In what sounds like something from a spy novel or Spiderman comic book, the Obama Administration has announced The Narcotics Kingpin Act to target Mexican druglords. From the White House:
The Administration has released the names of three Mexican organizations against which the President has decided to impose sanctions pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (the “Kingpin Act”) (21 U.S.C. 1901-1908, 8 U.S.C. 1182). Kingpin Act targets, on a worldwide basis, significant foreign narcotics traffickers, their organizations, and operatives.
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IFC showed one of my favorite movies a couple nights ago, the mid 90s film, director Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors, a film you could reasonably call Boyz in Da Hood for aborigines in New Zealand. Not specific to the story, but a family’s coming of age centered around gang participation, domestic violence, failing fatherhood, blah, blah, blah…
if you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to get it. The acting is brilliant, though perhaps overblown in places, and you’ve seen a few of the actors since in other smallish side roles in Hollywood.
What struck me back in 1994 when it came out, and still today is how the movies throughout their history have shown in great detail how poverty and want can lead to crime and other pathologies. In everythung from the East Side Kids to Cagney movies, that theme an its relationship to reality has been a popular dramatic device. And more importantly, most of those flilms involve people who are white American, British, aboriginal, Chinese –in other words, every freakin’ body.
So why is it that Black people get so damn bent out of shape when movies and/or rap music tell the same kinds of stories in the African American community. Why do we take it so personally?
Conversely, if the notion that poverty leads directly to pathology is such a common and accepted theme in our culture, why do people who are not Black seem to reject the truth of that theory when it relates to Black people?
If it’s true in New Zealand and China, and Africa and Ireland and the streets of East London - why not in Brooklyn?
The buzz on Mat Johnson’s graphic novel, Incognegro, is very similar to the kind of fawning attention that Art Speigelman’s Maus received nearly twenty years go. It makes one wonder, given the visual power of the graphic novel format, why more authors don’t partner with artists to do graphic translations of their material. The artist, Sue Coe, found great success shortly after the release of Maus with her graphic novel, X, based on the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Incognegro is the fictional story of journalist Zane Pinchback, who passes for white in the Deep South to investigate lynchings. According to the New York Times. “The inspiration for “Incognegro” comes from the personal and professional experience of its writer, Mat Johnson. The author’s note reveals that Mr. Johnson, as a young boy, could pass for white and would act out missions as a race spy in the war against white supremacy.
Clearly, the combination of race, ethnicity and conflict makes for a potent graphic treatment that appeals to a broad demographic of audience. Here’s are my three top choices for Black books that would do gangbusters as comics:
1. Native Son (Richard Wright): None of the movie versions of Native Son did the imagery justice. The smoke in the basement. The metaphor of the blind white woman. The rooftop chase. Perfect for comics.
2. Wild Seed (Octavia Butler): No way this could ever be done as a movie. It’s at once too visual and too deep to translate well without being able to refer to the text. The exact combination of problems solved by the graphic novel format.
3. Miles: The Autobiography (Miles Davis w/Quincy Troupe): Cries out for visual treatment. Don Cheadle’s producing a movie version. They’ll have to cut all kinds of small stories and nuance to advance the tale in two hours. Graphic novel treatment can move you visually from birth to death without losing the style and flavor of the times to serve an audience’s attention.
Got ideas for more? Weigh in.
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