Now Let Me Fly
A Portrait of Eugene Bullard
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
From author Ronald Wimberly, creator of the viral comic Lighten Up, comes a soaring graphic biography that casts new light on the first African-American fighter pilot.
On the eve of World War I, Eugene Bullard was a refugee of the Jim Crow South who was determined to find a place where a Black man would be treated as a fellow human being. His search took him from rural Georgia to the streets of Paris, from the vaudeville stage to the boxing ring, and finally, from the muddy trenches to the open skies. In 1914, Bullard joined the fight to defend France—and made history as the world’s first African American fighter pilot.
In this candid but sensitive portrait of Bullard, author Ronald Wimberly balances the personal and the historical to interrogate concepts of cynicism, idealism, fear, glory, and the pervasiveness of anti-Black racism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The winding life of Eugene Bullard (1895–1961), one of the first Black American fighter pilots, is streamlined by Wimberly (Prince of Cats) into a deservedly ripping folk hero origin tale. Born in Jim Crow–era Georgia, young Bullard stares down terror when a lynch mob invades his home seeking to kill his father. He runs away "to go someplace where people don't want to kill us" and later stows on a boat headed toward Europe, which drops him off near Aberdeen. Prizefighting takes him to Paris; along the way he meets other Black expats, such as heavyweight Jack Johnson. In France he joins up with a patchwork infantry during WWI. Blazing trench warfare kills fellow soldiers and his own injuries earn a Croix de Guerre. Bullard's valiant reputation secures him a spot on a flying corps of American mercenaries despite his lack of piloting skills. A quick study, he's soon dogfighting Germans with a pet monkey riding along. Wimberly's script navigates haunting scenes of racism and ultimate optimism and triumph. Revel (Guerillas) draws emotive faces and propulsive action, as fluidly rendering a boxing ring as a battlefield. Yellow and white coloring with deep inks reinforce the period landscape while lettered sound effects resonate. It carries off the lift of a pulp adventure, while memorializing Bullard's warrior spirit.
