There have been numerous articles interpreting the genius of George Herriman..
...and his most famous creation, Krazy Kat, including this rarely-seen tribute by pop culture historian/movie-tv novelization & comics adaptation author/sci-fi writer and co-creator (w/Gil Kane) of Star Hawks, Ron Goulart!
At the time (mid-1960s), Herriman's ethnic identity was unknown to almost everyone except family, who kept it secret.
Would the article have taken a different slant if Goulart and the audience knew the artistic genius they were celebrating was Black?
Consider that the piece appeared in the same issue (P.S. #1 [1966]) as this article by another noted sci-fi author, Alfred Bester, about the difficulties of Black actors/models getting work in print and TV advertising...
It's interesting to note Bester's comments about the absence of non-stereotyped Black roles in old-time radio and 1930s-40s Black actors' lack of training due to industry-wide prejudice.
(Bester, besides writing Golden Age pulp magazine and comic book stories, was a prolific scripter of dramatic radio shows during the period!)
P.S. was an experiment by Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction editor Ed Furman to expand the publisher's line into the general interest market, using the best of then-current humor and sci-fi writers to do both nostalgic and predictive articles...
...including Jean (Christmas Story) Shepherd, Ray (Martian Chronicles) Bradbury, Issac (too many to list) Asimov, among others.
Furman was willing to push the envelope...
...but the audience just wasn't there, and the title folded after only three issues.
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