In this episode Kwanza talks about the hit Kickstarter, BLACK.

Topics include Kwanza talking about why a book like this hasn’t existed yet, the popularity of the superhero genre, not enough diversity in comics, Milestone, making changes, racial profiling, deciding an editor needs an editor, the graphic novel format, publishing models, ideal audience, being underrepresented, getting pissed off with Robot Batman, and what he’s reading!

Links:

• BLACK Kickstarter
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• the comiXologist > Subscribe on iTunes
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Transcription:

Matt: Kara

Kara: Matt.

Matt: Welcome back to comiXology Conversations.

Kara: Your premier podcast destination for what’s happening for the comics creators of the world.

Matt: That’s trademarked. That’s true. We’re here with a premier creator right now, Kickstarter happening right now through the rough, what if the only people that could get superpowers were black people. This is the world that you want to read about right now.

Kara: Everyday.

Matt: ComiXology’s a part of it. You can get the digital redemption for that book. Kwanza Osajyefo welcome to the show.

Kwanza: Thanks for having me on guys.

Matt: You’ve been in the comics industry for a while. You were a former DC editor, Marvel, and you did some really cool things with social media for InstaCop, I remember that when that came out it was, you could only read it on Instagram or Twitter or what have you. This Kickstarter’s a bit different. The pitch is easy enough, which I mentioned before, but it’s never happened before. Why hasn’t this idea ever happened before?

Kwanza: That’s the question that launched the question that’s in the log line. I came up with the idea for Black about ten years ago. It was something that I sat on for a while while I was pursuing my editorial career at DC. Once I left I thought about and I said, “Wow. Nobody’s beaten me to the punch to this one already?” It seems easy. I think that’s part of why Black has done so well on Kickstarter, because once you throw out the premise, is just engages the mind to entertain what the implications of it mean, especially with the real actual social context of it along with what we know within superhero tropes that we’re all used to. It just seemed like the easy marriage to bring together. I even had a friend when I previously, just in casual conversation, told him the idea, and they’re like, “Why would you want to do superhero story?” I was like, “Because it just seems like such an easy mix.” It writes itself in a sense when you think about it. That was how the story was brought to life recently.

Kara: Why do you think that the superhero and superpower genre continues to be so popular in American pop culture?

Kwanza: It all hearkens back to power fulfillment in us like dreaming of being able to fly, being able to do things that aren’t in reality within our grasp, like walking through walls, walking on water. If you compare current superheroes to ancient mythology it’s very similar. It’s a very human take on what having unearthly abilities is whether it was Zeus or Thor or even some religious figures and stuff like that, which I guess back in those days Zeus and Thor were religious figures, right? They all just had this supernatural aspect to them but they were built off our own ideals and our own egos which is interesting because you would read a story about Thor and he still had all the same problems that anybody else had, they were just super. They were in the sky and he was fighting dragons, but really it’s just a guy who just had to clean his yard out, but his yard had dragons in it.

Matt: It’s just normal problems we all face everyday.

Kwanza: Pretty much, but just elevated through some science fiction or supernatural twists.

Matt: I think comics face a huge diversity problem and it’s starting to get a little bit better now. How much the fact of the fact that this book hasn’t happened is just because there’s just not enough diversity? Or just black people in comics period for this to have even been a story?

Kwanza: Yeah, that’s the other reason why I decided it was really important to approach this now. One of the things that comics, or at least the comic book industry reflects is that we still a lot of things to overcome as the human race, and a lot of things that we need to acknowledge. As someone who worked in the industry for as long as I have that was something that I saw clearly. It wasn’t about necessarily always the diversity of characters, but the inclusion of people with different perspectives. I don’t think that it’s untrue to say that most publishers are still dominated by white males and a white male aesthetic. If you even look at the output of companies like DC, and you look at their top bench of white characters, it’s pretty stark in terms of the backgrounds of these characters. You can look at them and go, “All right, so it’s just these five guys and that woman and that’s pretty much it.”

In looking at that I thought, comic books that spoke to me at a certain age were these characters, but then when something like Milestone appeared on the scene it really struck a chord in me and made me realize something that I hadn’t, because you’re young or a kid, you don’t always think like that. It’s like, “Oh, that was missing!” That was grossly missing. You didn’t think about it because it’s fantasy. In looking what’s missing there really felt like this idea, the concept of Black, was a little bit more than just a Sci-Fi story, but also a platform for highlighting what’s missing from the media.

Matt: How do you change that? How do you change that representation in comics? Is Black the attempt that you can do to change the diversity and makeup of the comics industry?

Kwanza: I think that’s part of it. I also think it’s part of … The real truth is using this as some bit of discussion to own up to what’s missing in your business. I think Marvel has taken some steps towards that in terms of diversifying their characters. I think the next evolution of that is for them to really internalize and look inside and say, “Where are we missing that internally?” Yeah, and they are. I don’t think I would be wrong in stating that. The same thing could be said for DC. It’s more about inclusion, in my opinion, than it is about diversity, because once you have inclusion diversity will organically happen. You’ll have more people with different opinions and different perspectives to challenge and meet these market requirements. That’s really what a lot of this is based on.

If you look at consumer reports, you’ll see that the fastest growing consumer demographics are Hispanic, black and Asian in that order. You got to feed the beast. That’s the nature of this business. People are still going to love Batman and Superman and all those characters, but they definitely want to feel like there’s characters out there that have some similar connection points to them.

Kara: With Black you’re addressing racial profiling, which is a topic that not everyone is comfortable discussing. How do you hope the book will add to or change this conversation?

Kwanza: The real story behind Black is really about humanity and how we’re not particularly good, we’re not particularly evil. We’re particularly human and we make decisions, some are good and some are bad. That’s what I’m really exploring in there and highlighting, and trying to be honest about that. People have asked me, “What’s one of the core elements to the story?” The core element is truth even though it’s wrapped in fiction, and really trying to get to core of … That we are bigoted sometimes, or we do base things on superficial reasons. If we acknowledge that and discuss it and get more comfortable with it, we can overcome those things. That’s reflective of how Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were so pivotal, and desegregation back in the ‘60s. It was about having an open dialog and saying, “This is an issue. This is a problem. This is something that we should address, and we shouldn’t be fearful of it.”

Matt: With the pitching of this book, I’m not even sure if you tried the traditional route of pitching it to a publisher, but how was the process for you with your history of editing books, how was it for you to pitch your own book and decide that maybe you needed an editor? What’s the process like this time around?

Kwanza: I always believed that anyone making a comic book needs an editor. One of the key people on my team, Sarah Litt was somebody who I worked with at DC. She was an assistant editor at Vertigo. She worked with me when we went over to LA for DC Digital, and she came from Penguin Publishing. She has a very strong literary background. I strictly believe that while I might have some great ideas, after you’ve been writing and working on it for so long, you start to get blind to some of the flaws in it. It’s always good to have somebody there to poke holes in it and tell you, “This is kind of wonky,” or “This might be read this way.” I think that’s extremely important.

On The other hand, when I look at traditional publishers, I also know that as we were saying before it comes with the specific perceptions sometimes. I think it takes a very enlightened mind to understand that something like Black would need to exist even though there’s economic hurdles and brands and higher company pressures on these things that might weigh against it. Sometimes you just have to be a champion for things. That’s what I tried to do when I was over at DC working on the Zuda imprint, was just really trying to be a champion for a lot of the ideas and the stories that the creators were coming to us wanting to tell. I thought it was very important to do stories like Bayou and High Moon where we were looking at characters and exploring perspectives that didn’t really exist in the medium at that time.

Kara: For Black, you’re publishing it as a graphic novel format. Why did you choose that over a more periodical format? Do you think most creators or readers would find strong appeal in the album format?

Kwanza: I prefer books. I think the general mainstream market prefers books. They want to get a whole story. That doesn’t mean that periodicals are off the table. I definitely am open to partners in that. With the digital release on comiXology, that will be released in chapters. The story is spaced out in the traditional comic sense of chapters. For me, when I looked at the core product and the thing that I wanted people to hold in their hands and that I wanted them to be able to read and reflect on and share, to me a book as a product really lent itself more to that. I think the direct market is strong and I hope maybe at some point, or even right away we can put periodicals out. That wasn’t top of mind when I was putting this together. I really wanted to put together a graphic novel.

Matt: If you were back in a making your own books now, let’s say Black is the most successful book of all time. It already met its goal for Kickstarter. If you want to get the graphic novel and the digital version on comiXology, you better head over now. We’ll have a link to it in our notes. Let’s say this is success beyond your wildest dreams, and now you have your own imprint, and you’re making your own books. Would you only do that album format and maybe do one book a month or one book every three months in this new publishing model?

Kwanza: I think I would just because that’s my own personal preference. I think books travel well. I think people engage with them. Again, I’m talking about the general consumer. I feel like they really engage more with something that has a beginning, middle and an end that they can thumb through. I can’t really say I have an interest in having an imprint or being a publisher. In fact, I’m rather contrary to that. I feel like that’s an old publishing model that I don’t want to recreate. I think that’s one of the other things that, aside from challenging the status quo on culture and ethnicity, that I really want to challenge the idea of how we put out content because it’s been the same for a very, very long time. I think we’ve seen in the news, even though some of it might be a little bit of a Chicken Little, that market’s starting to weaken a bit. Some of it might be content and some if it just might be method. I think it calls for reevaluation.

Matt: What do you think the new model is? Is it just a piece of everything like Kickstarter…

Kwanza: I think the new model is being receptive to what your audience wants. I’ve worked outside of comics a lot in social media and a lot of what drives marketing in that field is community and being receptive to behavior and habits and the voices of the public, and understanding what speaks to them. I think traditionally comics has always been very top down operationally and in term of product. They just make something, put it out there and cross their fingers essentially. Then it’s, to be frank, left on the direct retailers to hold the bag on that. It’s not necessarily always understanding what’s top of mind for their audiences. I think you’ve seen that in some of the fumbles in terms of even the larger publishers putting stuff out. You need to really figure out how to make that connection with your audience and activate it and be receptive to it in order to put out the right content for them.

Granted, your storyteller have a story that you’re itching to tell, you can’t necessarily AD test that or put that in a room and figure out exactly who’s going to respond to it. You have to have your artistic integrity. Comics, at least as they are now, it’s a commercial business. You have to think in that regard. I think you’ve seen that with things like, attempts like DCU and All-New Marvel and stuff like that. Again, that’s operating from, “Here’s what we think,” not necessarily, “Here’s what our audience wants.”

Kara: Speaking of audiences … Matt’s laughing because I always like doing segues.

Matt: Terrible, terrible segue.

Kara: Speaking of audiences who is your ideal audience for Black?

Matt: I think my ideal audience is everybody, but if I were to specify what would make me happy, I think what would make me happy is if Black was a product that influenced me in the same way that Milestone did. Dwayne McDuffie had a huge, huge impact on my career. He was the first person in comic books that I ever had an interview with at the very beginning of Milestone’s publishing career. Knowing that somebody like him, somebody who reflected some of my history and had some common bonds, could make his way and have his own agency in this industry really was powerful in letting me know that there was room for me to also be part of the creative culture. I think that speaks to, again, when you look at the traditional publishers, the larger publishers like Marvel and DC, that lack of inclusion can impact product. Once you start including those people in there, you really find this wealth and bounty of creative ideas and amazing stories that might have been out of the purview of a more homogeneous group.

Matt: You mentioned Dwayne McDuffie and I remember, growing I remember just hearing about Damage Control and stuff. I had no idea because it’s hard, if stuff like that isn’t collected regularly, it’s impossible to find. I think we just released Damage Control maybe six months ago on comiXology. It opens up to a whole different audience that don’t understand the magnitude of what certain books mean to people because they’re not in everyone’s face, getting maybe relaunched every six months, so it’s difficult.

Kwanza: Right, and a book like Damage Control was one, immediately innovative, and two, it didn’t really have to serve any longer tooth brand. One of the other reasons why I decided to do Black as a graphic novel and a book is because serializing Black is not something that I’d like to do. I don’t want to tire out my audience by making them come to a comic shop every month. I want to tell them a story, have them feel satisfied, or leave them a little, maybe, uncomfortable at the end, but definitely talking about the story until the next one comes out. That’s an iteration of it. With things like Damage Control, it was a great concept and a limited series that years later we’re sitting here talking about on a podcast because it was something so original and so out there. I don’t know necessarily that people are always going to be talking about that one fill-in issue of Iron Man 2 blah blah whatever. It’s not always something that sticks.

Matt: My assumption is that Black comes from the answer to this question, but how difficult is it to love the comics medium when you’re just so underrepresented for so many years and so often?

Kwanza: I think that speaks to just the idea storytelling is human and never took anything away from a Batman story that there weren’t black characters in there. It just would’ve enriched it even more if you had more representation, or even better, original characters who had their own agency and were fleshed out and thought through. It’s one of the problems I sometimes had with Green Lantern, or a John Stewart Green Lantern where it’s just like, “Am I supposed to like this guy just because he’s the brown guy on the team?” It’s like, “No, I think he sucks.” He’s really boring and bland. What’s up with his haircut? This guy is not me. Don’t put him on the team just because you think that’s going to make me pick up the book. That’s ridiculous.

I could see in some vain that the next iteration of that has been the Miles Morales and Sam Wilson Captain America Spider-Man thing where I do love Miles as a character. I love what’s been written about him and stuff, but it does has a bit of veneer on it as opposed to, it was really great, I personally thought, when he was in Ultimates and he was Spider-Man instead of being, now in the Marvel universe where he’s a Spider-Man. It’s not like the amount agency that Peter Parker had when he was just this poor kid in Queens trying to make a buck and keep Aunt Mae out of the hospital for the eighteenth time. That had a lot of gravity to it and a lot of weight to it. That’s not to say, again, that these stories aren’t great and fun, but it’s these things where I look at it and say, I don’t need you to treat your brand like a line of Barbie Dolls where it’s like, “Hey, here’s Captain America,” and at the last five seconds it’s like, “And the black one too.”

It’s just the sort of thing that’s just like, “You can do better than that.” You really can. Especially in the case of Marvel where they actually have built up some newer and more original characters, tell me what the real difference is between Blue Marvel and Black Panther. They’re both super science dudes. Let’s dig a little deeper than that. Let’s not just have it be like, “Oh, we made black Fantastic Four.” It’s like, “Who are these people?” You got them in front of me now, I’d like to know more than just putting them on front of the page because there they happen to be the darkest-skinned characters and saying, “We’re Diverse!” It’s like, “No, you got to dig a little deeper, guys.”

Kara: Building off that, how did your identity influence this project? Are there characterizations or plot points that you’ve drawn from personal experience?

Kwanza: Somewhat. I actually based a lot of the characters off of family members that I’ve lost. Kareem is based off of my cousin who I grew up with and was like a brother to me. I put a little bit of his personality into the character. It’s more about speaking to some of the universal experiences, but also showing the depth and diversity as I was saying when talking about those Marvel characters showing blackness in all its ranges and differences. One of the things that I really loved about Milestone was that they really had that range, so with a character like Icon, he was a conservative. That is not a political position that too many black people share in terms of government, but that’s who he was. It actually made him far more intriguing.

They could have made him super Liberal, like, “The man is holding me down,” kind of character where instead he was a, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I’ll be this icon of this community, but I don’t know if I necessarily share the same ideals that are there.” It was this interesting conflict. I think that’s what’s important because if the whole idea behind your character is to just make the black version or put the black guy on the team, then that’s all they become and then they have to carry the entire weight of an entire culture on one character, and be that for all of them. Then you just end up with something really two dimensional.

Matt: Yeah. I think people appreciate that, obviously, because the Kickstarter’s already funded. I think by the time this posts they’ll be maybe fourteen days left or ten, so just a reminder for everyone to get in while the getting’s good. With that topic, the anticipation of the project, were you anticipating it to be over the goal so fast? I think the danger of Kickstarter for a lot of people are stretch goals. Did you purposefully veer away from stretch goals? A lot of people dig their own grave with those.

Kwanza: That was one of the interesting things. I had some sort of stretch goals in mind, but the core thing that I always wanted to get in front of people was the book. The tier that’s pretty much the book with the digital versions of it, has been our highest purchased reward. I think once we got to the stretch goal mark, I was really about adding on content, so I threw a few more things in there like bookmarks and a poster just because Khary’s cover is so amazing, figured maybe somebody would want to hang that on their wall, and bookmarks just because I like bookmarks. It speaks to the idea that it’s a graphic novel. If you’re not done, you can put a bookmark in there because dog-earing is the worst. Here’s a little something for that.

The response I got back because I did ask the community, “What do you guys really want to see?”, was they want more content. One of the higher tier stretch goals is that we want to add twenty pages to the book of just the epic final battle. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do because I often feel like comic books, they have to compress and truncate that last battle. We go to the movies and we see the Avengers tearing down Manhattan for half an hour, but we buy a comic book and it’s two pages. This is suppose to be the epic thing and that’s all we get? I really hope that we’ll be able to give people this really big, epic thing where it’s a lot of action, not a lot of dialog because nobody can really talk when they’re getting punched in the face, and really have a smashing big blow up at the end, really blow people’s minds.

Matt: With the topic of all the books that we talked about that were inspiring or the superhero dragon neighbors, what do you seek out what do you read in your free time that you enjoy?

Kwanza: I think I’ve started to veer a lot more towards Image. I just read the latest issue of Paper Girls today. That book is … It’s amazing because it’s so weird and is so unconcerned with you being able to follow along what the hell is actually going on in the book that it actually draws you in more because you’re trying to figure out what the hell was going on in the book. The characters just roll with everything so you’re just like, “What? I would be losing my mind in this book at this point.” Stuff like that I find really engaging because it’s just so unique.

I also really, of course, I’m talking all BKV books right now, but Saga’s been really great approach to long form serial periodical. In this case, in that form, I think it’s very fitting for the serial because it’s such a big and broad story that has so much depth to it. It really is something that I look forward to every month. I do also like that the characters are aging and growing so it shows me that these people aren’t in the same place that they were from issue one, and they definitely have an end to it approaching.

Whereas you’ll look at something like Spider-Man and it took that guy sixty, seventy years for him to own up to the fact that he’s a super scientist and start his own company and be like Mark Zuckerberg. It’s like, “Ah, okay.”

Matt: It’s taken so long that reading books where he is a scientist popular guy is so weird. It’s still so strange to me even though it makes the most sense.

Kwanza: Yeah. I do like that about Marvel. I think there’s a huge change from from when I was right there to a little bit after, I would say Bill Jemas who was ousted, that the thing that he left that I attribute to him from knowing him and working there was that he really made them so much more less precious about their characters, and instilled an ability to just play with this stuff. It’s fiction. If you can kill Wolverine, guess what else you can do. You can make him have a clone who’s a woman. You can do all this stuff with these characters. If people don’t like it, retcon! As long as it’s written well enough people will accept it because it’s a nice, fun roller coaster ride. Other books that I’ve really been into … I really like the early one of Jem and the Holograms just because I’m an '80s kid. I like that nerdy stuff. I’m trying to think what else, Plutonia, Zodiac, I’m forgetting the rest of the names.

Kara: Starforce.

Kwanza: Zodiac Starforce, yeah, I really have been digging that book. I think I’m outing myself as some kind of Brony, but I won’t lie. I like that, too.

Kara: You’re describing my entire reading list. That’s what I’ve been thinking the whole time.

Kwanza: I still read the traditional comics if nothing else just to grouse and make fun of the ones that aren’t really working, like Green Lantern. It’s a wide variety. I’ve definitely loved Scott Snyder’s run on Batman specifically because he’s been unchallenged in what he’s been able to do with the book and the stories that he’s been able to tell, which always makes Batman more interesting and exciting. I like the fact that he came up with robot Batman and pissed me off and then proved me wrong.

Matt: And sexy Jim Gordon too.

Kwanza: Right. Exactly. He just does all this stuff and it’s just like, “Jesus Christ, I wanted to be so mad at you and say all these awful things about you as a writer, but no. You actually enormously clever.” This is great. Why don’t you spread some of that on Superman? I do enjoy superhero comics too when they’re done really well.

Matt: Which is funny, coming back to Scott Snyder. He did have that run on Superman which I felt like didn’t connect with me as well as his Batman stuff. He even had Jim Lee on it. I wonder if maybe he had the opportunity to just go nuts with it like he did with robot Batman, maybe it would connect.

Kwanza: I think that might be because he had Jim Lee on it. When certain things hit a level of focus, I think, in the upper echelons in any company, they may suffer from some of those pressures where you don’t have as much freedom, or ability to tell the story that you want. It becomes something done by a committee. I think the project suffers for that. The great thing about Batman, and this is one of the best pieces of, I can’t even call it advice, it was just knowledge that was impressed upon me during my comic career, was from Paul Levitz. He said, “You can’t ruin Batman. You just can’t.” It’s impossible. He’s as much a superhero on the corporate culture as anything else because you can do any sorts of iterations of him and it’s going to be pretty fantastic and fun even if it’s something that you hate later on or just like, “Oh that was horrible, but it was kind of cool. It was Batman.” Batman just beats all those odds.

I think that often leaves, because of money because of status of the book and the character, that often puts that brand in the realm of greater possibilities of other ones where people are trying too hard. A great example of that is in Wonder Woman. As Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang running that was so phenomenal and so amazing. To me, it as the first time Wonder Woman was ever a good book, ever, and had a real story and a real depth of character. Then once they left the book it just turned into a hot mess. I think it was some pressure to, it’s like, “Oh, you have to bring her into this arbitrary trinity,” and, “Oh, we have to put clothes on her again.” It’s just like, “Why do you keep injecting these things in here?” It might not sell as well, but at least you’ll have that integrity there.

Matt: Kwanza, I appreciate you taking the time out. Black, the Kickstarter is obviously hugely important. People want to get in at the ground level before most people get their hands on it, we’ll have a link to the Kickstarter. Thanks again. I appreciate it. We both do.

Kara: Yeah.

Kwanza: Thanks. Just so people know, I don’t know if I’ve emphasized this enough, but the addition that comes out of the Kickstarter, there won’t be any more of that one. We’re never going to allow that to be printed again. Essentially what this book will be will be it. It might be different iterations or hardcovers, but it won’t have some of the content in there. It’s definitely going to be a unique item because…

Matt: You and the team are signing every copy, right, individually?

Kwanza: Not every copy, there’s certain tiers where you get our John Hancock.

Matt: For every page every copy gets a different sketch.  All right, man. Thanks very much again.

Kwanza: Thanks for having me on, guys.