Graphic Novel Alert!

After changing our blog template, I didn't want you guys to think that I left my enthusiasm for graphic novels behind with the change. I was perusing Rich Watson's column (Glyph) on the PopCultureShock.com website, when I came across his engaging interview with graphic novel writer, Alex Simmons. Simmons is the creator of the Blackjack series which has definitely garnered my interest for two reasons: 1)the book's protagonist is an African-American answer to the Indiana Jones character and, 2)The character Blackjack, according to Simmons is inspired from a real life man of adventure, Eugene Bullard.

Here is an excerpt from the interview in question, courtesy of PopCultureshock:

[In part 2, Alex talks about his success with Blackjack.]

RW: Alright, so let’s talk about Blackjack. How did Blackjack get started?

AS: I’ve always had a love for old movies. Even as a kid, I used to watch the older, black-and-white films, and adventure and mystery stories were my particular favorite. And I didn’t, as a young child, consciously recognize that none of us were there, except maybe if it was in Africa, [where] we were running. We had the funny loin cloth and grassy things on, and we were either taking orders or being chased and shot down, usually stuck with the Tarzan movies, which hey, I grew up watching too. But it used to bother me how the Africans seemed to be totally incapable of dealing with the animals. Tarzan and the Africans all lived in the same jungle, but in the movies, the African natives acted like they’d never seen half these creatures until Tarzan sent them after them. So there were these little discrepancies, but I don’t think I’d made this whole big conscious decision about anything, initially; I was enjoying them. And then when I hit my middle-to-late teens, I was involved in a club, people of different ages, who used to get together on Saturdays and watch the reels of the old serials. So I got to see a lot of those things way before they made them to videotape and DVD. And again, we weren’t anywhere in these things unless we were a porter on a train…

I got into my twenties and I was writing more, and I had a desire to create an action-adventure hero for the comics. Dick Giordano was vice-president and creative director up at DC. I sort of knew him; I knew some people at Marvel. I wanted to write comic books. I thought it was kinda cool; I’d always enjoyed reading them. So I was looking at what I wanted to create. Now, Indiana Jones had been out, the first movie had been out, and I remember thinking again – and that’s when it started to happen, slowly – where were we? I know we were back there, y’know, where were we? So how about a black adventurer, ‘cause then you can see the 30’s and 40’s from that perspective, and it would make the stories more interesting for me to write. And then the more I worked on the character of Aaron Day, the history and his origin and all of that, the more I would do some research to make sure I wasn’t going too far afield of reality. I mean, it was certainly going to be a fictional character, but what would support this?

And as a side note, here is an excerpt of Wiki's synopsis of Eugene Bullard:

Eugene Bullard (9 October 1894 – 12 October 1961) was the first African-American military pilot.

He was born Eugene Jacques Bullard in Columbus, Georgia, in the United States. His father was known as "Big Chief Ox" and his mother was a Creek Indian; together, they had ten children. Bullard stowed away on a ship bound for Scotland to escape racial discrimination (he later claimed to have had witnessed his father's narrow escape from lynching as a child).

While in the United Kingdom he worked as a boxer and also worked in a music hall. On a trip to Paris he decided to stay and joined the French Foreign Legion upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Wounded in the 1916 battles around Verdun and awarded the Croix de Guerre, Bullard transferred to the Lafayette Flying Corps in the French Aéronautique Militaire and was eventually assigned to 93 Spad Squadron on 27 August 1917, where he flew some 20 missions and is thought to have shot down two enemy aircraft.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm definitely going to be on the look out for this book not just because it appears to be a different period piece (instead of the civil rights and slavery fare that Black period entertainment usually entails) but also because it actually appears to have all the trappings of a fun read. It has also come to my attention that although this series has been out for quite awhile (hey I don't know everything), Simmons' work was optioned for the development of a feature film a few years ago. For more on the Alex Simmons' interview, his website and Eugene Bullard-click on the links below:

Pop Culture Shock-The Alex Simmons Q-and-A pt. 2


Alex Simmons' Website


Wiki does Eugene Bullard