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COURIER L 24-7 IFE, FEB. 1-7, 2019 51
By Kevin Duggan He’s written about black powers.
A Bay Ridge comic book creator
will bring his graphic novels
about a superpowered New York City cop
to the Black Comix Expo at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music on Feb. 10. The writer
and illustrator of “Nowhere Man,” who
will join about 20 other artists at the daylong
celebration of comics creators of
color, said he invented the heroic character
because he wanted to read about someone
he could identify with.
“When you look at successful characters
in comic books, it’s often someone the
author can relate to,” said Jerome Walford,
who founded Forward Comix in 2010.
Walford was a big fan of comic books
growing up, but felt like the classics that
inspired him, including Alan Moore’s
“Watchmen” and the Batman story “The
Killing Joke,” did not represent his experience.
In high school, he invented the
character who developed into the star of
“Nowhere Man” — Jack Maguire, a black
police detective who discovers futuristic
technology that lets him walk through
walls, create blasts of energy, and hack
communications, among other abilities.
But the state sees the super-cop as a threat,
and unleashes a paramilitary force to hunt
him down, racially profiling and harassing
black men in his neighborhood.
Walford said that his protagonist
reflects the black experience in modernday
New York.
“In the context of relations between
the African-American community and
law enforcement, I wanted to create a
character that would walk both lines and
‘Nowhere Man’ came about organically,”
he said. “We have this scene where the
chasers go into the communities and use
aggressive tactics to try and hunt down
Jack. We see interactions, and we begin
to realize that this looks very current and
very relatable.”
Walford, who immigrated with his family
from Jamaica during the 1980s, also
created the “Gwan Anthology” in 2016 to
publish the stories of immigrant comics
creators.
Writers and readers from non-white
backgrounds have increasingly been able
to find their own stories reflected in
comics, a trend amplified in recent years
by the release of the blockbuster movie
“Black Panther” and Netflix’s “Luke
Cage,” according to one of the organizers
of the Black Comix Expo.
“Comics play a big part, because for some
readers they are the first visual representations
of some of these ideas,” said Deirdre
Hollman, the founder of the Black Comics
Collective, which co-hosts the event.
Another recent factor, she said, has been
the growth of the Afrofuturism movement,
which envisions a future distinctly shaped
by black culture and tradition.
“It’s an affirmation that not only do
black people survive in the future but they
bring with them the cultural traditions that
have sustained them throughout time,”
said Hollman.
In addition to the comics creators, the
Expo will feature several events inspired
by Afrofuturism, including a virtual reality
experience that puts visitors in the
body of a black woman, and a panel discussion
on black women in science fiction
and fantasy. The event will also include
a superhero cosplay contest and an art
workshop for kids.
Black Comix Festival at BAM Peter
Jay Sharp Building 30 Lafayette Ave.,
at St. Felix Street in Fort Greene, (718)
636–4100, www.bam.org. Feb. 10; 11
am–5 pm. Free.
Kapow!: Bay Ridgite Jerome Walford (inset) edited the anthology
“Gwan,” and wrote and drew the comic “Nowhere Man,”
about a superpowered cop (above). Photo by Kevin Duggan
Hometown heroes
Local creator brings super-stories to Black Comix Fest
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