Black History Month 2010
November 3rd, 2009 by david brothers | Tags: black history month '08, black history month 2009, Colored Commentary…is three months away. I know.
I’ve had a revelation over the past few months. I don’t really have any interest at all in doing another 28 day marathon talking about black people and comic book characters/superheroes. I just don’t care, for a variety of reasons too deep to go into today but which will undoubtedly leak out over the next few months.
However, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to represent. I just want to do it differently than I have before. Comics, and real life, shouldn’t be about the characters. It should be about the creators.
So, a request. Help me out. Drop a comment here or email me with the names of black writers, artists, colorists, editors, whatever. Superheroes, webcomics, mopey comics, indie comics, coloring books, whatever. I want to know. Also, specify if they are actively working or if they’re a classic creator and where I can see them in action.
I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing next year, but I have a vague idea. So, help me help you by helping me gather information. I don’t/can’t read everything, so no suggestion is too dumb or too obvious.
Except I guess Priest or Hudlin or McDuffie. Don’t recommend those guys to me. I already know about them.
Let’s get it.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_comics_creators
notably absent: Trevor von Eeden & Jeremy Love.
Man, do I get to be the person who suggests Kyle Baker? Cool!
Baker is extremely active, most recently with a stint in Wednesday Comics. His style varies based on the project, from the line drawings of Cowboy Wally and Why I Hate Saturn to the cartoonish King David to his (IMHO flawed) attempt to recreate Jack Cole’s Plastic Man.
He’s always a creator to be watched, and would make a great feature for 2010’s creators list.
Valentine DeLandro. Current penciler for X-Factor.
As anyone whose been reading the series knows, it really benefits from having a stable art team.
Dave Crosland has some beautiful, out there art. He’s not a ‘big two’ guy though, I guess. Hope he’s still interesting!
http://www.hiredmeat.com/contactbio.htm
How about George Herriman? He’s been dead for 65 years, and worked in newspaper comics rather than funnybooks, but he’s been massively influential on all sorts of people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herriman
Oliver Harrington
One I’d like to recommend is the late Steven Hughes, artist for Chaos Comics who is pretty much single-handedly responsible for the bad girls trend of the mid-90s (which I like to think is separate from the pouches and pads trend developed by Liefeld). His art essentially kept that company and its licenses afloat for, pretty much, its entire existence.
I think Brian Stelfreeze deserves at least a passing mention.
Just off the top of my head, here’s a few of my absolute favorites who haven’t been named so far and aren’t included in the Wikipedia list.
Louis Small Jr – He drew a bunch of Vampirella stuff, including a few of the Morrison/Millar issues, and the first few issues of Vertigo’s Codename: Knockout.
Rick Mays – This guy you should already know about, David, since he drew some of Adam Warren’s Gen13 and his Livewires as well. He’s also drawn a ton of other things like the Arsenal miniseries for DC along a smattering of Teen Titans and the first few issues of Top Cow’s recent Cyblade mini. I also particularly love the Kabuki stuff he did with David Mack, especially the Scarab miniseries.
Juvaun “JJ” Kirby – Very underrated artist who hasn’t drawn that much that I can recall, mostly some Backlash and DV8 and the sorta recent New Dynamix miniseries for Wildstorm and a couple of awesomely cute X-Babies one shots.
My favorite artist, Olivier Coipel, from Thor and House of M.
Or should they be American?
It also might be bad to highlight someone who drew a book about the blond-haired Norse guy that killed Black Goliath.
I thought of a few more not listed here or on Wikipedia.
Keron Grant – He drew the Son of Vulcan miniseries for DC and some other things, but I’m mostly familiar with him for having drawn the three issues of Fantastic Four written by Adam Warren, #57-59.
Felicia D Henderson – She’s writing a few issues of Teen Titans and The Web. (Is she still writing Teen Titans?)
Eric Jerome Dickey – While definitely more familiar as a prose novelist, he did write that Storm miniseries a few years ago.
Raven Gregory – He wrote The Gift and all those porny Alice In Wonderland books.
Sean Z – He writes and draws his own NSFW self-published series called Myth. http://myth.rated-z.com/ I met him at an Isotope party last year and at Folsom Street Fair earlier this year where he boothed with Justin Hall, he’s a pretty cool guy.
I still feel like there’s a couple of really obvious ones that are escaping me right now.
Ken Lashley, who was on Black Panther recently. And I believe a Canadian.
I’ve seen a fair bit of negative criticism of his art before (at least on a “Legends of the DCU” Justice League story he did with Priest), but I’ve always liked it.
David, don’t forget Marguerite Abouet, who wrote the AYA series of books from Drawn & Quarterly that you/I really like!
Crazily enough, David, I was just thinking about 4th Letter Black History month yesterday. Regardless of what you’re doing, I’m looking forward to February.
Lesean Thomas, Denys Cowan, Sanford Greene, uh… other guys.
Ms,Shatia Hamilton?
site- http://www.destiny-makers.net/art_portfolio.html
She also recently had a sitdown with ANN:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-gallery/2009-10-24
Came for Priest, didn’t see Priest. Already writing my guest spot for next feb.
I don’t think Damion Scott has been mentioned yet, and that dude can draw and should really get more work.
I’ll point out Lamar Abrams, who did the hilarious indie book Remake (I reviewed it here, if you want to know more). There’s also a guy named Brian Williams who’s doing this indie superhero book called Lucius Hammer (I talked about it here); I’m not sold on his book, but he seems interesting.
Curious you just interested in americans? Cause I’ve heard of a few black creators from europe (would be the PC term for them? African-Brittainian?)
Brainfarting right now but only guy I can think of at the moment is Olivier Coipel, who is from france.