Black Com!x Day celebrates its seventh installment this weekend at WorldBeat Cultural Center. But creating this free pop culture event focused on Black creators was never on Keithan Jones' bucket list.
"It just kind of fell in my lap," Jones said.
Origin story
In 2018, the Malcolm X Library asked Jones to help organize a Black History Month event related to comic books. But as an independent comic book creator, Jones works incredibly hard and spends long hours just trying to survive as an artist. That does not leave a lot of free time to invest in organizing a convention, even a small one.
"I was about to say no," Jones recalled. "And then I thought, you know what? I don't know of too many platforms or opportunities for Black creatives to have their stuff be out there and be accessible. And so I just took it as an opportunity to remedy that."
In February 2018, Black Com!x Day: Heroes Rise I was born. And we have all benefited. Since then, it has provided a space for local and out of town Black creators to showcase their work and network, while attendees have opportunities to meet with creators, buy art, discover new independent comics and enjoy daily panels.
This weekend's panels
This weekend's event features two panels. On Saturday, The Empowered Panel returns with this year's topic, "The Business of Indie Comics," moderated by Aaron Nabus. Panelists include Robert Love, Russia Jones, Jordan Jackson and Ralph Miley.
"They're basically going to discuss the process of making a comic — from the concept to writing the script to laying out the pages — and how you delegate chores to the art team, like the penciling, the inking and the coloring," Jones explained. "So that's a procedural panel and audience members who are interested in publishing their own comics, I think it'll be a great panel for them to attend and get some pointers."
On Sunday, the panel "Tell 'Em Kick Rocks: How to Rise Above Negative Energy and Achieve Your Goals" will focus on overcoming obstacles. Jones will moderate, joined by Joshua Brown, Cheryl Morrow, Jason Reeves and Jocelyn Short.
"I think that's going to be a very uplifting, interesting, introspective panel," Jones said, "because we're going to actually give testimony to our own personal trials and tribulations of how we basically navigate through people who either don't believe in what you're doing or how life will throw you obstacles and how we basically navigate it through all of that and we'll be the folks who actually lived through it."
Debuting a new comic
This year, Jones is adding another challenge: debuting a brand new comic, "American Grit."
"Since we are a collection of Black artists, there's no doubt going to be work that reflects our current times and offers a commentary on the things we go through," Jones stated. "So I have a new short story that I plan to premiere on the 15th of Black Com!x Day called 'American Grit.' And basically, it's a character who used to work for the United States government, in the vein of Captain America. His code name was Integrity, but they call him Grit for short. It's stylized after the old Marvel and DC Comics, where it's very bombastic and just kind of quirky and explosive action. It was inspired by how there's a lot of tension in the air in America and we're losing some of our fundamentals that make this country great. And so he is a former government operative that wants to ensure that Old Glory still flies and there's meaning behind it and it stands for something and to fight those forces that are trying to mutilate its meaning."
Black Com!x Day: Heroes Rise VII runs Saturday and Sunday at the WorldBeat Cultural Center. The event is free, but attendees are encouraged to register here to help organizers anticipate crowd size. Doors open at 10 a.m. and close at 6 p.m. each day. The WorldBeat Cultural Center's fabulous vegan restaurant will be open all weekend, so food will be available. Jones insists on keeping the event free, hoping attendees will spend their money supporting the Black artists.
