If a white editor is considering a subscription to "Watch Your Head" explained Thomas, "in the back of his mind he's going to be like, 'OK this is a black strip', not a strip about college kids."

Amy Lago, an editor with the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates both Bell and Thomas' work, said she tries to "look beyond" race when deciding what strips to pick up. Lagos also pitches the syndicate's artists to newspaper clients.

"When I describe a strip, I tend not to mention that the cast is black or biracial or 'diverse,'" Lago wrote in an email. "I prefer to focus on its other attributes, such as, 'young people just entering the workforce, commenting on socio-politics and current events.' "

Anthony Zurcher, an editor with Creators Syndicate, works with Morrie Turner, the first African American to get national syndication in 1968 with his strip "Wee Pals." Zurcher said that fierce competition for space on funny pages is just the nature of the doodling business. "If you're a young cartoonist no matter who are, you're going to be competing," he said.

Bell said black cartoonists do want to compete, but with the entire comics page—not just those artists who happen to share the same skin color. In an email, Bell added that to some Sunday's drawn-in might look like "just another group of whiny dark people playing the race card." But he hoped most would see more than that. Thomas agreed.

"I'm not naïve to think it's going to be this grand sweeping change or anything, but hopefully you get people to maybe kind of reassess the way they look at our strips and look at our work."

Helena Andrews is the congressional style writer at Politico, a multi-media news organization covering national politics.