Golden Legacy Toussaint L'Ouverture Review

In 1966, at the age of 34, Bertram A. Fitzgerald jumped in to the comic book publishing business, despite having no background in writing or publishing. He had been disillusioned with biographies of writers like Dumas and Pushkin, whose African heritage had been almost completed and deliberately eschewed. So he got an old army acquaintance, Leo Carty, to draw up a comic book biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution of the late 1700s. I'll let you figure out why I'm opting now to review a comic book about Haiti's independence over a half century since it was first published.

The story actually starts with Toussaint's father being brought to San Domingo as a slave. He was soon purchased as a house slave by Count de Breda, and it was there that Toussaint was born. His father and godfather taught them as much they could, so he could rise to become a great leader. He was afforded more leniency than many other slaves, and he eventually left to join the Maroons, a group of former slaves that had run away to live in the island's hills. Toussaint was welcomed and his intelligence was almost immediately promoted to physician of the Maroons' army, and his knowledge of military strategy and tacits got him soon promoted further as one of the group's leading generals. He handily won a number of victories in battle, often without bloodshed. He managed to drive back armiers from Spain and Britain ad, six years after first joining the Maroons, the governor stepped down and offered the job to Toussaint. Toussaint's approach quickly caught the ire of Napoleon Bonaparte, who sent an overwhelming fleet to attack. Toussaint and his army held their own, and Bonaparte offered to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. Toussaint went to France to do so, but found himself captured and thrown into a damp cell to rot where he eventually died in 1803.

The comic here is serviceable. The script relies a little over-heavily on captions, but given that this was Fitzgerald's fist comic book in any capacity, it's not bad. The illustrations are surprisingly loose but it's clear that is being done in a deliberately stylized way by artist Leo Carty. Unlike the Harriet Tubman issue I reviewed a couple years ago, the art on this one doesn't get muddy at any point. I suspect that is mostly due to the printer, but there could be some other factors at play. The only real issue I had with the craft involved with this book was the lettering. It was legible enough, certainly, but there were a number of notable spacing issues -- where the letterer seems to have re-done the lettering in places but not there's either too much or too little space on either end of a word. Or sometimes, there's a few instances where the letters get squished up against the edge of a speech balloon or panel border. If I had to guess, it was a case of "Hey, you have good handwriting! How'd you like to work on this comic?"

While it may not be the height of artistic creation in comics, it's definitely very readable and it served its purpose of educating me on the life of Toussaint and the origins of Haiti's independence. Frankly, even at a scant 24 pages, it's more than enough to showcase why racists like Trump and Vance are using stocastic terrorism to target those with Haitian heritage.

I don't know why Fitzgerald chose to launch his Golden Legacy series with a biography of Toussaint. As far as I can tell, Fitzgerald didn't have any Haitian ancestory. It could be that he chose several subjects and Carty simply happened to turn this one in first. But the whole series is worth it, in my opinion, because they cover a lot of subjects that aren't taught in schools but should be. You can still get the collected editions in hardcover or paperback today at the Golden Legacy site.

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