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Release Day: Comics Lit Vol. 1

We are excited for the release of Comic Lit Vol 1 by Alyson Shelton, Eric Lee, Kelly Gaines, Seth Singleton, AA McCartney, Heath Fodor, A.R. Farina, Tonya Todd, and Anthony D. Holt Jr.!

Comic books are high art.

They—and their graphic novel counterparts—harken back to classic literature and artworks. Through a series of essays, the authors will illustrate that modern pop culture characters are direct descendants of classic works of literature and their visual depiction is inspired by the works of master artists.

Join us as we peel back layers to discover gothic influences, representations of badass females, uses of the mask, and the new look of Rappaccini’s Daughter as well as discuss teaching comics in college, Black identity and power, mythological and religious tie-ins, and many more correlations hidden within the pages of action-packed heroes and villains. The essayists in this collection are, first and foremost, comic book fans with extensive backgrounds in art, film, education, literature, and writing.

Comics Lit Vol. 1 contains essays by Alyson Shelton, Eric Lee, Kelly Gaines, Seth Singleton, AA McCartney, Heath Fodor, A.R. Farina, Tonya Todd, and Anthony D. Holt Jr. Foreword by Bryan Edward Hill.

You can order this book  in all formats directly from our 4HP Website and receive 10% OFF using coupon code 4HP10!

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The Origin Story of Comic Lit

ARF: The idea of Comics Lit actually started over 30 years ago. I was in my first year of college (University for our friends across the pond) and I was taking an interdisciplinary class where we took a look at how the humanities in general and classic works of literature in particular intersected with our lives. As a comic nerd, I thought it would be fun to start comparing comic book characters and storylines to classic characters and stories from literature. 

I made all kinds of connections to tragic figures like Sisyphus as Spider-man or Empusa the shapeshifter as the inspiration for Mystique. I could see how much of the DC Pantheon was straight from Shakespeare. Lex Luthor is Richard III. Jimmy Olson is Horatio. Batman is Henry V. I wasn’t limited to just those plays of course. It was then that I first made the argument that Poison Ivy was inspired by Hawthorne’s short story “Rappicunni’s Daughter.” My ideas were not fully formed then, but I never really stopped thinking about them. I would try them out on my students and push them to make broad connections and while they often didn’t compare literature to comics, they found other amazing ways to connect the old with the new.

Flash forward 25 ish years to a conversation I was having off the mic during the recording of an episode of my Indie Comics Spotlight podcast on the Comics in Motion network.  I mentioned something about my Poison Ivy idea and he mentioned he always thought the same thing about Cyborg and Frankenstein’s Monster. We started brainstorming about making a collection of essays based on these two ideas.

I gathered a team of nerds and thankfully for me, and this project, one of them was Ms. Tonya Todd, whom I met for the first time in this life through a mutual podcasting friend Mike Burton. Unfortunately, because of some pandemic stuff, and other just crossed wires, the project sat in purgatory for years. Then Tonya was at a conference and she mentioned this project to Valerie Willis and…

TT: Before I even finished describing the pitch for the collection, Valerie was pining, eyes-wide,  arms-outstretched, and reaching through the screen with gimme-gimme hands. This was a live event, so I couldn’t jump onto a call with Tony to ask his permission about sharing details for what he had in mind. My plan was to gauge their interest and possibly connect 4HP with him after the conference. But when Erika joined Val’s enthusiasm, I sent up a silent prayer that Tony would forgive me for representing his project. Dear reader, he did! 

ARF: So here we are now, somehow, via her magic powers, Tonya got one of my comic book idols, Bryan Edward Hill, to do the foreword and Volume One is ready for the world. Just like the idea that Ivy was inspired by Hawthorne, the idea that Bruce Wayne and Henry V share some DNA has never left me, and so, as we gather essays for Volume 2, Tonya and I can announce that we will be writing that very essay together, in two parts. It should be epic.

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Representation Matters

Representation Matters. It’s a phrase tossed around in headlines and hashtags, but it’s worth far more than a moment’s righteous satisfaction. I could offer a laundry list of reasons why it’s important. For now, I’ll narrow it down to the most significant two.

  1. Self-Worth

When I was a little girl, I read hundreds of stories. Within those pages, I found characters with similar goals, ideals, personality traits, perspectives, emotions, and interests, yet most of them were boys. And, not a single one looked like me. 

So, I wrote.

I wrote stories, where little girls excelled at sports and beat the boys…because I did. I wrote stories, where little girls were the smartest in their class…because I was. And my favorite of the stories I wrote was about a young she-wolf, who overthrew the patriarchy and led her pack to a better society. 

I’m still working on that.

As exciting as these stories were for me, the sad reality was that despite tossing gender stereotypes to the wind, the concept of a white protagonist was so ingrained in me that my heroines, when human, were white. Even my characters didn’t look like me. 

And, why would they? As young children, all of us are exposed to prejudiced attitudes. These attitudes—expressed repeatedly in books and other media—gradually distort children’s perceptions until negative stereotypes and myths about people outside of the majority are accepted as reality. By the time I started writing, I’d been exposed to thousands of words and images featuring white characters as protagonists, highlighting Caucasian features as good, attractive, and right. 

Which meant what I saw in the mirror was bad, ugly, and wrong.

When I did finally find characters who resembled my wrong face—the nameless mulatto girl, seemingly referenced for no other reason than to prove the white protagonist was kind to servants—it was too late. My developing mind had already been taught, “The world isn’t built for you. You’re not normal. And, you’re only here to serve those who are.”

If this is the effect of merely my race not being represented in literature, consider the impact on the other intersections of my identity. What if, in addition to not being white enough, I’m also not straight enough? (I’m not.) What if I’m not young enough? (I’m not.) What if I’m not thin enough? (Are women ever?)

We read literature to learn about life, to immerse ourselves in stories and experience them as an insider. Being constantly cast as an outsider chips away at our sense of value. 

And unfortunately, the adverse effects are not limited to those who are rendered invisible or reduced to stunted stereotypes. Even compassionate members of the majority, whose story and likeness are often part of the narrative, may not see how lack of fair representation negatively affects them, too.

Which brings me to…

  1. Perception 

My experience querying agents with my first manuscript led to several unfortunate responses, not based on the quality of my story, but questioning the validity of my black characters. More specifically, “they did not sound authentically black.” 

As if there is only one way to exist as a black person.

Countering this myth is part of what drives the Own Voices movement—the push in recent years to have more people telling their own stories. Yet when it comes to getting published, many underrepresented authors are shut out because the publishers say they already have “a black story” or “a gay story.” 

In 2009, Chimamanda Adichie gave a Ted Talk called The Danger of a Single Story. In it, she states, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

This not only skews people’s perceptions, but can lead to dangerous prejudices that we don’t even recognize. Exposing readers to a wide variety of representations challenges stereotypes and other harmful preconceived notions about those who identify differently from them. 

For example, there are innumerable ways for someone to live with a disability. Queerness is so multifaceted even people within the community lose track. And when you compare the lives of Stacey Abrams, Lenny Kravitz, Laverne Cox, Colin Kaepernick, and Meghan Markle, how can anyone believe there is only one black experience?

If we are to improve awareness for the intersections of underrepresentation in the world, we must make space for more stories outside the dominant narratives. And we as authors are uniquely qualified to blaze the trail toward more inclusive perspectives.

I offer three steps to help pave the way.

  1. Read more inclusively. 

Seek out books written by and about people whose identities differ from yours. The more we learn about other communities, cultures, and perspectives, the more worldly and knowledgeable we are about ourselves and our own surroundings. That in turn will fuel your art and enrich the stories you tell.

  1. Write more inclusively.

Populate your stories with a cast of characters from a variety of backgrounds. When it comes to race, ethnicity, age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, religion, sexual orientation, ability, class, and economic status, we do not live in a homogenous society. If we are to be true to our art, the same should be true for our stories. 

Let’s work toward writing inclusive books as a collective goal—books with diverse characters, books that challenge the dominant narratives, books that offer more accurate reflections of the real world. Over time, we can diminish that sense of otherness, disempowering it so that the next generation of readers will understand they were not only seen, they were valued.

  1. Share your stories.

At a certain point, I recognized that if I wanted see more stories for me out there, it fell to me to write them. If I didn’t, who would? Now all my stories feature mixed black women (with cats, because ailurophiles deserve representation, too).

If you are an author from an underrepresented community, consider sharing the various nuances of your lived experience through your characters. Your stories don’t have to revolve around this underrepresented element. You can write a man in a wheelchair running for president. You can write a queer character whose biggest moment in life had nothing to do with coming out. You can build a world in any genre, using these qualities to create any type of character you want. An amputee assassin. A transgender trapezist. A Chinese cheesemonger. My idea of a great protagonist is a biracial vampire queen, but hey, to each his/her/their/eir own.