The work of Kerry James Marshall reveals and questions the social constructs of beauty, taste, and power. Engaged in an ongoing dialogue with centuries of Western visual representation, Marshall has deftly reinterpreted the tropes, compositions, and styles of his artistic forebearers, recontextualizing them within a modern setting. At the center of his prodigious oeuvre is the critical recognition of the conditions of invisibility long ascribed to black bodies in the Western pictorial tradition, and the creation of what he calls a ‘counter-archive’ that reinscribes these figures within its narrative arc. RYTHM MASTR Daily Strip is a presentation of the three primary comics from Marshall’s ‘Dailies’ series (Rythm Mastr, P-Van, and On the Stroll). Marshall began developing the ‘Dailies’ in 1999 in response to the absence of black superheroes, characters, and environments in mainstream comics. The content of the ‘Dailies’ ranges from the quotidian to the fantastic, and their narratives take place within the daily life of ‘Black Metropolis,’ the former nickname of the South Side Chicago neighborhood of Bronzeville.
