Black’s in: When a ‘blackout’ is a good thing

Comic books, and related TV shows and movies featuring black superheroes and other characters, are currently enjoying a major boom. From being fringe offerings of years gone or even niche fare of days past, today there’s a veritable ‘blackout’ of sorts in geekdom. Here’s why that’s a good, good thing.

By Abdulkareem Baba Aminu

I’m one of those people who waited for a Black Panther movie, even when it seemed none was on the way. I’m not talking about post-Blade comic book movie days, when Wesley Snipes told me to my face in Abuja, Nigeria, that he was developing one. I’m referring to the early 80s, and the scattered few comics my friends and I would scramble to buy, featuring our favorite characters and their wondrous stories. T’Challa was one whose appearances we greedily devoured, and whose action scenes we would draw out on cheap paper. He also inspired a retinue of our own creations, complete with the tropes and all.

Some of my friends grew up and left comic books behind. I, and a handful of others, did not, and we continued to enjoy our four-color epics, even as they evolved into the cultural movement they are today. But I digress. My childhood friends and I embraced comic books, a great deal of which are American. Marvels, DCs, Archies, and the odd indie title that would find its way to our Kaduna Post Office haunt from where we bought a good chunk of our weekly diet.

We loved Batman, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Thor, Alpha Flight, Green Lantern, Fantastic Four, Teen Titans, The Outsiders, Power Pack, and many, many more. But what really got us going? Black Panther, John Stewart’s GL, Luke Cage/Power Man, Black Lightning of The Outsiders, and finally, Storm of the X-Men (who looked like my big sister Adama then, honest, but sans white hair and blue eyes, natch).

But somehow, back then, we didn’t really care much about how few black characters we had. Maybe it was because Ibrahim Yakubu, then-classmate and brother-from-another-mother and I, would create hundreds (yes, hundreds) of our own characters, detailed back-stories, costumes, and all. We drew, with ballpoint pens on drawing paper and colored in with coloring pencils, our own comic books, and sold them to friends who were starved of comic books.

With the proceeds, we’d run off – unaccompanied and unauthorized – to super-busy Central Market, in rickety and sometimes-dangerous mini-buses, to buy gems like the first issue of Secret Wars by Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck. And also, later on, discover the joys of Swamp Thing, Sandman, Kid Eternity, and other mature readers-themed titles.

“We’d run off – unaccompanied and unauthorized – to super-busy Central Market, in rickety and sometimes-dangerous mini-buses, to buy gems like the first issue of Secret Wars by Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck. And also, later on, discover the joys of Swamp Thing, Sandman, Kid Eternity, and other mature readers-themed titles.”

Many years after, Snipes wowed the world and box office with his awesome martial arts portrayal of Marvel’s half-vampire Blade, and a ho-hum Spawn flick was, well, spawned to yawns from fans. And that was it, really. Fast-forward to today, and of course, we have witnessed the cultural juggernaut which the Black Panther movie is. Boasting an A-list cast, almost all-black, and helmed by a young, black director, that movie is one of the few to ever gross a billion dollars in the domestic U.S market.

It sparked a merchandising wildfire for African clothing and hairstyles, and the soundtrack album, curated by rap superstar Kendrick Lamar, was a massive hit, too. If there ever was a moment that black’s really ‘in’, this was it. A friend described that period weirdly, but aptly, as a ‘blackout’. From having a limited number of black characters in comic books and related TV shows and movies in the past, I’m suddenly spoilt for choice. It is a good feeling – sometimes bittersweet, even – one shared by many creators I had conversations with about the ongoing ‘blackout’.

“From having a limited number of black characters in comic books and related TV shows and movies in the past, I’m suddenly spoilt for choice. It is a good feeling – sometimes bittersweet, even – one shared by many creators I had conversations with about the ongoing ‘blackout’.”

Joe Illidge has a career spanning decades, and has worked on some of the most iconic books in the industry. He told me that growing up, the fact that there were too few black superheroes is something he was always aware of on a basic level, from reading comic books for years and barely seeing any characters that looked like him. “When I started working at Milestone Media, Inc., that’s when the reality of it crashed in on me, because their universe was, in terms of cultural diversity, the antithesis of the superhero universes that served as part of my fiction diet for most of my life,” he said.

On the movies, Illidge told me that while Marvel’s Black Panther movie success will be attributed to too many variables to easily list, a confluence of events led to it. He mentioned the rise of the MCU, the growing buying power of black people in America, the accelerating popularity of Afrofuturism, the resurgence of black film auteurs, as well as the increased dehumanization of black people in America, and the result of them needing to see themselves in a brilliant light which goes against the jackhammer false media narrative of black people as less than. “These factors alone make for a fluid bomb,” he said.

I spoke to Roye Okupe, a creator whose comic books are all based on strong black characters. His biggest hit, Malika: Warrior Queen, is a smash that is getting made into a TV series via a Kickstarter campaign. Originally from Nigeria, he ditched a career in engineering to pursue his dream full-time. He grew up thinking the concept of a ‘superhero’ was something that was meant for only a particular group of people, people unlike himself.

Okupe agrees that there are more black superheroes in comics today, compared to in the past. “Even just looking back at the past 5 years, it’s a huge difference. But I think it has more to do with the indie creators and companies, than any of the major publishers. A lot of people, including me, simply got fed up for waiting for the big guys to do it, so we rolled up our sleeves and went to work,” he said.

“Okupe agrees that there are more black superheroes in comics today, compared to in the past. “Even just looking back at the past 5 years, it’s a huge difference. But I think it has more to do with the indie creators and companies, than any of the major publishers.”

Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, he says his goal, for now, is to create characters and stories inspired by things he saw, felt, experienced, and was taught growing up. “I feel a responsibility to provide not only people of African descent, but all races, great stories that also inform about Africa, past, present, and future,” he said.

For writer David Walker, whose fan-favorite work on Marvel’s Luke Cage has attracted awards buzz, said the vast majority of the work he has done in comics has been work-for-hire, starring characters that already existed. “In those cases, such as Luke Cage, Cyborg, or Shaft, those characters were already black. I didn’t create them, so that’s that. But in my own personal work, I frequently have black protagonists, a decision informed by the fact that as a black kid growing up, I rarely saw heroes that reflected my background and experience,” he said.

But, Walker said, while there are more black superheroes in comics today, only a small number get coverage in the press, or enjoy significant sales. “To be clear, even though we’re talking about black superheroes, we aren’t really talking about comic books. We are talking about film and TV. When I wrote Power Man and Iron Fist for Marvel, most people that watched Luke Cage on Netflix didn’t know that Luke Cage was also Power Man. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met that didn’t know Luke Cage existed before Netflix. Likewise, people seem to think the Black Panther is new, because he’s in a movie, and they think he was created by black creators,” he said.

Walker also said if market realities were truly reflected, then at least 30 to 40 of all comic books would star black characters because blacks make more than a quarter of the market.

“Walker also said if market realities were truly reflected, then at least 30 to 40 of all comic books would star black characters because blacks make more than a quarter of the market.”

John Jennings has the enviable job of being an artist, and an Associate Professor of Art and Visual Studies at Buffalo-State University. He’s also co-editor of Eisner-nominated collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. Growing up, he tells me, his home state of Mississippi had such naturalized aspects of racism in the very atmosphere, that he didn’t politicize around race until much later.

Jennings says once he realized just how underrepresented black characters and black stories were, he went out of his way to make more. “Creation is a political act, whether you think so or not, and what you choose not to show is just as important as what you do show. Even my organizing of black-themed cons is way to instil the reflections of a spectrum of black images in the psyches of black children and teens. Understanding your own humanity and your own subjectivity is extremely empowering, and something that is inherent in our society for white youth,” he says.

If one looks at the independent black comics creators that aren’t sold in mainstream shops, Jennings says, there are literally thousands of black characters. I ask, are comic books, TV and movies featuring black superheroes ‘cooler’ than before? He replies: “I think that because a few more black creators are working them, they are at least closer to what we may think of as ‘cool’. Cool in the connotation that they are individuals who are free-thinking and are shown as complete beings and not stereotypes. So yeah, they are ‘cooler’.”

However, Jennings says, for this ‘blackout’ to continue, there needs to be support for black creations that aren’t owned by Disney, or Warner Brothers, or whoever. He says: “It’s great to see these huge spectacles on the screen, but there’s a veritable ton of great stories out there created by black independent artists and writers. At the end of the day, a robust independent comics scene will generate even more work that will end up in the mainstream. There has to be a time when a black superhero is the norm, and not a novelty.”

“A proper comic book store anywhere in Nigeria remains an elusive thing. Which I strongly believe is one of the biggest reasons why there’s an explosion of indie publishers putting out stuff varying from political thrillers, and fantasy epics, to superhero soap operas and Hausa legend-based adventures.”

Back at my own reality, though, a proper comic book store anywhere in Nigeria remains an elusive thing. Which I strongly believe is one of the biggest reasons why there’s an explosion of indie publishers putting out stuff varying from political thrillers, and fantasy epics, to superhero soap operas and Hausa legend-based adventures. This is true, also, in Ghana, South Africa, Kenya and more, in essence creating another kind of ‘blackout’ on the continent.

In September of 2006, a friend of mine and I opened the first comic book store in Nigeria.  Ah, Planet Comics, we called it. But other careers beckoned and we had to close it down, even though the market was quite encouraging. Today, all grown up, I’m a writer, illustrator, cartoonist, and editor (and I finally understand why J. Jonah Jameson is always so stressed out!). Also, my love for the medium of comics only continues to grow. But now I get my fix from Amazon, sometimes Forbidden Planet UK, Gosh! London, and Kinokuniya outlets in Bangkok, Tokyo, and Dubai whenever I travel. But after all is said and done, for some of us, this rise of the black superhero – this ‘blackout’ – is personal, and will remain deeply so.

A version of this article was published in Full Bleed Vol. 3 (IDW Publishing, 2018)