With Jackie Robinson Day and the Civil Rights Game being played at Dodger Stadium this coming Wednesday, I figured it was about time I take a moment to truly share my Jackie Robinson comic collection. Back in 2007 I made scans of only the front covers of the 6-comic collection (see that post
here), but that post must have been rather unfulfilling. After all, what good is the cover if you can't take a peek inside.
Considering that, I decided to take some time to scan the actual inner pages, and the first half of the Jackie Robinson #1 comic is below. I'll have scans of the second half of this comic, as well as, pages from the five other Robinson comics available over the coming days.
This comic series was originally published in 1950 and was written by sports columnist Charles Dexter. You may know Dexter from his Robinson themed book titled
Baseball Has Done It from 1964. BTW,
Cathy Keen at the Smithsonian wrote a fantastic article about these comics that you can check out
here. An excerpt is below:
The abuses he endured are addressed in a vague, sanitized way in the
comic book, which mostly covers his minor league career and his call-up
to the Dodgers. (This comic was part of a series.) Brief reference is
made to "the Jim Crow code." The words "race" and "racist" are never
used. Instead, the words "scheming foes," "sinister plotters," and
"Jackie's enemies" are used to describe the abusers, virtually implying
that there were only a handful of bad apples who made his life
unpleasant.
In other words, this comic is far from an explicit retelling of Jackie's life. Instead, it's sanitized for the youth of that time.
UPDATE: Directly below are links to the other Jackie Robinson vintage comics I've scanned and shared:
- 1950 JR Comic #1 (the first half) - Link
- 1950 JR Comic #1 (the second half) - Link
- 1950 JR Comic #2 (complete scans) - Link
- 1950 JR Comic #3 (complete scans) - Link
- 1950 JR Comic #4 (complete scans) -Link
- 1951 JR Comic #5 (complete scans) - Link
- 1951 JR Comic #6 (complete scans) - Link
Click on any pic to embiggen.
