‘Creating Comics’ camp at COCA next week
By Meliqueica Meadows
For the St. Louis American
While the adults were talking upstairs, young Ian McClain would go down into the basement of his grandfather’s house to read his collection of Batman and Superman comic books. His love for the genre started there and continues.
“I was always into writing and drawing,” McClain said about his initial interest in comic books. “I have been a comic book fan since I was a kid.”
While he enjoys reading comic books, he said he wishes there were more black characters and writers in the industry.
“When you read a lot of the mainstream comics, there’s a big lack of black superheroes or the black experience,” McClain said. “You have a lot of white writers trying to write about black life, and it’s kind of weird.”
McClain, hoping to become one of the growing ranks of minorities in the comic book industry, decided to take a course in creating comic books organized by COCA (Center of Creative Arts) and Star Clipper Books, located at 6392 Delmar. The store has been in business for over 15 years and hopes to introduce comic books to more mainstream audiences.
“We think it’s our job, being a comic book store, to try to promote the idea of comics as a form of art,” said Ben Trujillo, owner of Star Clipper. “The best way to do that is to teach it as art work.”
“COCA was excited about doing this (class) also,” he said. “In fact, it was one of their fastest-filling classes of all time, so there’s some interest out there.”
Trujillo feels that classes like Creating Comics encourage diversity in the comic book industry “because they’re open to all ages, all age groups and all ethnicities,” he said.
Creating Comics teacher Matt Kindt is scheduled to teach the same class at COCA next week, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. June 13-17.
Kindt has published several graphic novels, or bound collections of comics, since 2001 through Top Shelf Publishing, but teaches his students how to self-publish their own independent comic books in the 5-week course that covers penciling, drawing and script writing.
Kindt feels that diversity in the comic book industry is needed. “I go to conventions and you hardly see any women (or other minorities) creating comics,” he said.
“When the class started, I was so excited, because there’s so many different people,” Kindt said. “It’s great to see 12-year-olds and then people in their 50s and men and women. I couldn’t have designed a better class.”
Alayna Stewart took the class with McCain and also hopes to one day create her own comic books.
Stewart said she reads Marvel comics and Manga, which are the graphic novels that come from Japan and read from right to left, rather than left to right like English. In the future, Stewart said she would like to make “my own small, short comic book, but my real goal is to do something like a Manga or a book.”
The history of blacks in the comic book industry is similar to the history of blacks in other areas of society and popular culture. Some of the largest publishers in the comic book industry have, in the recent past, relied on racist and stereotypical images of blacks to sell books. However, blacks are starting to make strides in the industry.
Recently, Marvel comics announced the addition of an African-American film writer and director to its writing staff. Reginald Hudlin, an East St. Louis native best known for his movies House Party and Bebe’s Kids, now writes the Black Panther comic which relates the exploits of one of the first black superheroes in the industry.
Aaron McGruder is another African-American writer who has gained critical acclaim and a wide following with his Boondocks comic strip that runs in newspapers nationwide. Last year, McGruder and Hudlin teamed up to create the book Birth of a Nation. McClain says they inspired him to create comic books that reflect African-American culture.
“It would be more of a standard superhero book,” McClain said, describing the comic book he hopes to one day create. “It would be something with more of a hip-hop influence and more of the black experience.”
For more information about blacks in the comic book industry, the Museum of Black superheroes offers an online gallery at www.blacksuperhero.com. Star Clipper and COCA will present an intensive week-long Creating Comics Camp from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. June 13-17. For more information, visit www.cocastl.org or call 725-6555.