The legend of Jack Johnson, who became the first black heavyweight champion 100 years ago Friday, keeps growing. His story was already inspiration for a stage play and a feature film. Now, he has inspired an online comic-book biography, The Original Johnson.

The comic, being serialised in weekly installments at www.comicmix.com, is written and illustrated by Trevor Von Eeden, and is unflinching in its depiction of racism in America, the brutality of the boxing ring and the tragedies and triumphs of Johnson’s life.

The novel opens with Johnson at his physical peak during his greatest victory: The title bout against Tommy Burns in Sydney. But it quickly shifts to flashbacks dramatising gruesome scenes of ill-treatment of black people as well as the tough love amply supplied by Johnson’s mother to strengthen him from becoming a punching bag for neighbourhood children.

Johnson’s mother is depicted as larger-than-life, but well-meaning. She wants to teach him to stand up for himself and end the abuse, even if she uses her own fists to deliver the message. Thus begins his journey into boxing, which the novel interweaves with Johnson’s struggle for acceptance into white society. The pages abound with images of brutal fights, detailed cityscapes, the monstrosities of slavery and bombastic dream sequences.

It is a tale fraught with fights, and romances, both of which are depicted in all their fury and passion and adult language. The novel also offers a who’s who of past boxing champions. Von Eeden presents James Jackson Jeffries with a body and face reminiscent of early drawings of Superman, and Joseph Choynski as a lithe dancer.