Clinton comic strips depicted two eras of life in Gotham City

Everyone’s heard of Batman and Spider-Man, but what about Afro-Kid and Needle-Man?

In 1970, the chair of the DeWitt Clinton art department decided to create a cartooning elective to channel students’ love for comic books into something productive. 

Olga Kitt, 83, a former arts teacher at Clinton and longtime Riverdale artist, was charged with teaching the class.

“She said ‘who here reads comics?’ Everybody raised their hand. Some of us had them in our history books. She said, ‘Who here likes Iron Man? I put my hand up so high I think I broke my shoulder. And she said, ‘OK, you guys are going to come with me to Marvel Comics,” alum and author of Clinton comic Bronx Bicentennial, Al Cazzoli, 55, said.

Ms. Kitt didn’t know much about comics and spent the summer before the first class doing research. 

“It was on the basis of what the students learned there that I encouraged them to begin to produce their own comic books. After all, if Stan Lee could produce all these Marvel comics …” Ms. Kitt said.

In the 1930s, before a market even existed for graphic novels, students produced issues of The Clinton News filled with the work of some of the country’s most noted comic book authors to date. 

Bob Kane, creator of Batman, drew some of his first comics in The Clinton News in the early 1930s. Will Eisner, a friend of Kane’s who he used to double-date with, is known as the “father of the graphic novel” and made his name after creating the comic series The Spirit. He also created his first comic for The Clinton News. 

Bill Finger, from the class of 1933, co-created the Green Lantern and came up with Batman villains Joker, Penguin and the Riddler, and originated the name for Batman’s Gotham City. 

Seymour Reit co-created Capser the Friendly Ghost. And perhaps the most well-known of all, Stan Lee — who co-created Iron Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man, and is also the former head of Marvel Comics — graduated  from the school in 1939.

It was partly because of these legends that a DeWitt Clinton High School class created their own characters like Afro-Kid and Needle-Man.