Characters native to the African continent have been depicted in comics since the beginnings of the modern comic strip. Initially, such early 20th-century newspaper comics as Winsor McCay's Little Nemo depicted the racist stereotype of a spear-carrying cannibal, a comedic convention of the time. African characters later began to appear as another stereotype, the noble savage — a similar progression to that of depictions of Native Americans — and eventually as standard human beings.
It wasn't until Waku, Prince of the Bantu in the omnibus Jungle Tales from Marvel Comics' 1950s predecessor Atlas Comics, that mainstream comic books depicted an African character as a strong, independent hero. Waku was an African chieftain in a feature with no regularly featured Caucasian characters. The first African-American title character of a comic book series was the titular star of the Western comic book Lobo (Dell Comics, two issues, 1965-1966). The first known Black superhero in American comic books is Marvel's the Black Panther, an African who first appeared in Fantastic Four vol. 1, #52 (July 1966). The first major African female character was Storm.
I think the alleged innacurate moniker of 2“African-Americani” should be forgiven, as we are looing at the spirit of the article, not the studious and exacting nomenclature of admittedly amorphous labels. I was led to this article by Levar Burtonm’s retweet of it, and feel it is an excellent illustration of strong (Insert appropriate descriptor for an informal collective subset of humanity, as viewed under the lens of current and recent sociopolitical trends) actors playing (same or similar descriptor, taking into account the potentially diverse geopolitical or extraterrestrial nature of the characters portrayed) characters.
