Joe Martin (comic strip)
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Joe Martin was a short-lived newspaper comic strip drawn by Forest McGinn[1] to further market Universal Pictures' celebrity orangutan Joe Martin. The Joe Martin strips were free "six-column mat form" comics issued by Universal to any newspaper that requested them.[2] The Joe Martin comic strip was introduced on or before March 1920[3] and continued until at least 1921.[1] The strip, sometimes called The Life, Loves and Adventures of Joe Martin was published in newspapers in the United States,[4] Canada,[5] and Sweden.[1]
Contemporary audiences would find the subject matter highly offensive. The comics are period-typical in that "Blacks were the principal comic figures [although] many of the images of 'Blacks' in the first half-century of the comics were not of Blacks at all. Instead they were caricatures derived from [minstrel shows]."[6]