Comics that Redefine Humankind
Nigerian startup, Comic Republic, looks for answers on what it means to be human.
(Recently, I contributed a recorded audio piece for the beautiful people behind the Spanish podcast, Podcasa de los Horrores. Below, I am sharing the English transcription of my contribution to their special episode on heroes or villains in art and culture.)
What are we scared of? What are our desires? How do we make our choices? And what are their consequences? Our existential questions make us human as much as they help define our societies. This is how we survive generation after generation as civilisations move forward.
Stories have always been there to guide us and to encourage us to dream of a better future. And here we are, in the West, with superheroes that appear to be culturally homogeneous without taking into account the cultures and beliefs that make up the diversity of our world.
In Lagos, Nigeria, the creative minds behind the startup Comic Republic explain that many identities and worldviews have been systematically excluded from these comics, showing only a partial vision of the dreams of humankind. To address that, they purposely write stories that respond to their concern of the existence of a global disconnect to what it means to be human. Since their foundation in 2013, Comic Republic has been reminding the world that the heroes and villains of our comics should all have a single mission: to find unity within the diversity of our humanity.
This is why the characters in their comics, regardless of their good or bad intentions, themselves debate the moral question of why the world needs superheroes to protect humanity.
Comic Republic’s stories stay away from any of the stereotypes that define African villains in international comics. Instead, they bring a new and much needed approach to the conversation of what it means to be evil. According to the character bible of Comic Republic, their villains have human traits. Therefore they live and breathe like any other mortal. It is their ego that defines their actions when they stumble onto unforeseen circumstances and decide to do things that have a harmful impact on the common good.
To achieve that, they turn to their own heritage for inspiration: Folklore and the popular stories of West Africa, recognising the importance of oral storytelling in their culture and how traditional storytellers in Africa adapt stories to their audiences and different historical moments.
As they explain, traditionally in Africa, words have a sacred value of being essentially human. An approach that brings us closer to the foundations of Western societies, far away from the globalised world view of the United States, going back to the Mediterranean, in ancient Greece, when they believed that the written word threatened the freedom of expression of humankind. This is why the Greeks believed that the souls of each one of us was manifested through our voice and the stories that we were able to share with our breath.
It is not a random fact that Spiderman is a journalist. In our modern times, the journalist is our storyteller, the imparter of knowledge that helps us make sense of our world. The comic superhero was inspired by a character from African mythology called Anansi. A god that took the shape of a spider and which symbolised the spirit of knowledge of all stories.
And this is how the West of Africa, with their traditions and the project of Comic Republic in Nigeria, which has all their comics available to download for free from their website in English, reminds the world that it must dream of a future where human beings are at the core of what defines modernity and where diversity and unity is what makes us strong in the advent of the powerful desires of those who decide to pursue evil.