The Outsider

A secret history of comics, unearthed within the moving biography of legendary comic artist Bernard Krigstein. Take a walk with The Outsider.

Comics in the 1950s is a nowhere medium for journeymen and artistically frustrated illustrators. Certainly that’s what Bernie Krigstein —a comics artist and out-of-step painter slumming in the sleazy comics industry to make ends meet— thinks. What starts as an escape attempt from the rut of cranking out comics takes successive leaps into tales of labor organizing and fighting tenaciously to realize the artistic potential of the medium.

The Outsider is both a bird’s-eye view of the comic book industry in the 1950s and an intimate portrait of one of its most militant artists. Joseph D’Esposito explores the Jewish roots of comics and its lineage of Black, women, and other unsung participants (such as Matt Baker, a Black pioneer of the graphic novel). In the political hotbed of postwar America, the personal and the political weave vertiginously, culminating in “Master Race,” written by Al Feldstein and elevated into one of the few serious early comics works by Krigstein’s formal innovations.

The beating heart of Krigstein’s journey is his wife, Natalie, a multifaceted character who grapples with competing roles as steadfast partner, postpartum mother, and ambitious writer. Other friends and foils include Stan Lee, Harvey Kurtzman, and Robert Kanigher. The Outsider is a story about dedication, frustration, ambition, anger, integrity —the 1950s comic book industry— all told in vivid, painterly strokes of melancholic blue.