C2E2 News: Panelist John I. Jennings Talks Comics, American Culture & the Black Male Image
Here at âAnd⌠Action!â Entertainment, we are very excited about the selection of our panel proposal for next weekâs Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo. The Comics, American Culture & the Black Male Image: Perspectives from Creators panel is a fantastic opportunity for us to have this important discussion â and some of the top creators in comics today will be the leading voices at this event.
This week and next, we will sit down with each creator and pick their brains a bit, to give everyone a preview of what to expect from next Saturdayâs discussion in Chicago. Today, we catch up with the whirlwind that is John I. Jennings.
Jennings is an Associate Professor of Art and Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo â State University of New York. He is the co-author of the graphic novel, The Hole: Consumer Culture, Vol. 1 and the art collection Black Comix: African American Independent Comics Art and Culture (both with Damian Duffy).
Blue Hand Mojo:
Hard Times Road
He is also the co-editor of The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Centerâs Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem, MLK NorCalâs Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco, and the AstroBlackness colloquium in Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.
Jenningsâ current comics projects include the Hip Hop adventure comic, Kid Code: Channel Zero; the supernatural crime noir story, Blue Hand Mojo; and the upcoming graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butlerâs classic dark fantasy novel, Kindred.
And⌠Action! Entertainment: The panel at C2E2 is focused on âBlack male identity.â Why is it important to confront stereotypes of the male image in comics? Even the âpositiveâ ones of strength and virility? Are they positive?
JENNINGS: Fighting against black male stereotypes isnât just about representational equity. Itâs a matter of life and death.
In todayâs exacerbated climate around the black body and heightened police brutality and discrimination, it becomes even more imperative to humanize the black body. Stereotypes are very dangerous because they simplify an entire group of people into one fixed image. Simple images are easy to transfer and propagate.
Comics pretty much traffic in stereotypes. So, if you propagate the idea of black men as sex-starved, violent savages in every aspect of media you end up with a populace that âmis-readsâ the black body; all black bodies, as dangerous thugs.
Masculinity. John I. Jennings, Artist
Trayvon Martin was killed because his black body was in the wrong place and Zimmermanâs racial literacy only allowed him to see the boy as a threat. So, when we are talking about black male images in comics, itâs not just to make ourselves feel better by seeing images of ourselves in the comics. We are trying to create resistant images to the hundreds of years of negative information that leads to so many tragic outcomes surrounding racialized violence in our country.
Something else we need to clarify when we say âthe Black Male Identity in ComicsââŚare we talking about the medium of comics are we conflating the medium with the genre of the superhero? The reason I ask is because, as much as I love superheroes, they are inherently problematic constructions when we talk about masculinity.
The superhero is pretty much a white male power fantasy and when you map that fantasy onto a black male body you intensify that signification into a space that can be read as hyper masculine. Black men are already read as not-human and super sexual, violent monsters. How do you negotiate the tropes of a genre that is so mired in physical violence as righteous when it is projected onto a criminalized body?
Itâs a catch 22 to be sure.
Can they be positive? Sure.
Are they usually? Probably not.
 Comics pretty much traffic in stereotypes. So, if you propagate the idea of black men as sex-starved, violent savages in every aspect of media you end up with a populace that âmis-readsâ the black body; all black bodies, as dangerous thugs.
 AAE: There is a level of sensitivity that comes with saying âIâm not invulnerable, I am human, I am a man.â Do you think there has been a reluctance in the overall discussion of diversity in comics to acknowledge the special societal pressures on Black male characters?
JENNINGS: The main goal of the mainstream comics industry is to make money â like any business. So, as long as âdiversityâ is important to an audience that has money, it will try to engage as much as it can without disturbing what it thinks is itâs main fan-base; straight cisgender white men.
Itâs not the job of the comics industry to really have the discussion. Itâs job is to try to provide entertainment. I think that the work of discussions of this kind are happening in the independents as usual.
Mainstream comics are essentially IP farms for films, video games, etc. We canât expect the industry to make a space to help us have these discussions. We can only utilize what we can from them to make our arguments and statements about the status quo when we talk about these issues of intersectional identity.
iconic black power fist Twitter bird image created by John I. Jennings
AAE: What is the greatest issue facing black male characters in comics in their various forms? Invisibility, marginalization or mischaracterization?
JENNINGS: Iâd say invisibility.
The black indie market is growing but, the mainstream simply has more years, capital, and media outlets to get their stories out. So, even though the characters are there, itâs hard to get them into the mass market because the larger companies are controlled by massive conglomerates that can dominate airwaves, web sites, screens and whatever other means to get to the audience.
We suffer from symbolic annihilation. The erasure of people through omission by the dominant culture.
Click to Tweet: We suffer from symbolic annihilation. The erasure of people through omission by the dominant culture.
 AAE: It has been said before that being a person of color creating comics is, in itself, an act of protest. You created the iconic Black Power Twitter photo, participated in APB and regularly create comics that explore Afrofuturism and the Black imagination. Do you feel like what youâre doing is radical or transformative or is it normalizing comics?
JENNINGS: I donât think that what I am doing is radical at all.
I think that what I am doing is necessary for me to be at peace with myself.
I am very much aligned with how W.E.B. DuBois thought of black art of any kind; itâs propaganda that should be geared towards liberation.
I try to have as much fun as possible while making my stories but, at the end of the day, I want my work to help undo oppression on every level. As long as I have breath in me, I will make work that attempts to do this â until itâs no longer needed.
Is that radical? Some people may think so.
I think itâs just why I make art.
AAE: Which creators are âgetting it rightâ in terms of representing diversity in the Black Male image in particular?
JENNINGS: Besides myself and the other gentleman on the panel? Iâd say Alex Simmons, Tim Fielder, Damian Duffy, Stacey Robinson, Bill Campbell, Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander, Dawud Anyabwile, Jeremy Love, Joel Christian Gill, Garth Ennis, Ales Kot and Jerome Walford to name a few.
AAE: When you hear the phrase âblack male characters in comicsâ what is the first thought in your mind?
Fun Stuff Lightning Round:
AAE: If you could have any superpower â what would it be?
JENNINGS: That depends. Am I the only person in the world with superpowers
or are there others?
Because if their are other super folks then Iâd wantâs Rogueâs power.
Iâd immediately then suck up Professor Xavierâs power, Madrox The
Multiple Man, and Spider-Manâs powers
If I am the only super..then Iâd want to be a telepath/mind controller
dude like Prof. X.
AAE: If the current presidential candidates were comic villains who would they be?
JENNINGS: Sigh. The thought of this Presidential race makes me too afraid to
even answer this.
AAE: Favorite movie snack?
AAE: When did you fall in love with comics?
JENNINGS: Eons ago, in the early 70s, when my mom got me my first Marvel Comics.
AAE: Three things you need to get you in the (writing) mood?
JENNINGS: I am always in the writing mood! Seriously. I have the opposite of âwriterâs blockâ.
C2E2 News: Panelist John I. Jennings Talks Comics, American Culture & the Black Male Image was originally published on Legend of the Mantamaji -Science Fiction Diverse Graphic Novel
