Black creators — and creations — take the spotlight in AFROFUTURES

The annual observance of Juneteenth may have wrapped up for 2024, but it’s impossible to confine the celebration of Black freedom, people and culture to just one day. That sentiment rings especially true this week with the launch of the Kickstarter campaign for Afrofutures, an oversized magazine featuring 100-plus pages of comics and articles; curated by writer Troy-Jeffrey Allen, the project gave 20-plus Black creators a platform to “run wild with their unique, thunderous imaginations.” The fruit of this creative release includes characters like 808 and the All-Negro Squad, among others — and stories such as “The Secret Files of Josephine Baker,” “Lucy & Percival: A Love Story,” and more. We recently chatted with Allen — along with fellow Afrofutures contributors Mervyn McKoy, Nicki McKoy, Jason Pierre, as well as editor Sy L. Shackleford — to get more details about the upcoming publication.     

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Carlton Hargro: So, what led to the creation of Afrofutures?

Troy-Jeffrey Allen: I guess the origin [of Afrofutures] was in January of 2020. I was on location for a documentary about Afrofuturism. … I largely just carried stuff into the room and then sat there for about four hours and listened to George Clinton and Vernon Reid talk about Afrofuturism. And then the whole damn world shut down, and the production completely halted — and I was left kind of with these thoughts on Afrofuturism. I kept going back to it in my head and about [how] four years later we were still talking about media representation [like] it was a destination. I was like: “Man, fuck that. … Let’s get past those talking points.” Because after a while, those talking points started to feel like a limitation in themselves. And Afrofuturism to me is about seeing our future selves [and] also seeing our furthest selves. And I want this magazine to allow us to push harder past that. Let’s just go crazy. Let’s just have fun with this. Let’s leave behind the — forgive me for saying, because some of the stuff is great — but leave behind the drama porn. Let’s push past the altruistic racism in media, some of the digital panhandling for white tears. Let’s get past all this stuff. That stuff is boring to me, and I’m done with it. I want to let Black creatives express themselves. So, the magazine is my attempt to do that.

Sy L. Shackleford: Yeah, think of it like our own version of Image Comics for black-oriented creators, where we have control over our own product, and we are unfettered by any kind of corporate rules or any kind of regulations that govern a lot of larger publishers. And we’re reimagining black involvement in a wide variety of genres — not just superhero genres, but sci-fi, drama action, etc.

Hargro: Let’s delve a little deeper into some of the characters and concepts in the magazine. What’s the story behind the robot you’re calling 808, who is apparently the narrator of Afrofutures?

Allen: Yeah, I’m really excited about this. 808 doesn’t so much talk … but she’s like the DJ, the MC, the host of the magazine itself. … She’s presenting each story in the magazine to you. The way I put it is, it depends on your age: 808 is either the Crypt Keeper from Tales From the Crypt, or TOM from Toonami. I’ve been hovering around music and comics these last few years, so I’ve been wanting to really embrace that melding of the two. But, more importantly, Mervin and Nikki (who designed the 808) really brought [the character] to life.

Mervyn McKoy: Well, actually, just to piggyback off what Troy is saying, I would add that one of the things that drove the idea behind 808 is kind of a physical embodiment of synesthesia, if you’re familiar with seeing hearing colors and stuff. So that’s at least my take on the character. And Nikki is actually very good at that: She’ll see something and then she can hear a soundtrack to it.

Nicki McKoy: Yeah, I mean, we saw her kind of as an avatar for the magazine, which was really important. And I think that having obviously dabbled in color theory, it was really important to pick something that was representative of the scene itself. So that’s why we went for a design that was kind of bold and loud.

Hargro: All right, so now Jason, what’s the story — “Lucy & Percival: A Love Story” — that you’ve written for the magazine all about?

Jason Pierre: It’s basically it’s like Christine meets Akira, is how Troy described it, and I think that’s actually very accurate. When he told me about this project, I was really excited. I’m a really big fan of pulpy midnight movies, and I wanted to see those stories told [along with] stories from my upbringing, as a Jamaican American from the South Bronx; I really wanted to see a future that reflected off of that. So that’s the story I told — about a cab driver and one of the customers he runs into, but in the future. I won’t spoil too much, but it deals a lot with the price of survival and what it takes to make it in whatever situation you’re in.

Hargro: Troy, I know you envisioned Afrofutures as a perennial or evergreen publication, but are there any plans to continue telling stories about some of these characters via other comics in the future?

Allen: Yeah, I mean, ideally. I’m batting around a few things. I’ve been thinking about, well, maybe we can do some web comics … with the All Negro Squad and some Ace Harlem flashback stories of what he’s been up to the last 70 years. I definitely have a whole fully formed, full-length Josephine Baker story that I would love to execute. As a matter of fact, I was trying to shove it into this book, but then I felt like I was doing it a disservice. So, the [Josephine Baker] story that’s in this book is kind of like the introductory story to the larger concept. My whole thing is … to allow these characters to be mythologized in the same way that Batman or Goku or Barbie get mythologized. To me, Afrofuturism is about making room for Black myths, and that’s something I’m oddly precious about.

For more about Afrofutures, visit the project’s Kickstarter page