Afua Richardson
Selected Works: Genius, 24Seven

There’s a lot to be said for simply being dope. Being able to draw a comic that looks good, reads well, and is visually inventive is a skill that isn’t half as common as you might think, and it’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised when you pick up a book. Afua Richardson is dope, precisely because she can do exactly that.

Her art is really attractive. She does pencils, inks, and color, which gives her almost total control over how the art appears in a book. There aren’t a lot of people I regularly read who are the total package like this (maybe just Frazer Irving and Brendan McCarthy?), and it’s cool to see how the various aspects of her art fits together. Her style isn’t overly realistic. It’s not like DC’s Ed Benes-by-way-of-Jim Lee house style, but it’s not full blown Joe Madureira-style manga homage, anything goes Chris Bachalism, or Humberto Ramos-style bigfoot, either. It reminds me of animation (which I realize is a hideously general and possible meaningless description but ride with me for a minute) more than anything, with bright, splashy colors, backgrounds that fade in and out as needed, and lines that wiggle on the page.

Splashy is a good word for it. If you look at her work in Genius with Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman (my main point of reference), you’ll see how there are these wide swathes of color splashed across the page, sometimes battling it out with bright lights. Dark panels often have at least one bright splash of color for contrast. It’s not neon, but she knows how to throw some bright colors down for maximum effect.

Richardson’s art is real splashy and raw. I really want to see what her finished PSDs or AIs look like and peel them back, layer by layer. I bet it’s crazy interesting to see.

“Fresh. For 2011.”

Spike
Selected Works: Templar, AZ (chapter guide)

I didn’t intend for all of these entries to be about how every single one of these people are trailblazers or inspirations or represent some facet of black life, and make this all, or partially, about me. Really, I just wanted to talk about some black creators I dig and just sort of point out the fact that they exist. But that isn’t really possible, because everything I like holds some special significance when examined, and who I am is part of why I like what I like. So I’m gonna roll with it. Case in point:

I only really dabble in webcomics. I read a handful, probably somewhere between 10 and 15, but my ear isn’t to the ground with webcomics like it is with print comics. Despite that, one name I hear on a regular basis is “Spike.” She writes and draws Templar, Arizona, and has been doing it since ’05. She’s done well enough at it that she keeps coming up as an exemplar of the format amongst my friends and the writers I follow. She lives off it, which is something to be applauded every single time it happens.

But a big part of the appeal for me is that Spike did it her way. Templar, AZ is her comic, and hers alone. She writes it, she draws it, she letters it, she hosts it, and she gets money for it. That’s basically the American dream, isn’t it? Being beholden to no one but yourself, doing what you want to do, carving out a new lane for yourself, being able to survive doing it, and having the complete freedom that we all deserve. She’s doing what all of us wish we could do.

So, hats off for Spike and Templar, AZ. Much respect due.

super magic black origin freshly out of dopeness
created: How come people keep saying that Heroes for Hire is a bite of Birds of Prey? The gimmick is completely different, the cast rotates instead of having a core of girl power… I don’t get it, honest I don’t. But whatever whatever, here’s some stuff what I wrote:

–some breakdowns of some mutants from some movie at Moviefone

–a quick look at Marvel’s Heroes for Hire

---

definitely out of dopeness, sketch another opus
consumed: How funky is Janelle Monae’s The ArchAndroid? It got snubbed hard at the Grammys, but that’s life, I figure. Short post today, ’cause things are blowing up.

-via Angie Wang comes a fascinating game. Here’s what she said about it when she linked it: “An affecting wordless game where your anthropomorphizing tendencies towards inanimate objects will reward you” and here’s the link: http://www.the-end-of-us.com. I liked this a lot. Play the game all the way through (it’s as long as a song) before scrolling down to read about it.

–This Jeff Yang piece about how multiracialism is redefining Asian identity is pretty interesting. I wonder if there’s a parallel in the evolution of black racial identity? Like, at some point, your great great great grandparents are straight up African or Haitian or whatever American, and then by it gets down to you, you’re just sorta… black american. That doesn’t mean that you’re not Nigerian or Somalian or whatever, but that you have more to pull from than just one mother culture. Does that make sense? It’s not a diluting so much as it is an evolution and adaptation. I haven’t given this the time to percolate that it deserves, but Yang’s piece brought up a lot of really interesting questions I need to answer for myself.

-It also made me think about fusion cuisine, which I generally think of as being wack but is almost definitely something that you’ll see more of when you hit the family reunion bbq and there’s all types of sushi and collards in casserole dishes and fish, hot dogs, burgers, and hog maws on the grill.

-There’d still be just kool-aid and lemonade in the jugs, though. Everybody loves kool-aid and lemonade.

-Guess who’s hungry right now.

-I’m feeling like Ghostface in “Shakey Dog”. “Fried plantains and rice, big round onions on a T-bone steak, my stomach growling, yo, I want some.”

-More colored commentary, this time courtesy of C-Rayz Walz and The Angel & The Preacher:

-via Ron Wimberly comes a gang of super dope James Bond novel covers. Diamonds Are Forever is great and Octopussy is creepy. It’s slightly nsfw on the sidebar (pulp covers got pretty rowdy), but you can’t see nothing so tell your boss to get deez nutz if he tries to say something.

-JM Ken Niimura, artist of the undeniably dope I Kill Giants, has a webcomic called 514H. I dig it–a little funny, good panels, nice colors. What’s up with not having an RSS feed, though?

-More Jog on Ditko.

-I dig this belt from The Hundreds, but only in black. They’ve got a store in SF. I might pop by and see about picking it up. I went from having regular belts as kids, with loops and holes you had to punch out, to woven belts in high school, and now all I rock are these types. I thought they were called golf belts, but whatever.

–Joáo Lemos is an ill artist. He did the only story I dug in that Wolverine 1000 joint Marvel put out, a collabo with Sarah Cross. I hope this guy gets more and more high profile work.

–People recreating old photos. I think this is good staging + Photoshop? Regardless, this is a fantastic project. I don’t think I can even pick a favorite, though the ones that span like thirty years are pretty awesome.

-The Grammys were a joke when it came to rap. They picked the laziest, safest rap albums to award. Eminem’s Recovery winning over The Roots’s How I Got Over is jokes.

-ANYway, there’s also Record of the Year awards, which prompted this:

-Four out of five songs nominated for Record of the Year were rap joints. Em and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” (straight), Bobby Ray and Bruno Mars’s “Nothin’ On You” (good), Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” (aight, but y’all ran that one into the ground instantly), and Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind” (one of Jay’s best, I guess). The fifth song is Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now.” Now, silly me, I figured we’d get a rap win.

-Four rappers. One country group named after nostalgia for back when nigras knew their place won.

-Really though? That’s pretty doggone suspect.

-The next Damon Albarn Appreciation Society post might be a little mean. A preview:

-Speaking of mean… Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s SHIELD would be an ill comic if it were about something other than how unbelievably awesome white dudes have been throughout history. I mean, dang, can’t I at least get an Arab mathematician or Chinese dude as an actual character? Only white guys did anything of substance over the past however many thousand years and next few hundred years? I feel like I’m asking for one rib over here.

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knock off your set, BROOKLYN we keep ’em open
David: Hellblazer 276, Thunderbolts 153
Esther: Yes: Superman/Batman 81, Tiny Titans 37
Perhaps, if Damian is really funny: Supergirl 61
Possibly, if it looks decent: Young Justice 1, although it’s stupid that they made Robin Dick and not Tim. Tim’s been around for twenty-two years! That’s at least twice as long as the show’s target audience has been alive. Come on, people!
Gavin: Booster Gold 41, Green Lantern Corps 57, Green Lantern 62, Darkwing Duck 9, Amazing Spider-Man 654.1, Avengers Academy 9, Deadpool MAX 5, Hulk 30, S.H.I.E.L.D. 6, Thunderbolts 153, Uncanny X-Force 5

art by dan fraga
Christopher Priest
Selected Works: The Crew, Black Panther, Captain America & The Falcon Vol. 2: Brothers And Keepers

I find myself less and less interested in who was the first to do something. Milestones are nice, and arriving is undeniably important… but it’s not very interesting, is it? Who cares who was first, if the person who was first was wack? Being first doesn’t mean much if that’s where your accomplishments stopped.

Christopher Priest was a handful of firsts. At the very least, he was the first black editor at Marvel and DC, and he may well have been the first black writer at Marvel. He’s had a long career, having gone from Marvel to DC to Valiant to DC to Marvel and out over the course of what, somewhere around thirty years? It’s been a long time since we’ve seen any new comics product from Priest, and as near as I can tell, he’s retired.

Priest managed to be first and good. He wrote a couple of classics while he was at Marvel, edited and wrote a gang of good ones at DC, and I’m pretty sure that his runs on books like Black Panther are generally regarded fondly. More than that, Priest has range. His Spider-Man vs Wolverine is a good book, and perfectly in line with the cape comics of the day. Quantum & Woody is a screwball comedy. Black Panther veered from political intrigue to Kirby homage to Avengers-style action. The Crew was street level spy slash crime comics.

Priest is a consummate writer. While he has a few quirks I’m not particularly fond of, he’s done some genuinely impressive work in a variety of genres and with a number of different gimmicks. He redefined Black Panther forever in his five years on the book, and I still say that The Crew is the best book Marvel ever cancelled. Priest earned his place in history.

art by clement oubrerie

Marguerite Abouet
Selected Works: Aya, Aya of Yop City, Aya: The Secrets Come Out

The thing about race and comics, or race and anything really, is that it’s vastly more complicated than people often think it is, but it’s really pretty simple at the same time. It’s complicated because every culture has something weird that they do, a certain set of values, and a wide spectrum of experiences. It’s simple because every culture is weird when you’re on the outside looking in. The unfamiliar is weird, that’s just how life works.

Once you peek beyond the surface, though, you’ll find that most cultures are actually pretty similar. We go through the same journeys, have the same problems with our family, and so on. The specifics of different, sure, but life on Earth is a lot more universal than some people realize, I think.

I don’t have much at all in common with most Africans, beyond a skin tone and some distant ancestor. I don’t know what Africa’s like to live in, and I’ve never been, but the most surprising thing about Marguerite Abouet’s Aya, illustrated by Clement Oubrerie, was how familiar Aya’s life was. This is a book that’s supremely easy to relate to if you’ve ever been a teenager. Every family in the book is familiar, from the stuffy businessman’s house to the fake aunties. Aya is just about real life.

Books like Aya remind me that it’s bigger than just some black/white dichotomy or being mad about some black character that’s only been in two good stories ever getting disrespected and dismissed in Cape Comix Cuarterly. Being black, and being able to recognize my life in a fictional account of someone else’s life decades ago, is a better thing, and a beautiful thing. It’s just another reminder that being black is normal. Being black is being human. While that seems like a weird thing to need reminding about, but take it from someone who knows: it helps.

-We bought comics!
-David: Power Man & Iron Fist 1, Heroes for Hire 4
-Esther: Batgirl 18, Batman and Robin 20, Birds of Prey 9, Knight and Squire 5
-Of course, we digress like a mug.
-We also talk about the Origin of Bane, and why he’s so awkward
-Esther talks about some fan-pandering turned fan-baiting in Batman & Robin 20
-I talk about some death in comics stuff
-These covers come up:

-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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Olivier Coipel
Selected Works:: Siege, Thor by J. Michael Straczynski Omnibus

For a while, Bryan Hitch held the crown of slam bang superhero action. On The Authority and The Ultimates, he took his Alan Davis-inspired style and redefined how what cool action scenes meant in cape comics. Hitch splurged on spectacle: hundreds of space ships, hyper-detailed rubble, and battle-scarred landscapes. He held the crown, until Olivier Coipel came along and knocked it right off his head.

My first exposure to Coipel came in House of M, an event comic that had a story that was actually pretty terrible. Despite that, Coipel’s art shone through. His broad, muscled figures really sell the power and majesty of the superhero. He can do that big, nasty superhero action that the fiends live for, and he only got better as time went on. He knocked Thor out of the park, and Siege, with inks by Mark Morales and colors by Laura Martin, looked amazing.

I don’t think of Coipel being a realistic artist, at least not in the way that Hitch or Alex Ross are realistic, but I do think that his comics look real. He’s got more in common with that old Alan Davis style, where characters have believable proportions but are absolutely subject to cartooning or exaggeration for effect. Coipel draws straight up comic books, without realism being the goal. If it looks good on the page, he does it. Sometimes this means drawing regular humans, but more often than not, it means playing with scale. His superheroes are barrel-chested and broad as a house. His faces are cartoony, perfectly caricatured, and exaggerated when things get emotional.

I dig this guy quite a bit. His comics look real because he’s just a consummate artist. He doesn’t have to work in the same lane as Hitch to get the same effect, and for my money, he’s holding the crown of what an event comic should look like.

(I accidentally uploaded a fifth image. Here it is.)

kyle baker, letitia lerner, superman’s babysitter
you can find it in bizarro comics, which is out of print, but widely available used or new for more than reasonable prices. hey dc! hook up a digital reprint of this tale and everything else from bizarro comics. you could be rolling in tens of dollars!

(pencils by powerful paul pelletier, inks by rocking rick magyar, colors by preening paul mounts)

Dwayne McDuffie
Selected Works: Hardware: The Man in the Machine, Icon: A Hero’s Welcome, Static Shock Vol. 1: Rebirth of the Cool

Just by a happenstance of birth, I was the perfect age for Dwayne McDuffie’s work to have an effect on my, what, mental growth? Racial consciousness? Whatever smarty art type of word you want to use. Spike Lee’s Malcolm X was a watershed moment for me. Less watershed, but still important, was the formation of Milestone Media, courtesy of McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek T Dingle.

In hindsight, the Milestone books I was really checking for as a kid (Static, Blood Syndicate) weren’t McDuffie joints. He was working on Icon and Hardware, which I tend to think of being more adult oriented rather than teen. I didn’t read all the way through those until I was grown. Despite that, the fact that Milestone existed was big for me. It showed that there coule be actual black people in comics. The company was full of people who looked, acted, and talked like people I knew. This is a big deal, believe it or not.

Years later, McDuffie helped shepherd Static Shock to beating Pokemon in ratings on TV. After that, he helped make me a believer in the JLA by way of the cartoon. Still later came a sequel to Secret Wars called Beyond! and his all-too-brief run on Fantastic Four: The New Fantastic Four and The Beginning of the End. He did all of this while maintaining a career making successful cartoons.

McDuffie did the job, and he kept doing the job. He’s built up a body of work that most people in his field should be jealous of and that fans should be thankful for. I’m thankful for the fact that he’s cognizant of his power as a creator, and simply tries to create worlds that reflect the ones we live in now. That was a big help as a kid, and his career has been an inspiration as an adult.

Denys Cowan
Selected Works: Hardware: The Man in the Machine, The Question Vol. 2: Poisoned Ground, Batman: Lovers and Madmen

I’m usually pretty okay at figuring out an artist’s influences, but Denys Cowan is a mystery to me. There are traits he shares with other artists, sure. He’s kind of scratchy like Bill Sienkiewicz got on Moon Knight once he hit his stride, or maybe some of those really dirty Jamie Hewlett pages. He works cityscapes like Frank Miller used to when he was on Daredevil, where they don’t quite make real life sense but they make perfect visual sense. His figures are a little off, just this side of Kirby’s flexible proportions.

That’s not to say that his art is a hodgepodge of techniques from other artists. Cowan’s art has certain aspects in common with other artists, but his art definitely stands alone when you look at it. Whatever his influences, he’s created something that’s distinctly his. The way he draws muscles are a couple points that stand out to me. Cowan draws some knobby elbows and knees, a couple of joints I generally think of as being bends in comics art, rather than anything with detail. It’s such a little thing, the sort of thing you have to work to see, most likely, but there it is: knobby elbows.

His faces are good, too. If you look at a close-up of Hardware or Barraki, they look black. Not just comic book black, where they look like generic (white) dudes with brownish skin, but actual black. Broad noses, full lips, cheekbones, everything. He nails it.

One last point: I listened to GZA’s Liquid Swords until the tape popped a couple times. Cowan did the cover and liner art for that, and I still love them.