What are the roles and responsibilities of America’s comic book artists in portraying diversity, racial discrimination, ethnic images and stereotypes on the pages of the comic books and graphic novels they draw and write?
These and other race-related issues will be the focus of “Outside the Lines: Reconfiguring Race in American Comics, Animation and Graphic Novels,” a one-day conference at Loyola Marymount University on Thursday, Feb. 23, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Ahmanson Auditorium on the LMU campus.
Featured panelists for this event include:
- LeSean Thomas, character designer and co-director of “The Boondocks”
- Lalo Alcaraz, creator of the nationally syndicated Latino strip “La Cucaracha”
- Nnedi Okorafor, award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist
- Brandon M. Easton, screenwriter for the “ThunderCats” television series
- Stanford Carpenter, assistant professor of visual and critical studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Professor Adilifu Nama, chair of the African American Studies Department at LMU’s Bellarmine College and organizer of the event, says it is time for a serious examination how race is portrayed in American comics.
“Over the last 10 to 15 years there has been a rise in the mainstreaming of comics,” says Nama. “‘Spiderman’ and many other adaptations of comics turned into films raise issues of what kinds of racial representations are we seeing in this rising tide of popularity? It’s also important to look at how comics have offered an opportunity to represent themes and ideas that television and films have shied away from as too controversial or in a ‘specialty’ market.”
This colloquium, the first of its kind on the West Coast, is co-sponsored by LMU’s African American Studies Department and the Office of Black Student Services.