What Does John Johnson Have to Do with Comics?

John Johnson, the founder and publisher of Jet and Ebony magazines (among others), died last week. He was a pioneer in many ways, mostly in changing the way that Americans looked at sucessful African Americans (athletes, entertainers, etc.), but also in creating a product aimed at a black audience in a time when, even in the more "civilized" North, they were looked on as being less than whites, and not having as great of an economic importance.

I think we take niche markets for granted. I mean, go to any Borders bookstore and you'll see hundreds of magazines, from the obvious Time and Newsweek, to "extreme" sports like Thrasher's skateboarding, to Modern Ferret. MODERN FERRET!

But when Johnson started Negro Digest in 1942, Ebony in 1945, and Jet in 1951, these were revelations. (Of course, these weren't the first magazines aimed at a black audience; they were just the most successful. Also, I'm not trying to argue that being black is "niche" in any way; I'm merely trying to say that in the 30s and 40s, marketing to blacks was likely not where companies would think to see a lot of money coming their way.)

Comic publishers, while not as daring to initiate this on their own, looked at the successes of these and other magazines, and like they were so apt to do, copied them. As I mentioned before, if Westerns were popular in the movies or on the radio, well Western comics should be published. And if romance comics were popular, then combine them with the Westerns, dammit!

Publishers saw the sales figures from the other publishers. They saw how many were being distributed, how they were selling, where they were selling, and they knew that if someone was doing well with a new type of magazine, they had better copy it and put out something of their own just like it. (In comics, look at Mad. How long after Mad came out did you see dozens of other titles on the stands: Eh, Crazy, Flip, and even a copy-cat from the same publisher [EC], Panic.)

So it's not surprising that Fawcett (one of the largest magazine, book, and comic publishers in the country) saw those Ebony sales figures, then looked at their romance comic and confessions magazines sales figures, and some editor said, "Negro Romance, people! Stat!" Three bi-monthly issues were produced, the first cover dated 6/50. (A fourth issue, published by Charlton in 1955, was a reprint of Fawcett's second issue.) Although I don't have sales figures from this series, I suspect it didn't do well for numerous reasons.

At the time, the romance deluge was in full force, and there was likely 20-30 romance titles being published that month. That's a staggering amount, considering that only two years prior, there were at most 3 titles being published at any given time. And when faced with that number of titles, magazine sellers often didn't even bother to put out many of the comics. They'd merely lop the top third of the cover and return it for credit.

Another reason is having the word "Negro" in the title. Remember, this was the 50s. I can picture many men, opening up their comic bundles, seeing Negro Romances, and simply refusing to sell it. I wouldn't be surprised that the distributor did the same thing and not even bother to send it out to the newsstands.

I'm not sure what problems Johnson had in getting Ebony and Jet on the newsstands (although I'm sure they were plenty), but he obviously had much more perserverance than Fawcett. And it paid off for him quite nicely.

But those four issues of Negro Romances were it for many years, even when it came to having black characters in romance comics (I'm not talking about titles or covers -- I'm talking about even having characters in the stories being black). In fact, I'm not sure if I remember any African-Americans showing up in stories, period, until the late-60s.

Makes you respect people like Johnson more than ever.

(And don't worry, I'll be talking about Jack Kirby's Soul Love in the not too distant future.)