Characters native to the African continent have been depicted in comics since the beginnings of the modern comic strip. Initially, such early 20th-century newspaper comics as Winsor McCay's Little Nemo depicted the racist stereotype of a spear-carrying cannibal, a comedic convention of the time. African characters later began to appear as another stereotype, the "noble savage" — a similar progression to that of depictions of Native Americans — and eventually as standard human beings.