Book Review - The Color of Paper: Representing Race in the Comics Medium by Chris Gavaler

 reviewed by Hélène Tison

Chris Gavaler. The Color of Paper: Representing Race in the Comics Medium. Ohio State University Press, 2026. https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814216040.html

Chris Gavaler, a renowned comics scholar who has previously authored and co-authored several authoritative volumes of comics scholarship (such as The Comics Form: The Art of Sequenced Images in 2022; Creating Comics: A Writer’s and Illustrator’s Guide and Anthology in 2021; Superhero Comics in 2017) takes on the complex and fraught question of visual representations of race in graphic narratives: not only what formal elements are used to represent race, but how, combined with culturally constructed racial categories, they are interpreted by viewers.

The Color of Paper is technically detailed and precisely referenced; Gavaler offers a clear methodology, provides a very pedagogical presentation of elaborate concepts in order to determine “how a material image composed of ink on paper conveys the culturally constructed concept of a racial category,” (1) and how the white page relates to racial Whiteness. He explains in the Introduction: “I attend to the physical (or discursive) qualities of an image that produce representational (or diegetic) qualities as perceived by individual viewers, because how those formal processes contribute to larger racial constructions is not fully understood.” (5)

Gavaler combines his own very thorough formal analyses of a large number of comics, in color, grayscale or black and white, with data gathered through surveys in which viewers were asked to identify the race and ethnicity of comics characters. Gavaler acknowledges that the survey methodology is imperfect and considers the findings tentative; yet despite their shortcomings, they not only enable him (and his readers) to avoid generalizing from his (our) own perception, but they also do provide valuable input – and some unexpected results, at least for this reader: as an example, only 67% of initial respondents identified a childhood self-portrait of Ebony Flowers in Hot Comb as Black.

The volume, alternating theoretical demonstrations and the application of theory to concrete examples, is clearly structured in four parts. “Backgrounds” analyzes page whiteness, exploring the division between surface and mark, the structuring effects of the white page’s “negative spaces,” such as gutters, and the unmarked areas whose default color represents skin color. Part 2, “Languages,” looks at what it means to “read” an image – generally through a combination of symbolic reading and non-symbolic observation – and, keeping in mind that race is not reducible to appearance, what it means to read race in an image.

Based on this distinction and noting that there is currently no consensus concerning color analysis, the first chapter in Part 3 argues that non-realistic traditional coloring (CMYK) tends to encourage more symbolic reading than digital coloring, which appears more realistic. Gavaler then looks at black and white reprints of color comics, and at colored versions of initially black and white or grayscale comics, and at their reading by paired survey groups, to further determine the extent to which color contributes to denoting race.

Part 4, “Bodies,” opens up the discussion to include gender, and turns to the relation between visual representations of (fictional or non-fictional) characters in figurative art (including comics) and the world beyond, the world of the viewer; it proposes “a theory of visual representation based on viewer perceptions of authorial intent, while also revealing an inherent gap between perceptions of race and gender and the actual racial and gender identities of represented individuals.” (211) Finally, Gavaler discusses the ways in which the physical space of reading, the spatial, overlayed relations of viewer/ comics, and the positionalities of viewers and creators, complicate the White gaze and the assumptions of Whiteness that have been dominant throughout the historical span of the medium. 

Gavaler, who begins with a lucid discussion of what he describes as “the ambiguities of race as understood in the US,” or the “illogic of US racial thinking,” (8) does a sound, thorough and essential job, enabling his readers to make sense of our own readings of characters, putting clear and convincing words on perceptions that can otherwise remain imprecise. Inspired by such essential authors as Rebecca Wanzo and Qiana Whitted, and grounded in his impressive command of comics theory, he opts for a material, micro-level focus that is not only fruitful theoretically, but fascinating when, throughout the volume, he applies it to detailed analyses of a large number of extremely varied artists, from Herriman, Schultz, Sherald and Magritte to Eisner, Kirby, Miller, Heck, Grell, Hernandez, Abel, Bechdel, Passmore, Tomine, and Flowers, among many others.

This is an essential read for anyone interested in understanding the ways in which race is represented and perceived in comics, as well as for anyone keen on comics theory.