Some Comic Updates
What’s up everybody!
So full disclosure, this was not the post I’d planned to make this month. That one is still in the works, but coming soon. I’m working on getting more familiar with my process, and more organized and consistent with my production schedule. But it’s slow going, and as it turns out I’m a slower writer than I think I am. So while I continue finishing up the next essay, here’s an update on one of those comic projects I’m always talking about.
It’s a sneak peak at a one-shot, called “The Hood”. A single issue for now, but I’m playing around with ideas for extending the story beyond that. It’s a not-so-typical story about a group of young people working to build their community by day, who become vigilantes by night to protect their neighborhood from internal and external threats.
The idea came to me a few months ago while I was reflecting on my love for superhero comics and the superhero genre growing up, which I still enjoy today to a much lesser extent. Spider-Man has always been one of my favorites, but as my memories of those stories collided with my current world view, I was reminded that there was something really rubbing me the wrong way about many of them. I remembered a running trope in Spider-man comics, at least the earlier ones, in which he would leave criminals tied up and beaten, hanging from a lamp post, gift wrapped with a nice note addressed to the boys in blue. “From, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”
A lot of people have pointed out the subtle authoritarianism in Superhero media in recent years. The common tropes of the genre almost always revolve around an absolutely necessary class of super people, who serve as the only meaningful barrier between business as usual, and obliteration at the hands of the evil super villains. On the one hand there’s something empowering and inspiring about seeing “ordinary citizens” take it upon themselves to protect and defend their communities from harm. On the other hand, the idea that you have to be of some extraordinary breed to take on that responsibility is immobilizing in the face of such massive threats, and that responsibility usually takes the form of defending whatever the status quo is at the beginning of the story. “With great power comes great responsibility” is a beautiful sentiment, until that power is centralized into the hands of unaccountable individuals, whose responsibility is effectively to enforce the will of the state they live in. When these lessons are applied to the real world, where the challenges our communities face far surpass the capabilities of any individual, and the status quo we currently live under is unsustainable at its best, and actively destructive to our people at its worst, I think it's easy to see how these lessons might become problematic when applied to the real world. And we teach our kids this stuff?
I started wondering what it might look like to see a superhero on the other side of those ideas. What would it look like to see superheroes who weren’t simply working as extensions of the state justice system? Beyond that, what would it look like to see Superheroes doing more than just handing out ass whoopings? To see them trying to decrease the number of ass whoopings needed by building a justice system based in community? And as I think about expanding the story I wonder, who would try to stop them? How would they respond? I thought about direct action. I read Blood In My Eye by George Jackson and The Spook Who Sat By The Door by Sam Greenlee. From all of these questions and research, The Hood was born.
Below are my current designs for the main protagonists of the story. I won’t tell you their names (I don’t know them yet) but here are their faces and a little bit about them. When I finish the outlines for the comic I’ll share that as well with some more details about the world and story! Hope you all like them as much as I do!
Everyone’s Auntie, The OG, old school revolutionary fresh out of retirement/exile
Niece. The Hood herself, and de-facto field commander of the Hoodlums. Team captain with a past she isn’t proud of. looking for redemption, running from revenge
Parkourist, climber, martial-artist, community organizer. Gets shit done. The busiest of the Hoodlums.
Artist, handy man, good neighbor. Retired car thief and hooligan. The most expressive of the Hoodlums.
Everyone’s nephew. Engineer, 2A appreciator, air-soft enthusiast. The angriest of the Hoodlums.