In the European/"Western" academic world, postcolonialism has been discussed since the 1970s. One of the most important products of this dialogue during the '70s, if not the the most important, was Edward Said's Orientalism (1978). Throughout the years that followed, huge amounts of postcolonial theoretical writing appeared, bringing into the arena histories and literatures that were formerly more or less marginalized as objects of serious research. Though the field is quite broad, it may be possible to state some general traits common to postcolonial academic writing. As a literary paradigm, postcolonialist analysis means contextualized research in which literature is taken as a cultural text. For example, some important themes of postcolonial research have been the use of power and power relations, Otherness and hybridity. Estimation of Edward Said's legacy may soon - following the death of this great Palestinian scholar last year - burst into full bloom. We can already claim that along with Orientalism, another extremely important scholarly work by Said is his Culture and Imperialism. Both in method and content Said's books contributed much to postcolonial theory and practice. In the early part of my paper, I will try to distill and examine the fruitful legacy of these works by Edward Said for literary scholars and educators. In the later part of my paper I will put some of Said's terms, such as 'orientalism' and 'contrapuntal reading' into parctice while analysing the representations found in some popular comics. The first comics under scrutiny is Tintin au Congo by Herge. It was first published in 1930 as a black-and-white serial story in a Belgian newspaper. In 1946, it was published as a coloured comic book. The second comic is Mickey Mouse and the Negro Boy Thursday by Walt Disney, printed in 1954. The third and last one is a popular Finnish comic book Mammila: naapurin neekeri (Mammila: negro as a neighbour), made by Tarmo Koivisto in 1992, the eigth in an ongoing series of comic books about Mammila - a fictive town in Finland. While the earlier books describe Mammila as culturally quite homogeneous, Mammila: naapurin neekeri describes the town as a multicultural place - thanks to its new black inhabitant. The three comics under scrutiny originate from various countries and from various times; however, what is common to them is not only that that they are comics but that they all are and have been very popular comics. Further, all of them are products of the so-called Western cultural sphere, some implications of which I wish to show in my paper. Some old comics, like the Tintin books, are translated into several languages (Tintin books even into 40 languages) and reprinted again and again. It is clear that the circulation of such comics among so many readers, is based on something that must be taken seriously. Clearly, humour is a significant trait in all the popular comics under discussion here. An important question then follows: how is the humour in them constructed?