Angola in the Comics #12: It Really Happened #4

Here's a rather unusual entry in my irregular "Angola in the Comics" series. This time I'm looking at It Really Happened #4, published in 1944 by the company usually dubbed 'Pines' (also known as Better, Standard & Nestor). It Really Happened was one of many educational comics published in the 1940s which seemed to exist primarily to defend the comics genre against charges that they were strictly juvenile with no redeeming values. It Really Happened primarily recounted the biographies of famous people from history.

It Really Happened #4 features 'Dr. David Livingstone', a nine-page adaptation of the life of the famous Dr. Livingstone. Angola is mostly a footnote in his career, and so it is within the book as well; there are only two panels explicitly set in Angola, the first when he finds landolphia vine in Angola and the second when he's recuperating in Luanda (spelled 'Loanda' in the comic). The unfortunate aspect of this comic is how the Africans are portrayed - all with big thick lips and speaking pidgin English.

The most interesting aspect of this comic is the identity of its author: believe it or not, Patricia Highsmith! Highsmith is best known for her novels Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, but in the years before she became known for protagonists who self-destruct because of their pent-up secrets, she wrote a number of comic books. I wish she had taken more care with the African dialogue, but the actual storytelling in the comic is pretty good, as you'd hope from one of the 20th century's greatest novelists.

Images from The Digital Comic Museum