This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Longaron and Friday Foster. The Unexpected Heroine
In 1970, Catalan illustrator Jordi Longaron (1933-2019) wrote an important chapter in the history of comics when he created the weekly comic strip ‘Friday Foster’ for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate from a script by Jim Lawrence. The main character, Friday Foster, is a brave, sensual, daring Black photographer and detective, transcending taboos of that time to become a disruptive character who was controversial and rejected in certain sectors.
Friday Foster became the first Black woman to headline a syndicated strip, showing there was room for empowered women beyond the stereotypical female roles of the time. Fifty years later, it remains a key piece for understanding the social and cultural transformation brought about by the Blaxploitation movement in a country marked by racial conflicts.
Longaron, who was only in New York once, captured the America of dreams in his art, of film and television, glamour and seduction, hiding the conflicts and inequalities.
