The Four Color Media Monitor

WHYY-PBS/NPR has a report about the 23rd East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention, held mainly at Temple University in Philadelphia:

More than two decades ago, Yumy Odom started a free convention to connect the Black comic book creator community in Philadelphia.

“Philadelphia [had] a lot of Black indie comic book creators. They knew each other but they really were not connected … until I reached out to them and connected them,” Odom said.

Each year, the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC), Odom’s “labor of love,” attracts about 500 people throughout the day,

ECBACC has inspired similar conventions throughout the country and around the world — Odom said there are 45 different conventions that have modeled themselves after ECBACC, some of which are in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.

“We’ve impacted the whole world with this very small convention,” Odom said.

Well good they've actually mentioned foreign countries, because a considerably number of PC advocates don't actually care about the world beyond the USA, or even Canada. Also great is one of the leading purposes of the convention:

Gerald Fauntroy, who came from Maryland, said a convention like ECBACC that focuses on Black creators and audiences is key to supporting Black artists and authors in creating original work.

Fauntroy, a comic book creator, was hit with inspiration in the midst of the action and quietly drew in his sketchbook in between chatting with visitors to his table, where his comic book “The Trials of Atlas” was displayed.

“It encourages Black creators to actually create versus recreating,” Fauntroy said. “I’ve seen a lot of creators and they say, ‘Hey, this is the Black Superman or the Black this, the Black version of something. But I want to see more [of] you created this, you know the beginning, the middle, the end, you know all of this top to bottom and no one can take it away from you.”

That's a good thing they're encouraging writers to actually come up with their own works, without turning it all into an obvious ripoff of an already existing white superhero like Superman and Spider-Man. It hints there's creators out there who realize the Big Two have turned themselves into a farce by going miles out of their way to create race-and-gender-swapped versions of already existing characters that aren't merit-based. But near the end:

Matthews attended the convention Saturday to present her fantasy novel and comic book. She’s been writing since she was nine, and said she’s happy that “now people are recognizing comic books as an actual literature.”

“I grew up in a Catholic school. And that was forbidden, comic books were looked at as a joke. They were torn up, they were thrown away,” Matthews said. “I’ve seen my brothers lose so many comics over the fact that they’re reading that and not a novel. I find you can’t distinguish the two. It’s reading and it’s broadening their mind and it’s showing them a universe and giving their imaginations [something], I say go for it.”

Unfortunately, that's not entirely true they're more recognized as valid literature. Many leftists today only see them as a perfect conveyor belt for political propaganda, possibly one of the cleverest ways of dishing it all out under the table. But this does make clear how past parental-style generations wasted their time regarding the medium as almost entirely illegitimate, without researching to see if any particular item was conceived for political/ideological purposes, and refusing to distinguish between decent fare and the indecent. And then we'll surely wonder why modern parents may end up trashing modern comics, if they discover they're rife with repellent ideologies.

The goal of this convention is great, but anybody who won't acknowledge we have a PC problem ruining modern mainstream isn't improving the situation. Nor will the situation get better if independent comics wind up serving similar purposes.

Labels: Africa, conventions, history, indie publishers, msm propaganda, politics