AN UPPERCUT ABOVE THE REST A Review of Paul Bishop’s FELONY FISTS by Andrew Salmon Back in the day, sports pulps, including boxing pulps, were as common as Westerns or Romance magazines on newsstands everywhere. People thrilled to action-packed, fist-flying tales of fictional sports heroes in action. And anyone who knows their pulp history might…
ALL PULP REVIEWS by Ron Fortier FIGHT CARD : FELONY FISTS By Paul Bishop (http://www.bishsbeat.blogspot.com/) 128 pages Punch. Block. Counterpunch. Duck. Uppercut. Jab. Haymaker. Clinch. The staccato machine-gun lingo of boxing that taps across the brain like a dance choreographed by battling gladiators. It is a ballet of flying fists, controlled mayhem performed by all…
A century ago today, the Fight of the Century was fought. Today is the centennial of the fight between the first black heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson, and the former heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries, who retired undefeated. The fight took place on July 4, 1910 in front of 20,000 people, at a…
A century ago today, December 26, 1908– ironically enough, Boxing Day in many countries– Jack Johnson beat Tommy Burns to become both the heavyweight champion of the world, and the most notorious black man on the planet. We’ve been covering his story in The Original Johnson by Trevor Von Eeden. If you haven’t been reading it,…
In today’s edition of The New York Times, the Sports section features an article on our Original Johnson strip. George Gustines does a nice job placing Johnson in American and boxing history. If you haven’t checked out the story from Trevor Von Eeden, it’s still running with new pages every week here at ComicMix.
Trevor von Eeden returns to comics tomorrow with a series that is especially meaningful to our American culture. It’s the story of boxer Jack Johnson, whom von Eeden describes as “the first psychologically free black man in American History.” This is the first major biography of Johnson created by an African-American artist. The Original Johnson…
