Encyclopedia of Black Comics

Sheena C. Howard, Christopher Priest

• Editore: Chicago Review Press - Fulcrum
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781682751688
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Literature
• Categoria: Comics & Graphic Novels Literary Criticism

The Encyclopedia of Black Comics, focuses on people of African descent who have published significant works in the United States or have worked across various aspects of the comics industry. The book focuses on creators in the field of comics: inkers, illustrators, artists, writers, editors, Black comic historians, Black comic convention creators, website creators, archivists and academics—as well as individuals who may not fit into any category but have made notable achievements within and/or across Black comic culture.

ENTRIES A-Z

ANDERSON, JIBA MOLEI

(Aug. 17, 1972– )

• Born in Detroit, MI
• University of Michigan, BFA in illustration and photography, 1994
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago, MFA in visual communication, 1998
• Illustrator, designer, writer, educator, and publisher
• Creator of The Horsemen

Jiba Molei Anderson’s creation The Horsemen served as the flagship property for his publishing house, Griot Enterprises, gaining inclusion in the permanent library of the Smithsonian Institution.

His first crack at comics came in 1995, when La Morris Richmond hired Anderson as an inker for his Jigaboo Devil comic. Anderson’s creation The Horsemen began during work on his master’s of fine arts thesis. This comic marked a shift from the concerns that normally occupied African-American superheroes at the time, such as drug dealing or other forms of inner-city crime. Anderson connected African American superheroes to African mythology, immersing himself in the study of Yoruba, which managed to survive the slave trade in Cuba and Haiti.

The comic depicts Yoruba gods as superheroes, with each chapter named for a different divine entity. The team consists of seven orishas, or manifestations of the god Olodumare. These orishas inhabit a group of young Black professionals from Detroit who do combat with a corrupt group of multicultural orishas known as The Deitis, who are bent on seeing humanity worship at the feet of politics, organized religion, commerce, and other corrupting elements of the modern world.

The year after receiving his master’s degree, Anderson founded Griot Enterprises publishing house and creative studio, with The Horsemen serving as its first major property. The first Horsemen comic saw release in 2002, receiving critical acclaim.

While the major comics publishers continued to focus on an audience it believed consisted solely of white, middle-class, adolescent males, Anderson and his contemporaries created stories about a wider range of humanity. His work includes positive images of people from a variety of ethnicities, working to dispel years of negative stereotyping.

Image courtesy of Jiba Molei Anderson

Anderson’s influences ran the gamut of popular culture. Along with the obvious influence of cartoons and comic books, Anderson draws inspiration from the works of Alphonse Mucha, Frank Frazetta—whose artwork was featured on numerous Conan the Barbarian covers and albums by Molly Hatchet—and Z-grade grindhouse films.

Anderson’s other ventures into writing include the educational text Manifesto: The Tao of Jiba Molei Anderson, Chronicle: The Art of Jiba Molei Anderson, and his blog The Afrosoul Chronicles, where Anderson expounds on the subjects of race, politics, business, and popular culture. Anderson also served as the lead writer and art director of the comic Crates: The Hip Hop Chronicles with Christian Beranek.

Anderson has managed to straddle the fence between academic and corporate worlds during his career. As an educator, he has taught as an assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Arts and as an adjunct faculty member at Sanford-Brown College and Chicago State University, and a visiting assistant professor at DeVry University. He has served in the capacity of graphic designer, production artist, and art director for the likes of KBA Marketing, Ryan Partnership, Cedar Grove Books, Landmark Sign Group, and Manga Entertainment. He has also worked as a graphic designer, animator, art director, and graphic novelist for institutions such as the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the Chicago Academy of Music, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Anderson has taken part in both one-man and group shows and has had his work featured in the book Black Comix. He has also traveled the country as a public speaker, discussing comic books and graphic novels as a means to explore issues of race, identity, and culture in the classroom.

Anderson believes comics are a democratic medium with power to speak globally. Through his work, he hopes to develop what he calls “young warriors,” people with strong viewpoints and the drive to succeed.

ANDERSON, JULIE M.

(July 30, 1987– )

• Born in New York, NY
• Miami Palmetto High School, 2007
• Illustrator, designer, and webcomic author
• Creator of the webcomics Onyx and VE Dead Breed

A self-taught artist, Julie Anderson is the author of two webcomics, Onyx and VE Dead Breed. Many of her works engage with Afrofuturism, an international aesthetic movement that addresses concerns of the African Diaspora through science fiction.

Anderson has worked in a variety of creative fields, including modeling, illustration, and graphic design. She also illustrated two children’s books: It’s Okay to Be Like Me! written by Grace Zhang, and Sir Frederick Squirrel of Canterbury, written by Robenia McKinley.

In 2015 and 2016, Anderson developed two webcomics: Onyx, a post-apocalyptic story in which survivors face the threat of a catastrophic virus, and VE Dead Breed, about a group of assassins. She also created a series highlighting Black women in comic book-themed genres that appeared in the 2017 Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco.

In 2015, Anderson was a featured artist in the New York Public Library’s Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination, an exhibit exploring Black speculative imagination surrounding Afrofuturism, science fiction, horror, comics, magical realism, and fantasy. She also did artwork for the 2014 documentary film, The Czar of Black Hollywood, chronicling the early life and career of African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.

Anderson describes her artistic style as “million-in-one multi-stylized work” that is influenced by fine art, anime, comics, and cartoons alike. She most identifies with the story structures and character development of anime and manga, although her art itself does not have strong elements of the style.

Image courtesy of Julie M. Anderson

ANYABWILE, DAWUD

(Feb. 6, 1965– )

• Born in Philadelphia, PA
• Rutgers University, 1983–34; Temple University, 1984
• Storyboard artist, illustrator, and comic creator
• Illustrator and cocreator of Brotherman: Dictator of Discipline

Although primarily known as a storyboard artist, Dawud Anyabwile is also the illustrator and cocreator of the comic series Brotherman: Dictator of Discipline and the illustrator of the graphic novel adaptation of Walter Dean Myers’s Monster. He is a frequent collaborator with his brother Guy Sims, who wrote the scripts for both Monster and Brotherman.

In 1989, he began collaborating with Guy Sims to create the Brotherman series. This groundbreaking series showcased a hero of African American descent, Antonio Valor, working to combat social apathy in an embattled city. The series ran from 1992 until 1996, selling 750,000 copies without major distribution or publishing. It later won several Glyph Awards, including one for Best Artist.

The year the series ended, Anyabwile began working with Wanderlust Interactive on the Pink Panther computer games and with MTV on Daria. After moving to California, he worked in the animation department for Klasky Csupo for The Wild Thornberrys and Rugrats, later moving to Atlanta, Georgia, to do production design for Turner Studios, the owner of Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, HarperCollins and Scholastic. His credits include Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (2004), Level Up (2011), and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (2017). In 2014, Anyabwile was the art director for the short Charged, which he both wrote and directed.

In 2015, Anyabwile and Sims adapted Walter Dean Myers’s Monster, a novel about a teenager awaiting trial for murder, to graphic novel format. The work received praise for both its writing and illustration. Dawud Anyabwile has also developed an instructional video, Drawing From the Soul, to help artists unlearn the “proper” way to make art and focus on genuine expression. He developed this philosophy as a young man when he was challenged by his father to draw more Black people. Anyabwile couldn’t understand why his drawing of African Americans looked so white until he realized that his primary education in drawing, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, had encouraged white-centric drawing styles that reflected neither himself nor his culture.

Dawud Anyabwile is the recipient of numerous comic and community service awards. In 1992, he was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Comic Book Artist at the San Diego Comic-Con, the same year he was granted the key to Kansas City, Missouri, for outstanding service to children. In 2008, he won an Emmy for conceptualizing a PSA for the Dalai Lama, and he won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention in Philadelphia in 2015. He has an artist archive at the Auburn Avenue Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta, Georgia.

Image courtesy of Professor W. Foster

ARMSTRONG, ROBB

JUMP START ©2011 Robb Armstrong.
Reprinted with permission of ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. All rights reserved.

(March 4, 1962– )

• Born in Wynnefield, PA
• Syracuse University, BFA
• Cartoonist and public speaker
• Creator of JumpStart

Robb Armstrong is the creator of JumpStart, a comic strip that has appeared in more than 400 publications. Entered into syndication in 1989, JumpStart can be seen as a living memoir; the characters Joe Cobb, Marcy Cobb, and their children are a reflection of his family life. Part of his motivation, he has said, was to create a comic that depicts middle-class life, as Black youth in the media are so often depicted as poor and underserved.

Robb Armstrong grew up using cartooning as an escape from difficult realities. He witnessed many tragedies in his early life: Armstrong’s father abandoned the family when he was only six, and the five fatherless children were brought up with little money to spend and little space to live in. His older brother was killed in an accident when he was still just six years old, and so...