Another DC Thomson series that has given rise to charges of racism is the character 'Sparky' who originally starred on the cover of the comic named after him during the 1960s, and continued to appear within its pages well into the 1970s. Though based on a much earlier character called ‘Sooty Snowball’ who starred in the short-lived Magic comic from 1939 to 1940 Sparky's own stories rarely contained any overtly racist themes: most of the time he could just as easily have been replaced with a martian or a talking animal - the real problem, in my opinion, was his outrageous appearance. The fact is that Sparky was a blatant visual throwback to a pre-war stereotype which saw all black men as primitive savages with grass skirts, bare feet and bizarre saucers inserted into their lips. This degrading image is all the more disturbing when one realizes that Sooty Snowball was himself an Anglicized version of an Italian character who became a figure of fun even as Mussolini’s Fascist war machine used poison gas to slaughter Abyssinian warriors armed only with spears and shields - all in the name of ‘civilization’!
Unfortunately, such past attrocities now mean that any depiction of a black person exaggerated for comic effect is likely to attract complaint. Had Ken Reid drawn such a character it’s unlikely that it could be reprinted today without inspiring automatic howls of opprobrium - yet Reid’s pen was totally democratic in that he went out of his way to make everyone look grotesque whether they came from Timbuktu, Wales or Wigan! The problem with our modern sensitivity to racism, however well intended, is that it probably makes white cartoonists shy away from drawing black characters altogether - which is a shame as they have a rich heritage in the history of British comics, and not all of them were anything like as objectionable as Sparky.
This became apparent to me when I recently acquired a number of early issues of Radio Fun and discovered Roy Wilson’s ‘Stymie’ (“the dark little lad with bright ideas!â€) who graced the back cover at the same time Sooty Snowball was appearing in Magic. To my mind this delightful little operator (seen below in an Easter episode from 1940) is everything Sooty/Sparky wasn’t: smart, contemporary and resourceful (indeed, going by the photo incorporated into the header ‘Stymie’ himself seems to have been based on a well-known performer of the day). As far as I can see his features aren’t any more exagerated than those of his white co-stars, apart from the dark complexion, and his speech pattern isn't any more 'colourful' than that of the cockney road digger; what’s more even Mr. Bunn’s use of the ‘n’ word only serves to put the baker himself in a bad light. All in all it’s a surprisingly enlightened strip considering the period in which it was written (and the artist even gets to show off some of his famous laughing animals at the end when the eggs hatch! ) -
Great stuff!!! - and a sign, perhaps, that our parents and grandparents weren’t always as politically incorrect as we sometimes tend to think...!- Phi Rushton
