Later this month John Jennings and Damian Duffy will be releasing an anthology, Black Comix: African American Independent Comics, Art, and Culture, that showcases independent African American cartoonists and the subculture of conventions, websites, and awards surrounding them.

Duffy and Jennings met at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Jennings is a professor of graphic design and Duffy was a graduate student at the time and is currently a PhD candidate.  Their first collaboration was The Hole a sci-fi graphic novel which dealt with “issues of identity and consumer culture.”  They then followed that up with two art exhibits which focused on African American comic creators.

The contacts they made at these two shows lead to the graphic novel which serves as an introduction to this area of comic book culture.  People featured in it include Dawud Anyabwile, the creator of Brotherman, Keith Knight, the author of The K Chronicles who wrote the introduction, Turtel Onli the creator of NOG: The Protector of the Pyramids, Sustah-Girl: The Queen of the Black Age, and Malcolm-10, and up and coming artists like Ashley A. Woods the creator of Millennia Wars and Arie Monroe.

The book also focuses on the history and nature of the Black independent comics community and the subcultures that orbit it.   Online you can find some of that history and community in the The Museum of Black Superheroes which was founded by Omar Bilal.