Welcome to Graphic Policy’s spotlight on webcomics, where we take a look at one of the many comics available online every Sunday: Webcomics Weekly (but don’t be fooled by the “weekly” part of the title; the feature may happen more or less frequently than that). We’re defining webcomics as any comics published online for free consumption by the general public that doesn’t require a  subscription service.

This week we’re taking a look at Kid Carvers. The strip is created by Jason Reeves, who was kind enough to answer a few questions for us about the webcomic below.

Graphic Policy: In a nutshell, can you tell us what the strip’s about?

Jason Reeves: Sure. Kid Carvers is about twins; Marley and Charley Carver, who also happen to both be kid geniuses. The setting is New Orleans, LA. The twins’ stomping ground/base of operation is their grandmother, ‘Moonie’s backyard, where she takes care of them after school. Marley is a cross between Quvenzhané Wallis’ Annie and a mad scientist, and if you put Doc Brown’s brain into Marty Mcfly, with old Kanye’s fashion sense, you get Charley.

They have a bit of a time dodging bullies in school and outsmarting their teachers, but in their spare time they investigate strange occurrences & mysteries only their brilliance can solve.

GP: How often do you update?

JR: Every Wedenesday.

GP: How long have you been producing the strip?

JR: We’ve been posting since January 3, 2017. So we’re only a few weeks in. We’re very new.

GP: Where did the idea for the strip come from?

JR: Having done a few more comic conventions in the past couple years, we saw that there were few if any all-ages books that the kids could take home with them. As much as we love our sort of rated ‘teen’ comics, looking at all those little eyes peering over the table con after con and having to tell their parents that maybe this book or that was a little too old for them, was a problem for us. So we set out to fill that need as we saw it and Kid Carvers was born.

We (Alverne, Kemi, Joe, Brandi, & I) really loved the optics of shows like Doc McStuffins, the Boondocks, comics like Tuskegee Heirs, and webcomics like Bounce, so we set out to create, inspired by content with an animated feel. 

We also wanted to conjure the idea of Black inventors, many that may be the unsung but brilliant minds of our past. Who better to represent the idea than George Washington Carver. I’m a big fan of the inventive mindset, a mind not just willing to rest on convention, but step outside of it to find more optimal methods, and in turn creating new more efficient conventions. Carver was all about that, creating alternative means of production for poor farmers to compete, and even thrive with the resources (peanuts,….) already available to them. That spirit of overcoming is definitely something I wanted to infuse into the twins.

We plan to shine a spotlight on Black inventors, engineers, and scientists who would be the twins’ heroes. Expect to hear mentions of some you’ve heard of and some you haven’t.

Our model is one more creators have started to embrace in recent years, presenting the content as a webcomic and also collecting the pages into print copies. It gives readers their choice of how they’d like to consume the content. If they’d like to support monetarily they can do so, but anyone can enjoy Kid Carvers free of charge, I think its the win win.

You can read Kid Carvers: Engineers of the Impossible every Wedenesday at: http://kidcarvers.com/

Or you can get Kid Carvers: and the Backyard Bike Bandits for purchase at: http://www.133art.com/

---

Why it’s awesome: Oh man… I don’t honestly think I can say anything more than what’s already been said. Y’all need to check this out yesterday.

Below you’ll find some examples of the webcomic in no particular order..

---

If you’d like to have your webcomic featured here, then drop us an email.