Black Humor

A new comic novel boldly takes on politics and race

Graphic novels used to be viewed as comic books--only bigger and more pretentious. Now that sales are booming, the medium is being embraced by artists as a hip way to tell challenging stories. The just released Birth of a Nation (Crown; 140 pages) by Aaron McGruder, creator of the controversial comic strip The Boondocks, and Reginald Hudlin, director of the 1990 movie House Party, began as a movie script that used race as the centerpiece of a political satire. "By the time we realized how difficult that would be to sell in Hollywood, we had already fallen in love with the...

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