Comics Arts Conference Session #15: Lost and Found Along the Color Line: Black and Brown Counterworlds in Early Comic Books and Comic Strips

How did early Black and Brown comics creators repurpose colonial "lost civilization" tropes to contest dominant regimes of place, power, and legitimacy in U.S. popular culture from the 1930s through the 1960s? This panel argues that lost-world settings are not simply adventure conventions but contested narrative structures through which creators negotiate sovereignty, historical memory, and civic authority. Stanford W. Carpenter (Comicpalooza University) reconstructs the underrecognized labor…