The Beat by James Romberger
This last weekend, the Penn Plaza Pavilion in NYC was the home of the annual Big Apple Con, which featured a host of old school comics talent. I went to this event for specific goals. Foremost among these was my hope to finally clear up the long-standing mystery of who drew the famous and widely distributed comics pamphlet Martin Luther King Jr: The Montgomery Story. Because finally, Sy Barry emerged as a guest at the Big Apple Comic Con and indeed, he confirmed to me that it was he who drew the comic.
The thin color comic book offers a gripping depiction of the early days of African-American’s battle for civil rights through the use of peaceful civil disobedience. First published in 1957, it went through several editions and remained in print for years, because in grade school in the mid-sixties, I and many thousands of other children were given free copies of it.
