Ekari Writes

Meet Jember, the Ethiopian Superhero I had the privilege of chatting with an African comic book creator who is breaking out in a big way. Using the power of Kickstarter , he is raising funds to produce and distribute his brand new comic book from scratch. Since the popular Black Panther  movie, the doors have been opened for African superheroes (which have existed for years) to garner more global attention than ever before.  The strategic release of this creator's project duringUS Black History Month cannot be overlooked... The young man's name is  Beserat Debebe , and we discussed his brainchild;  Jember . Read more to find out more about the Ethiopian Superhero, and how you can be a part of bringing this exciting project to fruition. UPDATE: The Kickstarter fund surpassed its funding goals in just 4 hours! You can still contribute for the remaining days until the 4th of March for their stretch goal to do an epic comic book tour across Africa ... ...

I've been collecting a stack of fiction that centrally features black characters, so after spinning around with my eyes closed and picking one at random, I started with reading  Amber and the Hidden City .  The book is a fantasy adventure story by  African-American  author Milton J. Davis, centered around the titular character. Amber is a 13 year old African-American girl who discovers that her grandmother is actually from the mystical city of Marai, which is magically hidden in the Sahara. Amber has inherited her grandmother's talents as a seer, and is urgently needed to guide the elders of Marai to who the next leader will be. The only problem is, she has no idea that the city is real, and the knowledge turns her whole world view upside down... She embarks on a dangerous trek across the world with her grandmother, to Paris, Senegal, Timbuktu, and finally Marai - all the while pursued by the minions of a power-hungry Marai elitist with his eye on the ...

I recently rediscovered the joy of comic books. They are a fascinating medium of storytelling, combining both visual art and dialogue. As such they make a great entry point for people who want to get into reading but struggle to visualize the words as an immersive world which the author has created. Traditionally, comic books are meant to be something you grow out of at a certain age, but now there are many comic book stories which are targeted at adults. The most well known type in this category are known as graphic novels.  But if you don't have access to these, there are countless web comics accessible online, many are free, others not. I've decided to write about a few of the ones I discovered here, and specifically works which have a strong presence by a black character. I selected this category because when I was growing up, I rarely found characters in either books or movies who represented my race and/or gender. Times are changing!  I a...