The Be-Bop Barbarians

In the turbulent era of late 1950s Manhattan-with jazz, the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, and the Red Scare as the volatile ingredients-three groundbreaking black cartoonists defy convention and pay the price.

Cliff Murphy is matinee handsome, a light-skinned, straight-haired black man and a comics artist known for his glamour girl art. He's black uptown and white downtown, and he has an eye for the ladies, and they for him-including his boss' wife, who knows Cliff's creation, the Phanto...