Throughout the 1960’s, the civil rights and black power movements reshaped the American consciousness. Marvel Comics took note of the social changes afoot, and in response they created characters such as The Black Panther, Luke Cage, Blade, and Falcon. Those characters took their cues from Blaxploitation in addition to other social phenomena of the day. Black Panther and Luke Cage especially resonated with black readers of all ages. Still, something vital was missing. As timely as those characters were, they were still informed by a largely white perspective. They didn’t truly speak for the Black community.
In 1990, an independent
comic by the name of ‘Brother Man: Dictator of Discipline’ burst onto the scene. Creators Dawud Anyabwile and Guy A. Sims had created
a fantasy world that teemed with life and energy. At its center stood a socially conscious hero
who had no special powers save for his intellect and a strong sense of
community. ‘Brother Man’ managed to do
brisk business with no corporate backing.
20 years later, ‘Brother Man’ is still going strong as Dawud and Guy
prepare to bring him into the modern age.
I recently spoke with Dawud about some of the ideas that drive ‘Brother
Man,’ as well what his future plans are for the character. He is one artist who definitely has a
socially conscious agenda, and uses his creation too further it by any means
necessary. God bless him.
Scott Tre: What
were some of the main inspirations behind Brother
Man: Dictator of Discipline?
Dawud Anyabwile: Actually
that goes back some years. Brother Man kind of encompassed a lot of
different components. I’d say my
experiences and my life, number one. There are a lot of things that have to do with
family, resurrection of our communities, keeping our communities tight. A lot of that came from there.
I would also say Hip-Hop contributed to it. I was heavily influenced in my formative
years in high school. I started high school
in ‘79. So around that time I got into DJ’ing
and stuff with my friends in school. So
that whole aspect of the graffiti writing and stuff in Philly inspired a lot of
my work.
I was also into science fiction. I used to write animated films when I was
like 13 and 14 with my brother. We used
to build armatures and a lot of little miniature sets and things at the house. I was also into the mythological component of
science fiction and action/adventure and had my collection of comic books when
I was younger.
So to me I look at Brother
Man as not necessarily coming from one vein, one source. It was actually a myriad of experiences from
a lot of different genres.
Scott Tre: What
do you think made Brother Man so
different from other Black superheroes that came before him such as Luke Cage,
Blade, and The Falcon?
Dawud Anyabwile: First
of all, I think every property that you mentioned served its purpose. Growing up I had Black Panther and Luke
Cage. They were also an influence on me
when I was younger. I think when we came
out with Brother Man, one of the
components that I think was really inspirational to a lot of people - and this
is first hand because we were dealing directly with the public, so a lot of
people would give us their testimonies right on the spot from the early 90’s on
up - was that number one it wasn’t so much just the story, it was the fact that
we owned and operated what we did. We
produced what we did. All the characters
that you mentioned, they were published by Marvel Comics. Nothing against Marvel Comics, I was a big
fan of Marvel Comics coming up and I still check out Marvel films. But there’s still something great about when
you have your own, when you produce something that comes from you and it’s a
reflection of your community and the people around you. A lot of people said when they read Brother Man they saw their uncles, their
aunts, their brothers, their sisters. A
lot of people said they didn’t feel that when they read Luke Cage and things
like that.
Also, in a lot of books the black characters, a lot of times
they kind of exist in a vacuum in terms of who their family is—and who makes up
their community. It’s not really built
on many layers of who they are as individuals.
The focus may just be on the action, and that’s what sells it. What we wanted to do with Brother Man was not focus so much on the
action but on relationships of people. A
lot of people say what they liked about Brother
Man was that it felt like a soap opera if I could use that word, because you
wondered what happened with these side characters. Was this person going to get with this person? A lot of things that people deal with in their
social circle, they saw it in Brother Man. On top of that, we interspersed that with
action and adventure. So that was one of
things that my brother Guy and I consciously thought about when we were working
on the stories, was sewing in that slice of life that we experienced coming up and
weaving that into an action book. A lot
of fans appreciated that and they picked up on that.
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Duke Denim |
Not only that, but a large amount of books we distributed
ourselves by going directly to the public, from east coast to west coast,
driving it right to different communities via the Black Expo trade show and street
events like the Brooklyn street fair and Odunde on South street in Philly. We were directly selling the books to the
public so we were bypassing the comic book industry. When doing that we were picking up a lot of
independent distributors who would get them from there and on to the streets and
barbershops. They were making businesses
from our business, which was something that was actually showing a lot of
people how you could bypass this comic book industry. But we were also penetrating the comic book
industry because we distributed through comic book distributors and comic book
stores as well. So we were actually
creating new venues and showing a lot of the Black independents how to get
their books out because a lot of them were having those issues dealing with the
comic publishers, feeling like they’re not getting a lot of sales, or some of
them felt blocked from some of these industries. We came into the market by going through the
black bookstores, as opposed to some of the comic books stores. Although we did do comic bookstores and we
sold a lot in comic bookstores, I think a lot of that was assisted by us not
relying on one entity.
So I think there were a lot of things that people related to
with Brother Man outside of those
mainstream comics that resonated with them as individuals. They felt empowered by this book. A lot of individual artists felt like they
used to copy out of Marvel and DC a lot, and they say when they saw Brother Man it made them look to their
own neighborhood and create stories as opposed to look in the pages of Marvel
and try to recreate what’s already been done.
Scott Tre: Back
when you started publishing Brother Man,
the trend in superhero comics tended towards everything being grim and gritty
and ultra-serious. You guys seemed to go
against that trend. Brother Man had a lot of humor and didn’t contain any graphic
violence or profanity. What made you
decide to go in that direction with the book?
Dawud Anyabwile: I wouldn’t say that was like a conscious
decision to go against what any of these other authors and creators was
doing. Actually, during that time I
wasn’t collecting (comic) books. I
stopped collecting comics when I was in elementary school. I didn’t even know that that was a trend that
was out there. When we came out with our
book, it was solely an extension of when we as a family have always been
doing.
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B.L.O.C.K and the Twin Terrors. |
My brother guy and I, in 1984, published the first book on
Kwanzaa for children called The Kwanzaa
Kids Learn the Seven Principals. It
was like an independently published book.
It kind of had a lot of the same nuances that Brother Man had, but it was many years earlier. It was my brother writing and me drawing. At the time it was my father’s business
called Black Family Rituals, and the book was about teaching children the seven
principles of Kwanzaa in a way that they
would understand. We used local
adventures that kids in the community would get into and help them to
understand these principles. So when you come up in that line of grooming
and that line of understanding, it kind of creates a direction and a destiny
for you to follow.
In my formative years during the 80’s I used to do custom
airbrushing at the Gallery mall in Philly and I used to have an airbrush shop
in North Philly and East Orange New Jersey.
During those times I always had a connection to the community, just
drawing people on shirts and drawing characters and caricatures on shirts. I saw how it just made people, from the toughest
thug to a college student or a little kid in elementary school, everybody kind
of felt good when they came in our shop and saw that they could get themselves
on a shirt. I saw it as a way to
unify. The arts were unifying people who
came in our store. They didn’t know each other but they would all walk out
talking to each other and feeling good. I
felt like Brother Man was a
collective of all that energy in a 24 page comic book.
The comic book wasn’t actually created to be a part of a
comic book industry, it was originally created to promote our airbrush
shop. Once we came out with the comic we
decided to stop doing airbrush shirts and just focus on comics and Brother Man just went on to do what it
did years later. It wasn’t a fluke. We
knew it was going to all these things in the interim. We knew it was going to be impactful because
of our own history ; my knowing a lot of other artists and knowing what we wanted
to see and the fact that a lot of these things were lacking. I knew
putting together Brother Man would
fill that void at the same time I was doing it, so I knew it was going to be a
multifaceted book that would cover a lot of ground when it came out. I’m hoping I stuck to that topic.
Scott Tre: How
has Brother Man evolved throughout
the years as a story, as a character, and as a universe?
Dawud Anyabwile: When
Brother Man first started, like you
said before, it had a lot of humor in it.
When we first started, we kind of came off the top of our heads and said
“hey, let’s do a comic book about this hero.”
It began as a parody of comic books.
We never thought of the hero as a jokester, and we never thought of it
as a satire magazine. We just looked at
it as an over the top universe that we knew we were creating. By issue number three is when the story
started to evolve. We started creating
neighborhoods in the city. We started differentiating
the neighborhoods in Big City so it’s no longer just a generic name for the
city. It started having a history; we
started creating the characters that created the city. Big City is named after Lyncean Big, who was
the founder of the city.
We started developing more of the character traits, like
Antonio Valor who is Brother Man. We
started getting more into his history, the history of the characters. So within the 11 issue run of Brother Man you can see from issue
number one to issue number 11 how it started to become more refined in terms of
the city he lived in and the universe.
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The lovely Melody Rich, one of the many supporting characters of Brother Man: Dictator of Discipline. |
Now where we are with Brother
Man, bringing it back after 15 years, we had a lot of time to really
process and direct the story to make it what we always really wanted it to
be. When the story came out, it was
never meant to be “This is Philadelphia, this is New York City, we knew it was
an over the top mythological universe, and maybe some people may not have
gotten it at the time because we don’t see ourselves like that. A lot of times we see a story about a city
and a black person and we automatically assume its New York, Chicago, or L.A.
in the story. This (Brother Man) never
was that. It was always a mythological
place with its own laws and rules. Now
we want to really refine that where people will see they have gadgets, their
technology is different, their laws are different, even their language is
different. That’s something that has
been evolved which we are working on now the all new graphic novel. That’s the book we’re working on now. We’re also working on the screenplay for the
film, which is a lot more in-depth than the original series. It parallels the original series, but it’s
more epic and descriptive.
Scott Tre: What
can we expect from the upcoming graphic novel Brother Man: Revelations?
Dawud Anyabwele: There’s
a lot to look forward to in that book.
In terms of a production schedule, we can’t guarantee when it’s going to
be out. We’ve been working on it for a
while, however there are a lot of components to doing this book and a lot of
our concentration has now shifted to the feature film. We may come back to the graphic novel because
now we are now using the graphic novel as the storyboards for the film. What a lot of fans can see, we’ve been
focusing on the origin of Brother Man, telling the backstory of Brother
Man. We deal more with the emotion, and
a lot of things that a lot of us deal with on a regular basis, but many of
times we don’t see ourselves in film dealing with families. Not even just dealing with our day to day
family issues, but weaving that into an action/adventure, mythological, surreal
universe.
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Artwork from the upcoming Brother Man: Revelations |
So that’s what Brother
Man: Revelations touches on. Now we
are seeing the story of Antonio Valor growing up as a young boy and going
through the losses in his life and the things that challenged him and made him
want to give up, but how he maintained his integrity. He realizes his greatness inside, whereas a
lot us, we get beat down by a lot of things happening in life and we give
up. I’m not saying everything is that
easy where we shouldn’t give up, but sometimes it’s too much for us. We give in.
Brother Man: Revelations is
about how this one character realizes that he can’t give in, that a lot of
people in his life depend on him regardless of if he thinks about it or
not. People look up to us. They make it in life because their best
friend made it and that gave them the drive to make it.
Eventually we have to come to the revelation
within us that our lives are important.
The fact is that I have to do better, I have to be this beacon if I want
things to change. If I’m waiting on
somebody else to change things it’s just going to stay like this. That’s what the book represents, but it’s
done in a way where it’s a whole new twist on action and adventure and it’s not
your typical superhero story. We don’t
feel as though it’s our mode to try to compete with Marvel and DC the way that
they have their high powered super heroes.
We’re not coming from that angle.
We weren’t thinking about Marvel and DC when we created Brother Man. We were thinking about our background and our
community and what we would like to see.
The type of fantasy that we would like to create based on our reality.
Scott Tre: How
does being a native of Philadelphia affect your art style?
Dawud Anyabwile: The
neighborhood I grew up in was a quiet area, the Mount Airy section of
Philly. That’s the northwest section,
which is a huge section of the city. It’s
composed of Mount Airy, Germantown, West Oak Lane. You have a lot of varieties of
neighborhoods. One day you could be
walking in the woods with your shoes off in the creek, and then you can go down
a couple of blocks and there’ll be graffiti on the walls, Trolley cars, and
basically you’re in “the hood.” The
whole vibration of Philly to me, when I think about it, is it kind of had like
its own unique style. The graffiti was
unique. Even to this day it has its own
unique graffiti style, its own unique talk; the way the people talk there is
its own style. There were a lot of
independent black soda companies, potato chip companies like Rap snacks and
Chumpy Chips. Philly was that type of
city. There were a lot of things that originated in Philly in regards to
Hip-Hop and graffiti and stuff like that, and I think a lot of times that
Philly doesn’t get the credit for it.
But I recognized it, being in the midst of it and seeing it coming up
from North Philly to south Philly to Southwest.
I was kind of all over the place.
I had a lot of friends all over the city. We vibed a lot, and that inspired my work from
being in a variety of different places in close proximity. The neighborhoods changed by block.
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The city of Philadelphia |
From my perspective, when I think of Big City, I think of
Big City as a collective of a lot of different personas. It’s not just “Big City Comics, or a hood comic and everybody’s a thug.” I feel like when I see some films that are
made about Black neighborhoods it’s always this one myopic view. We don’t really see the college student. We don’t see the person who’s interested in
Special Effects. Where’s the guy who
likes DJ’ing? Where’s the guy who
probably don’t like DJ’ing? “I don’t
like Hip-Hop. I’m Black. Why I gotta like Hip-Hop? Cause I’m Black? I’m into classical music.” That’s still Big City, because it’s all these
different personalities that are thrust into this one metropolitan region. That’s inspired by the fact that I had so
many friends that had so many different aspirations and backgrounds. That’s not unique to me. I’m sure you know a lot of people that had a
lot of different backgrounds. In film
and in storytelling, we don’t see a lot of that about us, even though it’s out
there. It’s not at the rate we see other
nationalities portrayed as a universe of people. I felt like Philly represented that universe
of people when I think of all the types of friends that I had. So I think of Big City as a distorted or
should I say blown out view of how I saw Philly coming up. It’s this congested place, there was a lot of
different types of people with a lot of different types of missions. A lot of people did vibe together and some
people didn’t.
I think the whole graffiti scene when I was in high school
played a part. I was an art major all
through high school. There were a lot of
graffiti writers in my school. That
inspires you to have an interest in it.
However I always saw something greater than what it actually was. Not as a putdown on it because I loved
it. It’s just that the way my mind
worked I always saw other universes.
Something greater I could do with graffiti and fine art and science
fiction and all that.
So I guess to sum it all up, I’d say the city was very
influential to me and my work. I
traveled a lot. I wasn’t just always in
Philly. The role that it did play was
significant in creating the man that I am.
Scott Tre: Your
art shows the influence of the graffiti scene, but it also shows the influences
of MAD Magazine artists like Jack Davis and Mort Drucker. Which of those factors had the biggest
influence on your art?
Dawud Anyabwile: I
wouldn’t really say MAD Magazine had
a bigger influence because I didn’t collect it like that. My oldest brother who recently passed away,
he had every last MAD Magazine from its first printing to the day that he died,
the latest issue came in the mail. That
was kind of ironic. He was a MAD Magazine fiend. He was a mechanical engineer, so it’s just
like he was sitting around reading comics or not doing anything. He’s like a mathematical genius. In his spare time he liked that release of MAD Magazine. Since they were around the house when I was
real young, because he left the house a long time ago to move to the west coast,
but I just remember when the books used to be around the house. I used to flip through them and look at the artwork
more so than read it. I would read it
and I’d get it, but I just liked looking at the artwork. I liked how Mort Drucker especially, and Jack
Davis, how their styles were loose and free.
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Mad magazine #135 with cover by Jack Davis. |
When I was in high school we did a lot of studying of
gesture drawings. It taught us how to
look at how people were moving, to catch the line of action. I’m standing at the
bus stop and I see somebody standing there and they just have a natural
stance. I’d strip everything down and
just capture the natural movement of them standing there, and my art teacher in
high school was very big on that. I
realized that’s why I liked MAD Magazine
because I think those guys, like Mort Drucker and Jack Davis, they capture a
lot of those little nuances that people do that don’t really stand out a whole
lot. They paid attention to details… they
captured every detail in a little tea cup or a fly in the tea cup or something
like that. Those little nuances make
something that much more interesting to look at, those little details and the
gestures. That’s how MAD Magazine was an influence on me, so
when I did my book, I was doing gesture drawings. I understand why people would equate Brother Man with MAD Magazine. As I really started getting into Brother Man, I started finding my own
style and moving to where I wanted to go.
I would say that the graffiti was an influence to a point
where I always liked it, but I knew I was never a master of it. I will never front to say “Hey man, I’m the
man at doing Wild Styles and the Philly Wickeds and all that stuff. Top to bottom and all that. I liked it, but at a certain point I realized
“eh…I can only get but this far with it.
So I’ll incorporate that into my artwork.” But it was never really like “Label me a
graffiti writer” because I didn’t master it like that. It was just one of the components of the many
things that I did. I don’t define myself
as a comic book artist because I don’t really consider myself as just that. I add all these components of what I learned,
even animation, to who I am as an artist.
Ultimately I enjoyed painting and illustrating. So if I was to give myself a label it would
be more so as an illustrator.
Scott Tre: As I
understand it, the New York style of graffiti was actually born in Philadelphia. Was there ever a cross pollination between
those two scenes? Did they ever inspire
each other? Or did Philadelphia graffiti
artists see the ones in New York as biters?
Dawud Anyabwile: That
would be an interview on Cornbread and Top Cat and all of them old
schoolers. I was a little fella back
then. I didn’t know what was going on
down that route, during that time. Retrospectively
looking at it, I guess a lot of writers that I knew in Philly went to New
York. I used to go to New York a lot and
Jersey. Most of my family is from Jersey
City so that was always my second home growing up. I noticed the difference in styles early on,
the Philly hand styles and the New York script styles and all of that. I always felt like New York was really very
artistic. New York always made me want
to really draw more. Philly was more
like the tagging city. The tags were
big. One name would take up a whole
door, but it’s a tag. It’s not a
piece. I think the early styles in
Philly, and this is from what I look at and the writers that I know, started
early with Cornbread and a lot of the early writers. With New York, because the city is so close
and so big, the styles evolved quickly. It
evolved a lot quicker, and because it’s from New York it becomes the voice of
the world.
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Legendary Philadelphia graffiti writer Darryl “Cornbread” McCray |
I think there’s been a natural affinity between Philly and
New York when I was coming up and with what I saw. A lot of things come out of Philly and get
picked up in New York and vice versa.
Even with the music and all that, like with the DJ’ing in Philly, the
transformer scratch, DJ Jazzy Jeff.
Philly was known for the DJ’s and New York for the MC’s, even though a
lot of the core things came out of New York.
For me personally, I look at it as it all collectively comes
from us. I can’t really get into what started
where and who said what, because I don’t know. I feel like in my zone, I considered
it all to be artistic expression. This
is something that’s huge, and this is something that is a collective of who we
all are. I’ll leave the historical
aspect to the people who are studying the history. I would never want to misinterpret and say
who started this and who started what because I was in what, first grade? I was more concerned about what cartoon was
coming on during that time. You know
what I mean?
Scott Tre: Do you
have any other upcoming projects that people should look out for?
Dawud Anyabwile: We’re
working on the Brother Man graphic
novel. We’re also working on pitching
the Brother Man feature film. There are a lot of components to doing that
as well. I’ll put that on blast when I’m
at that point where I can really shout it out because there are some real
aspects to that that can make some major changes in this industry. It’s something that I’m very careful about
because I’ve had a lot of movie deals in front of me over the years and I
always had to look at which is the one that’s right for me. I’ve been a patient person my whole
life. I never feel like I have to sign the
first contract placed in front of me.
I’m particular about how my property is going to be done because my
property is also a reflection of my people, and I’m concerned about how my
people get portrayed, even when it comes to the culture of my people, even when
it comes down to urban culture. I don’t
want it to be stereotyped. I want it to
be authentic. So I’d rather be patient
with it and make sure it’s being done right.
Making sure I have the control I need to have over what it is.
We also have the Brother Man Art Experience, The Brother Man
Comics Art Exhibition, which has been traveling from city to city. We have done a couple of presentations here in
Atlanta. It’s also been on display at
Virginia Tech and University of Georgia.
I’ve actually been requested to bring it to a variety of other cities
and overseas. We’re still working on
taking Brother Man to a lot of other
places. I’m really looking forward to
taking it to New York, because that was really the jump off for Brother Man because we introduced it at
the Black Expo in New York. After 20
years of introducing it there it would be great to have the Brother Man art show somewhere on
display in Manhattan and then L.A. and out to overseas. So there are a lot of things that I’m working
on now. I’m just not putting a lot of
things on blast until it’s more feasible to have a date on it, so that people
will know it’s right around the corner.
All the back issues of Brother
Man, issues 1-11, have been rereleased in trade paperback form. We have a three volume set, volumes one, two,
and three. They are all available at www.brothermancomics.com. We also have a website www.youtube.com/brothermancomics
where you can see some of the older interviews that we’ve had. I’ve actually been doing some speed
paintings, posting up some random illustrations to build up the following on
the speed paintings. I’m actually about
to start a whole new video blog on video paintings and things of that
nature.
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