Dave Astor at Editor and Publisher reported earlier this week that 10 African-American cartoonists will take part in a Feb. 10 comic strip event designed to draw attention to the way they feel their work is perceived. According to Candorville creator Darrin Bell, who’s quoted in the story, too many newspaper editors lump “black comics” into one category:
“Some are political, some are about friends, and some are about family,” noted Bell, who organized the Feb. 10 action along with “Watch Your Head” cartoonist Cory Thomas. (Both are syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group.)
For the action, the cartoonists will all do a version of one of Thomas’ comics. The theme and writing in each strip will be similar, though “we’re all plugging in our own characters,” said Bell. The idea is to satirically protest the erroneous notion of many editors and readers that comics by African-American creators are interchangeable.
What might the action accomplish? “I hope editors will start allowing minority cartoonists to compete for all their comics slots, not just one or two slots,” replied Bell, whose 2003-launched “Candorville” strip runs in 60 to 65 papers.
Hat tip: Tom Spurgeon, who offers his own nuanced take on the announcement.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Right now:
Black characters = Black comic = Black Audience
I think this exists for a few reasons:
1. There isn’t nearly enough diversity of material to form a full and complete genre. Put simply, if every black cartoonist/artist put out a unique strip/comic/web comic/ animated property, you’d start to see the audience diversify according to the material.
2. Historically, this has always been the case. (The WHY is less important than understanding HOW it affects the current situation)
3. Because of 1 and 2, audiences have come to expect this.
The action seems to be geared towards changing the popular perception that black books are interchangeable. I think that with more diversity in the books, you’ll see those things open up and perceptions change along with them.
I think anime is a good example of how to do it right. When anime first started making it’s way across the waters, it was a lot of the crazy stuff – akira, fist of the north star, street fighter, etc… It was popular because it was dark and bloody and uber-violent film making. However, as more material started to make it’s way across we began to see a much wider diversity of stories and creative work. With that diversity came new fans, female fans and a youth audience bored with the Disney-formula. So instead of anime being just for the asian kids, or the nerds (or black people, to bring it back to the case at hand), it became mainstream and MANY people were able to embrace it because some aspect of it spoke to them more directly.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with black comics being perceived as being FOR black people. I realize this has monetary drawbacks, but it has always been the challenge of artists to get their work into the hands of those who appreciate it. We are talking about a genre in its infancy. Those of us working and hoping to work in it would be better served by embracing the perceptions rather than trying self-consciously to avoid them. It is what it is. I’m currently editing my first superhero novel, it features mostly black characters. I am not concerned in the slightest about it being a BLACK book. It is a book. The characters are black. That would seem to make it a black book. That is where my control ends. The equation that a black book = black audience (exclusively), is something that I’ll let other people worry about. I would have written it if I were the only one who would ever see it.
The problem with the black genre is that it is so very insecure at the moment. It’s under fire from the BET-culture-of-failure crowd and from the It’s-not-white-so-it-can’t-be-profitable crowd. (For perspective, why isn’t GOKU being played by an asian person?)
In my opinion, for black creations to go mainstream, they need BODIES. More creators doing their own work. As the work builds, the audience will come. The greater the diversity and depth of work, the broader the audience will be. For a good example, think of the effect of jazz, soul-train, r&B has on mainstream music. It was diversity and range and depth that opened doors..one fan at a time.
AE.