Jay Paul Jackson (September 10, 1905 – 1954) was an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

artist who spent many years working for the ''

Chicago Defender ''The Chicago Defender'' is a Chicago-based online African-American newspaper. It was founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott and was once considered the "most important" newspaper of its kind. Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against Jim ...

'', in addition to working as an illustrator for

science fiction magazines A science fiction magazine is a publication that offers primarily science fiction, either in a hard-copy periodical format or on the Internet. Science fiction magazines traditionally featured speculative fiction in short story, novelette, novel ...

such as ''

Amazing Stories ''Amazing Stories'' is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances ...

'' and ''

Fantastic Adventures ''Fantastic Adventures'' was an American pulp fantasy and science fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1953 by Ziff-Davis. It was initially edited by Raymond A. Palmer, who was also the editor of ''Amazing Stories'', Ziff-Davis's other scien ...

''.

Background

Born in

Oberlin, Ohio Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, 31 miles southwest of Cleveland. Oberlin is the home of Oberlin College, a liberal arts college and music conservatory with approximately 3,000 students. The town is the birthplace of t ...

, Jackson dropped out of school at thirteen. He drove spikes for a railroad, moved to

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

and worked in a steel mill, attended

Ohio Wesleyan University Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) is a private liberal arts college in Delaware, Ohio. It was founded in 1842 by methodist leaders and Central Ohio residents as a nonsectarian institution, and is a member of the Ohio Five – a consortium ...

for a year, and had an unsuccessful and brief career as a boxer. He left Wesleyan, started a sign-painting business, and became a featured artist for the ''

Pittsburgh Courier The ''Pittsburgh Courier'' was an African-American weekly newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the mo ...

''. He began selling illustrations to the ''Defender'' and '' Abbott’s Monthly'' in the mid-1920s, but did not become a ''Defender'' staffer until 1933.

''Defender'' and elsewhere

By 1934, Jackson was put in charge of cartoons for the ''Defender''. In addition to editorial cartoons, he did a variety of single-panel cartoon series and comic strips for the ''Defender'' and other papers of the Negro press, including ''The Adventures of Bill'', ''As Others See Us'', ''Billy Ken'', ''Exposition Follies'', ''Senda'', ''Skin Deep'', ''Society Sue'', ''Speed Jackson'', and ''Tisha Mingo''. In 1934 he revived and reshaped the ''Defenders long-running ''Bungleton Green'' strip. Comics historian Tim Jackson wrote, "Jackson produced an astounding amount of comics and illustrations during the decade of the 1940s... Jackson's illustrations fairly dominated the newspapers in which they appeared." He married Eleanor Poston, a fellow ''Defender'' staffer. Jackson received two "Front Page" awards from the

American Newspaper Guild The NewsGuild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933. In addition to improving wages and working conditions, its constitution says its purpose is to fight for honesty in journalism and the news industry's business practice ...

, one for his skewering of HUAC’s attack on Hollywood, because Jackson was known for his biting satire of racists and red-baiters.

Science fiction

In 1938, pioneering science fiction magazine ''Amazing Stories'' had fallen on hard times, and had been purchased by Chicago-based cartoonist-turned-ad man William B. Ziff. He turned its editorial direction over to Chicago science fiction fan

Ray Palmer Ray Palmer may refer to: * Raymond A. Palmer, science-fiction writer and editor * Raymond F. Palmer, medical professor * Ray Palmer (pastor), American pastor and author of hymns * Ray Palmer (Arrowverse), a TV show character based on his comic bo ...

. Ziff's company had obtained a dominant position in advertising for black-oriented publications, and he was familiar with Jackson's work for the ''Defender'' and other papers. Jackson illustrated three stories in the first Palmer-edited issue of ''Amazing'' (June 1938). Over the next four years, his work would appear in nearly forty issues of ''Amazing'' and its stablemate, ''Fantastic Adventures'', with Jackson frequently illustrating more than one story in a single issue. Jackson is believed to be the first black artist used regularly in science fiction magazines. While not genre-savvy, he became more familiar with the field, and was recognized as an especially suitable artist for the kind of humorous science fiction content that Palmer liked to run. He was profiled in ''Amazings "Introducing the Author" feature, a rarity for an artist, with a photo which guaranteed that the magazine's readers understood that Jackson was black, a college man with a suburban family and considerable experience in his profession. After four years in the science fiction field, Jackson realized the potential for science fiction to safely criticize contemporary America by displacing action to another world or time. He stopped his work for the science fiction magazines, but turned the ''Defenders long-running ''Bungleton Green'' strip into science fiction and Green himself into a superhero. "Bung" is killed, revived and rebuilt, time travels first to 1778 (to showcase the shameful history of American slavery), then to Memphis in 2043, where blacks and whites have built a colorblind utopia, but a newly-risen continent of green people treats whites ("chalkies") in a manner painfully familiar to Jackson's black readers of the 1940s. (By 1947, this transformation would be reversed — "it was all a dream" — and another artist would take over the strip, returning it to its gag strip origins which Jackson disdained.)

After Chicago

In 1949, Jackson left Chicago for

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

and set up a studio there. He would stay there, except for a brief period doing

murals A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanis ...

in Mexico, for the rest of his life. Jackson worked in a variety of ways: he had a two-page montage in ''Who’s Who in Colored America'', and did illustrations for ''Who’s Who in the United Nations''. He was an illustrator for one of the Telecomics companies (there were two using the same name), some of the earliest cartoon shows on television, essentially a representation of comic strips on screen, with a narrator and voice actors talking over still frames, with only occasional moments of limited animation. He did glamour girl

postcard A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare. There are novelty exceptions, such as wood ...

s for postcard publisher Colourpicture of Boston. He created two comics he hoped to sell to syndicators, ''Girligags'' (a single-panel series featuring pretty girls and gags), and ''Home Folks'', a more realistic slice-of-life humorous series about the ordinary African-American life; but neither found a market. Jackson died of a heart attack on May 16, 1954. His widow got the ''Defender'' to publish the two unpublished strips, and sold them to other major black newspapers, including the ''

Michigan Chronicle ''The Chronicle'' is a weekly newspaper, weekly African-American newspaper based in Detroit, Michigan. It was founded in 1936 by John H. Sengstacke, editor of the ''Chicago Defender''. Together with the ''Defender'' and a handful of other African- ...

'', '' Louisville Defender'', ''

Tri-State Defender The ''Tri-State Defender'' is a weekly African-American newspaper serving Memphis, Tennessee, and the nearby areas of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. It bills itself as "The Mid-South's Best Alternative Newspaper". The ''Defender'' was fo ...

'' and the ''

New York Age Defender ''The New York Age'' was a weekly newspaper established in 1887. It was widely considered one of the most prominent African-American newspapers of its time.

''.Carper, Steve. "The First Black Superhero... Finale" ''The Chicago Defender'' January 9, 2021
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Works

* ''Bungleton Green and the mystic commandos'', ; introduction by Jeet Heer; New York : New York Review Books, 2022,

References