theoretical analyses to interpret the figure of the “badman” in comics and graphic novels. Mat Johnson and Warren pleece’s Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery, Derek Mcculloch and shepherd hendrix’s Stagger Lee, and kyle Baker’s Nat Turner all depict either fictional or historical outlaw figures derived directly from the rich reservoir of african american oral and folk culture. Incognegro, Stagger Lee, and Nat Turner each have intriguing and integral relationships with history, mythology, and the legendary narratives of black “badmen,” but also of interest here is the interstitial relationship between these comic (anti)heroes and the american justice system . each of them is either an outlaw, a fugitive, or a vigilante at specific points in their narratives and each in turn emerges from a narratological set of experiences that embolden them as culturally aspirational outlaws .1 These Bad-Brother-Men narratives depict a complex twenty-firstcentury portrait of the black heroic outlaw; visually dense and verbally articulated as historic essays, each of these narratives suggest the untapped potential for comics to engage american history and the politics of identity. scholarly writing about hip hop culture and new scholarship centered on the graphic narrative form are both emerging genres of study in the academy. as such, we might expect that there will be challenges, 168 Ba d Brother M a n · 169 miscues, and possibly even errors as each of these subjects of inquiry continue to garner the academic attention they so richly deserve. While there are multiple points of intersection between hip hop culture and graphic novels/narratives or comics, the lynchpin of the discussion in this essay is the african american (black) folk figure commonly known as the “badman.” For various (and maybe some seemingly obvious) reasons , hip hop figures/artists and the narratives they record have been consistently connected to and contextualized via the folkloric history of the black badman. While some of these connections are warranted and productive, at times the connections are facsimiles of previous attempts to connect the badman to the rapper, and unfortunately certain nuances of this important folkloric and historical interconnectivity are lost in the balance. The recent publication of three powerful graphic novels (Nat Turner in 2008, Stagger Lee in 2006, and Incognegro in 2008)—centered on what i am calling the Bad-Brother-Man figure—will unveil some of the complexities lost in the oversimplified connections regularly made between rappers and badmen or “bad niggers.” as an oral (and ofen folk) form derived from african american expressive culture, rap music has oracular roots in spirituals, the black sermonic tradition, the blues, jazz (especially scat—or vocalized improvisation ), and the tradition known as toasting.2 as Quinn points out, there are “striking continuities” between gangsta rap and the toasts in both “form and function” (94). “toasting,” Quinn explains, “is a black working-class oral practice, involving the recitation of extended and partially improvised narrative poems. These toasts were most typically performed and exchanged by men in street corner conversations, barbershops , and prisons” (94). listening to a stackolee toast and a rhymed excerpt from nearly any n.W.a. tune will bear this out clearly.3 The toast was the vehicle through which the black badman’s exploits were ofen narrated, lionized, and identified with on the part of the teller/toaster and the audience/listener. in the opening verse of “i ain’t Tha 1” a generally catchy albeit misogynistic rap/toast on n.W.a’s debut album, ice cube drops the following lines: “i ain’t the one, the one to get played like a pooh butt / see i’m from the street, so i know what’s up / on these silly games that’s played by the women / i’m only happy when i’m goin up in ’em /But you know, i’m a menace to society . . .”4 note that n.W.a.’s badman , exemplified via ice cube’s powerful persona, tethers his deroga- 170 · Ja mes Br a xton Peter son tory...