Digital Diaspora: African Comics and Accessibility

You can be the hero in your story.

You can fight the shadows. 

You can stand in the light. (Hero Generation: A Jazz and Tag Story)

In our elevation of African comics and graphic novels, we are not simply placing them on the same pedestal of Western comics, we are placing them directly in concert with literary and speculative fiction. However, they may be doing more than those genres can do within their respective mediums. These works operate both in the past and the future--both a griot and a prophet. Telling our own stories and regaining a sense of home has long been difficult, that is, until the growth of social media. Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie sums this up in her TEDTalk on the danger of a single story. She charges us to show the varied elements of our lives and, by that, grow nuanced and powerful. She is not the only scholar with this vision.

This can be seen in the rise of black people throughout the diaspora using the internet to learn, practice, and commune with others regarding African Traditional Religions (ATR) and African Derived Religions (ADR). Access to podcasts like JujuMama, social media groups like The Witches Brew: Indigneous Rootwork and Conjure, and free texts and websites have created a new world of African initiation through the internet. To be connected to the faiths of the ancestors while living in Western metropolises, black people around the world can feel that they have found more than a community, they have found a home. A digital home is as valid as the physical location and finding a tribe is empowering. 

In fact, the conscious act of aligning with a tribe is not only common, but instinctual. David Lammy, British-Guyanese writer and UK Minister of Parliament, discusses this in his book, Tribes: How Our Need to Belong Can Make or Break the Good Society. 

As the world has become increasingly more globalised [sic], the centrality of the nation state has eroded, yet alongside this erosion there has been no change to our human need to belong. The newly digitally connected, global world has only provided a coherent new identity for those who have the education and the means to exploit its advantages. (Lammy 15)

However, the scattering of African people of the diaspora makes this far more difficult than it once was. It is the internet that has closed that distance. 

As people of the diaspora search for home through their computers, tablets, and smartphones, there is also an evolution of the idea of home. Anthropologist Andrea Stöckl discusses this in her article, “Internet, Cyberspace, and Anthropology.” She suggests that virtual communities are hard to analyze because unlike classic ethnic communities, virtual communities are borderless. Stöckl does not imply that these internet communities are somehow illegitimate, just tricky to define. “The internet and cyberspace raise new questions of the nation-state, and offer new ways of creating identities and spaces for self-representation”(Stöckl 67). Self-representation through African comics is more than seeing an image that looks familiar; these comics are also educational tools that preserve culture and initiate readers into spirituality, music, cuisine, and (perhaps quite importantly) language. 

Beyond reaching to the past for spirituality, music, and cuisine, there is also what Jamaican scholar Stuart Hall calls the process of “becoming.” Hall suggests that we, as creatives, are doing more than simply waxing nostalgic about what was but also what can be. This is the place that afrofuturism, speculative fiction, and afrojujuism is born. 

People who are descendants of slaves are often very conscious that they do not know their historical roots. They are forced to hold on to recent cultural icons who share their own heritage, because they do not have any information about the ancestors who preceded them.” (Lammy 112)

The internet has broken borders and has given readers the chance to learn about their ancestors and find new cultural icons to inspire them. 

In the Kugali Anthology: Raki Edition, the Oro comic plays with mythological deities as well as historical characters--and the only access to these comics are through digital formats. The most important element of this series is not the rehashing of known tropes (or deities), but that these stories are accessible internationally. According to Hafeez Oluwa, writer of Oro--originally published by MAD! Comics--is not to stay rooted in one past or one location, but to create new worlds. “It’s not based on Nigerian history but borrows some story elements from the past and the present, mixed with fiction. The characters will span the continent – North, West, East and South Africa.” It is the power of access that gives weight to these stories, the power of the internet, which allows for, as Chinua Achebe once said, “a balance of stories.” 

In addition, websites like The Comic Republic provide new (and free) content regularly to reach those of us yearning for a sense of home, past, present, and future. According to Kamara Horne, access is the most important element of these new writers and artists. 

I was puzzled as to how a comic book company could sustain itself on free content. However, [Creative Republic’s] creative team feels so strongly that their work will resonate with readers, especially African-Americans who are eager to share African stories with their children, that they wanted to give the first issues of the comics away for free to increase awareness and prove to investors that there is a market for the African superhero internationally.

Digital formats of African graphic novels and comics, as well as making many of them free and easily accessible to a diasporic audience, these writers, artists, and publishing companies are bringing their audience to a home.  As James Baldwin once opined, “it wasn’t that he was close to his roots, but that he was close to some roots as old and valid as his own” (Price of the Ticket). The roots that readers can connect to through African comics not only feeds a hungry audience, it also gives a glimpse of future possibilities by showcasing the creativity of African writers and artists to the larger global community.

In the Kugali Anthology, several writers were interviewed about their process and their motivation for creating comics. Ziki Nelson, author of Iku and the co-founder of the anthology, focused on the importance of finding the balance between roots and the future. “Every great story works off two concepts: Nostalgia and Novelty” (Kugali 168). It is easy to focus on the stories of historical characters, deities, ancestors, and mythologies, but these writers are not simply dwelling in the past. For example, Comic Republic’s contact page reads “reach us from anywhere in the galaxy” which is more than apt.

With their huge catalog that spans several different worlds--universes, in fact--Comic Republic is acknowledging the importance of their accessibility and the importance of imagining worlds rather than revisiting old ones.   

The ability to reach African comics from “anywhere in the galaxy” also creates a community of comic enthusiasts, nerds, and geeks that have longed for access to conventions, comics, and speculative fiction--and even more so ones that represent them. Juni Ba, creator of Kayin and Abeni, explains his thirst for the availability of the ComicCons and the local comic book shops as his impetus for journeying outside of Senegal. “My biggest challenge, living in Senegal, was that we didn’t have access to conventions, most comics, no theater (last one closed when I was a teen so I have fond memories of going there as a child) and really felt like Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, eager to leave for better pastures” (Ba, Kugali, 99). For comic, science fiction, and fantasy fans, Ba’s reference to Luke Skywalker is more than apt, it echoes the longing of black nerds to join the adventure of fandoms. 

The founders of Kugali, Tolu Olowofoyeku, Ziki Nelson, and Hamid Ibrahim, all express the desire for African comics to be as popular as mainstream comics like X-Men and The Avengers.  For that reason, the founders of the Kugali Anthology crowdfunded £25,000 to launch their project as referenced in the BBC Reel segment “The Three Friends Starting a Pan-African Revolution.” The vision of Kugali’s creators is larger than simply distribution; Hamid Ibrahim made a big claim that he believes they can become bigger than Disney in Africa. Ibrahim continues stating “we want to get big enough in Africa that when they mention a character you know who the character is. You turn up to a ComicCon and you see a few comic book characters from Africa walking around” (BBC News). The gauntlet thrown by Ibrahim led Disney to collaborate on Iwájú, an animated series to stream on Disney+ in 2022. 

What is compelling is how the crowdsourcing of Kugali did not only come from African nations, but globally. Thanks to the relative meritocracy of the internet, the founders of Kugali were able to find an entire Pan-African community that helped ensure the creation of the anthology. “The internet is not (yet) a monopolized and controlled medium of communication, it is unencumbered by the requirements of radio and television:” basically everybody who has access to a computer, a modem, and an internet service provider can be creator and receptor of information” (Stockl 75). It allows for people like the Kugali founders to have an ability to be the threat to Disney that Nelson confidently claims while giving their audience a feeling of not just contribution to, but ownership of, these African works being created . 

Many contemporary African creators (and on a larger scale black diasporic writers) are realizing the power of the internet to launch their projects.  Karama Horne, writer for SyFy Wire, bristles at the ebb and flow of mainstream comic establishments’ relationship to black writers. In her web article, “Black Creators are Finally Getting the Attention They Deserve: But Will It Last?,” Horne laments that the rise in black content is directly related to racial justice lightning rods, such as the murder of George Floyd, making the inclusion of black creations not much more than lip service. However, Horne sees the same meritocracy of the internet as a possibility for changing things. “With the crowdfunding model and social media access, many creators are not waiting for the comics industry to find them. Instead, they are developing their own audiences and creating high-quality comic book series on their own” (Horne, Black Comics). In essence, the internet’s global accessibility allows for more African creators.

Representation seems overused in academia, but it shouldn’t be understated. The creation of a virtual home is not a cliche, but vital to creating a Pan-African comic community in which African stories are not on the fringe, but normalized in comic book culture.   

The virtual space creates communities, despite any hand-wringing to the contrary. In Kyle Chayka’s piece in The New Republic, Chayka explains why we often do not give online engagement as much importance as in real life (also known as in “IRL”) communities and relationships. “The stigma associated with online friendship, that persistent doubt that “real” intimacy can only be created via physical encounter, has not faded. Even in this, the Age of Social Media, when virtual interaction populates almost every facet of daily existence, online friendships are still viewed with suspicion. But they shouldn’t be” (Chayka). Chayka navigates the way online relationships built primarily through online communities can be as authentic and important as those “IRL.” Online communities, by this claim, can be as real as those in which people physically live. Neighborhoods now have digital footprints--social media groups, for example--so perhaps through the internet, users can live in Accra, Lagos, or Atlanta. 

The digital comics coming out of Africa and their accessibility is akin to going down to the corner bodega and browsing the latest Marvel or DC comics and then discussing them at the lunch counter. Readers can join online groups and offer recommendations and debate plots, characters, and artwork. “I also observed that people feel more at ease, quasi ‘at home’ in cyberspace. The sharing of experiences,  [...] created a sense of belonging, of finally being part of a bigger group” (Stockl 72). Being part of a bigger group, as Stockl mentions, is afforded by the global reach of the internet and inspires those in these groups to create, knowing there is an audience looking for them and they can finally reach them. 

The pathway to success for Black creators in this medium appears to come down to the fans and to indie publishers who are skilled at connecting with them. The more creators like Okupe who create their own work and maintain their own audiences, the more success they will have. They will not only be more attractive to companies with the marketing budgets to support them (Okupe’s comics are distributed by Diamond,) but, perhaps more importantly, they will own their own content. (Horne, Black Comics)

Ownership of their own content--and the audience’s investment in their work--is difficult through the classic methods of publication and distribution. In this space, comics as digital literature continues a long African tradition of connecting the griot directly to the listener. 

There is an ownership that is created by having access to African comics--people from the diaspora can feel linked and reconnected to their roots. The internet doesn’t just connect a person to their home, but to a home they may have never seen. It, perhaps, increases the feeling of Pan-Africanism and for hungry Black comic readers, it also increases their feeling of belonging in a diaspora. Still there is more to unpack about the impact of digital African comics and their creators. The vitality of the language through the seasoning of anglophone comics with pidgins, creoles, and contemporary regional slang adds even more intimacy with the continent. The highly stylized comics are less mimicry and more an evolution of the genre. (Don’t send me hate mail.)