The story of Strange Fruit takes place in the small town of Chatterlee, Mississippi. The town is in a heavy flood area and in the midst of repairing old levees. The only people working on the levees are black people who work for pennies on the dollar. The story opens with a group of white men bursting into a black bar and waving their guns around demanding that the black men get back to work on the levees and work faster, because they've had enough breaks. At one point they state "Our problem is we got too many niggers round here wearing suits and not enough filling sandbags."
The group finds Sunny who is accused of stealing from a general store and Sunny takes off running. The group of white men head back to Senator As he runs through the woods he encounters a group of klansmen. Meanwhile an explosion from above crashes and a naked black man rises up. The klan attempts to lynch them both before being taken out with minimal effort. Sunny hands the naked man a confederate flag to wrap around his waist as the comic ends.
The artwork of Strange Fruit is reminiscent of Kingdom Come. Jones uses a rare painted style similar to the one Alex Ross is known for. It's still a strange style, something that isn't seen often. Yet, it's always appealing to the eyes. Admittedly the text bubbles and boxes can be a little strange at times, more distracting than anything else.
Strange Fruit attempts to do a lot of things and it can be overwhelming. It doesn't help that it falls short on some of them. It's also a victim of bad timing. It makes sense that they would release it on Dwayne McDuffie's birthday. McDuffie was the man behind Icon, the original telling of a black superman. Icon crash landed on Earth during slavery. He's not the only black Superman to tackle race either. Blue Marvel was the most recent, with his story taking place in the Civil Rights era.The difference between Strange Fruit and those stories is Strange Fruit is written by white men. It's a story about racism told from a black perspective but written by two white men. That's a combination that can quickly become really toxic. This can only go one of three ways. First the other three issues help paint a picture of weighty white guilt that makes everyone turn away. The second is it suffers from white savior syndrome, where the good senator and his widow friend, save all of the black people. The third is it actually goes on to become a great piece from a whiter person who fully understands racism without the unnecessary tons of white guilt.
People are already writing off Strange Fruit in a variety of ways. Some say it's a lesson on white guilt, an example of white privilege, an assault on southern history and values. The list continues on and on about why people aren't going to finish this series. It got off to a rough start but it did a good job of building a foundation. Going forward Ward and Jones need to worry about stepping on all the wrong toes. They also need to worry about not just rewriting things that happened with Icon or Blue Marvel. It's a comic in a tough place. I admittedly don't have high hopes for it. But, unlike a lot of people, I'm willing to ride it out for the next three issues.
You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet
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