The Be-Bop Barbarians

In the turbulent era of late 1950s Manhattan with jazz, the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, and the Red Scare as the volatile ingredients, three groundbreaking black cartoonists defy convention and pay the price. Cliff Murphy is matinee handsome, a light-skinned, straight-haired black man and a comics artist known for his glamour girl art. Stephaney "Stef" Rawls has her own romance-adventure strip for the largest black newspaper, but she still has to work brutal hours as a maid to make ends meet. Then there's Oliver "Ollie" Jefferson, a decorated Korean War vet who writes and draws editorial cartoons under the pseudonym Attucks, for the daily Red newspaper The Struggle. These three friends will be tested and tried, will work in solidarity, and, just maybe, betray each other, in this explosive graphic novel.

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