Robert Johnson: The Devil had nothing to do with it

 

"Across the top half of a page in a single long image, Johnson is seen from behind at the far left of the panel, in his blazing suit and a broad-brimmed hat, looking up at posters advertising Louis Armstrong and the blues singer Victoria Spivey on the South Side of Chicago. Then it's as if the reader's eye is drawn by a tracking shot as it rolls down the block, passing a movie theater marquee announcing Harlem on the Prairie and Oscar Micheaux's Underworld , passing a man in a suit aiming a guitar like a rifle at two men sitting on a sedan in suits and Stetsons with their own drawn pistols, reaching a newsboy hawking the Chicago Defender with FREE THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS in a banner headline in front of more well-dressed black men, and behind them a poster reading JOIN THE NAACP SMASH RACIAL DISCRIMINATION"

READ REVIEWS BY GREIL MARCUS 

illustration Mezzo/J.M. Dupont Robert Johnson; from Mezzo and J.M. Dupont’s graphic novel Love in Vain