Comics, culture and John Jennings’ creative spirit at The MAX

By Sherry Lucas | Originally published by Mississippi Today

MERIDIAN — John Jennings builds worlds — captivating, colorful worlds full of indelible characters and heroic struggles, centered in Black culture and shot through with magic, mysticism and flecks of the graphic novelist’s native Mississippi.

The exhibition “John Jennings: Build Your World,” on view at The Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience (The MAX) in Meridian through March 27, is a peek behind the curtain for an up-close look at the storyteller’s creative process.

A New York Times bestselling graphic novelist, Jennings is also a Harvard Fellow and Hugo and Eisner Award-winning artist, with work featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and appearances on “CBS Sunday Morning” and in Marvel documentaries. He is a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and a key scholar as well as a creator in the Afrofuturism movement.

In the exhibition, storyboards, sketches, original drawings, notes, pitches, script excerpts and influential books showcase Jennings’ art in action through comics and graphic novels, unfolding across four key collaborative and solo projects: “Silver Surfer: Ghost Light” (Marvel Comics); “Blue Hand Mojo: Hard Times Road” (Rosarium); “Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation” (Abrams ComicArts); and his brand-new “Kenny Dreadful and the Hainted Hoodie.” The exhibition is curated by Benjamen Douglas.

The day before its June 20 opening, Jennings’ eyes swept the gallery at The MAX, and he let loose a chuckle of recognition. 

“This is like sitting inside my brain,” he mused. “That’s what it feels like.” 

Odd. A little vulnerable, too, with unfinished things on view he would not normally show people. 

“Not only do you look at the things that I work with, but how I work,” he said.

It hits close to home. The work always has. Jennings’ lived experiences as an artist and a Black man from Mississippi filter through an active imagination and a keen observation of contemporary culture. It comes out in comics and projects that reclaim history, highlight fresh perspectives, envision new possibilities and format the future.

Jennings grew up in Flora. 

“The outskirts,” he described it, “back in the sticks of the sticks.” 

That agrarian setting and his upbringing crop up in his creative output.

Comics and science fiction, and his mother’s love of action and horror movies shaped him. 

“She got me into all this stuff. First thing I read as a young kid, I remember, was Edgar Allen Poe stories. We were talking about all the scary stuff. I’m a horror scholar now because of her. I actually study horror as a phenomenon,” said Jennings, whose classes include a course on race and horror. “Students call it the ‘Get Out’ class.” 

Comics ambitions took root about age 10, with his first inkling that it was a job. 

“The first time I really for real lied to my grandmother was when I told her I wanted to go to New York and be a comic book artist, and she burst into tears, and I was, like, ‘Oh no, I was just kidding! I’m so sorry.’” 

He crossed his fingers behind his back and figured he might need to move there in secret, but independent comics and more opened the landscape beyond the New York City hub.

Cultural references from his grandparents and mom, including the songs they listened to, stuck with him and sneak out on the page. 

“The blues are actually a huge part of the stuff I make,” he said.

“Blue Hand Mojo’s” noir antihero Frank “Half-Dead” Johnson, a blues detective and conjure man left with half a soul, works to pay off his debt to the devil and echoes bluesman Robert Johnson’s crossroads folklore. “Blue Hand Mojo” has been optioned and may make its way to TV at some point, he said.

The gritty character in a fedora, trench coat, dangling cig and blue right hand aglow with sorcery, radiates magnetic appeal across several portraits as Jennings honed his look. 

“It jumps out at you,” photographer Griff Griffin rightly observed. 

What also jumps out: a Mississippi mud golem, looming in “Blue Hand Mojo” story panels nearby. 

“The environment pops up in my work, too — the red clay dirt and the heat, catching fireflies and watching sunsets … living on a dirt road,” Jennings said. 

His stargazing memories of climbing atop a barn to watch the night sky are ripe fodder, too.

Quilt-making shows up as stitchcraft, a witchcraft riff where quilt panels have spiritual and magical powers and the quilted cloak of an elder transforms into a hoodie on a teen in his new solo project “Kenny Dreadful and the Hainted Hoodie.” 

It can be used as a weapon or a portal, for a protective barrier or a magic carpet ride, he said. “I think kids are going to love it.”

Much of it did not exist before the exhibition, he said. 

“It forced me to actually drill down and make the world.” So, he pitched it to a publisher and he feels good about its prospects. 

“I think somebody’s going to pick it up. It’s got some tweaks here and there, but the story is there. The world is there.”

For “Silver Surfer: Ghost Light,” Jennings pitched to Marvel the resurrection of brilliant Black physicist Al Harper, who sacrificed his life to save the planet in the late 1960s story “… And Who Shall Mourn Him.” Jennings brought him back to life and made him a superhero, Ghost Light, creating a back story for Harper in the limited series adventure and collaborating with a global multi-billion dollar company and its teams in the process. 

“I got a chance to give him a life. It’s really cool.”

Some people were probably not cool with a character besides Silver Surfer at the story’s center, Jennings said, but “That’s the thing. … Everything is not for everybody.

“I want you to love the stories, but the other thing is, I want to challenge who you share empathy with. Because stories are empathy engines.” 

At 55, Jennings has extended empathy to white male characters his whole life, from Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Who to Superman and Batman. As a smart, working class kid, he related more to Daredevil than he did to Black Panther, he said.

“What I’ve been trying to do is create characters that actually resonate at different frequencies to other audiences. And, no shade on those characters, I still love Sherlock Holmes. But there’s space for other folk.”

For “Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation,” he and fellow academic and comics artist Damian Duffy co-adapted Octavia Butler’s acclaimed 1979 time-travel novel for a new generation, adding a rich visual element to the story that served as a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement. 

Visual styles and color schemes distinguish 1970s California and early 1800s antebellum Maryland, and the display of two dozen original drawings along with the finished book offers another window into the layers and details world building requires.

With its success and that of additional graphic novel adaptations of Butler works, Jennings pitched a speculative and nonfiction imprint for works by and about people of color. AbramsComicArts’ Megascope line, curated by Jennings, has put out 20 books with more on the horizon.

Its “Framing Emmett Till: Exposing Dark Fear,” a graphic novel biography about the crime, is due for official release Oct. 27 but premieres early at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson on Sept. 26. Jennings shares a panel at the festival with its author Christopher Benson and illustrator Eric Battle. Re-examining Till’s legacy through a contemporary lens explores what it means to protect history.

“I think it’s a beautifully done, powerful book,” Jennings said, “and I think it’s a book that actually reminds you of how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go if you look at what’s happening in society now.

“In some ways, I feel it’s Afrofuturist, too, because it’s protecting the past to get to the future, … If you disrupt how people see the past, it will change how they see the future.”

Career highlights also include his role as co-founder/organizer of the Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem, a magnet for Black creatives for more than 10 years. 

“It’s a major achievement for me, because it’s changed people’s lives. I think at the heart of it, that’s what art is supposed to do. It’s supposed to create connections and change people.”

He is the founder/organizer of others, too, in San Francisco, Los Angeles and at Ohio State University. 

“I’m kinda like the Johnny Appleseed of Black comics conventions – ‘Let’s do one, see what happens,’” he said.

Jennings is a curator, a teacher and a creative spark, but at heart and hand, he is a teller of stories with words and pictures that spin new worlds into existence.

Jennings likes “the strangeness of being a storyteller, trapped in here,” he said, tapping his temple, “and trying to figure my way out through the traditions that I’ve inherited from tons of storytellers that came before me. Mississippi storytellers. 

“Because at the end of the day, that’s what I am. I tell stories through the way that I teach and the comics that I make. 

“It’s all about unlocking truths that I feel like I carry with me.”

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article