Bitter Root #1: This Ain’t Your Great Grandparent’s Harlem Renaissance

Writers: David Walker, Chuck Brown / Artist: Sanford Greene / Image Bitter Root has arrived! And it’s here to entertain, inform, and challenge you and your assumptions about race on the page and behind the scenes. The introductory issue to the series drops us right into the thick of things as we see a day in the life of the dwindling Sangerye family. Issue #1 does a great job of tackling the task of setting up the characters and the rules of the world. What I was impressed with was how the comic instantly establishes its characters apart from each other in a way that not only makes them feel like individuals but living, breathing people. These aren’t adaptations or iterations of pre-existing characters, so Walker, Brown, and Greene had to work overtime to make them feel authentic. I think it paid off. Everyone has such strong characteristics that after just one issue, you can tell who’s who even if you don’t know their names yet. The two main women of the story so far are Ma Etta and Blink, and they couldn’t be more opposites. Ma Etta is old, stern, and rigid. She’s seen it all, and for better or for worse, that’s shaped her into the hard-nosed person she’s become. Then there’s Blink. She’s young, determined, and impatient. She doesn’t want to conform to society’s rules. She just wants what she wants, and what she wants is all the smoke. Cross her the wrong way and you might find yourself on the ground before you know it.

The two men are Cullen and Berg. Cullen is trying to …