John Jennings and Stacey Robinson of the collective Black Kirby worked with Larry Fuller, the original author of 'Ebon: Fear of a Black Planet,' to expand the character's storyline for a new exhibition at Tthe Culver Center of Arts at UC Riverside.
Despite its influence on comics and pop culture alike, Fuller’s work has remained relatively obscure — until Stacey Robinson and John Jennings, the duo behind the art collective Black Kirby, expanded Ebon’s story this year.
John Jennings, a best-selling author, graphic novelist, curator and professor of media and cultural studies at UC Riverside, and Stacey Robinson, an artist and professor of graphic design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, dreamed up their shared creative pseudonym, Black Kirby, after discussing the fact that legendary Marvel and DC comic book artist, Jack Kirby, is seldom given the credit he deserves.
For their updated look at the comic, Black Kirby redefined the “darkness” Ebon culls his power from as a “powerful Black safe space drawing from African traditions, hip-hop, Afrofuturism and more.” Additionally, they implemented a red symbol onto Ebon’s chest that produces an energy he can fight with.
For Black Kirby, the idea of a flourishing Black planet is fantastical when Black bodies are often rendered disposable — particularly in a place like the United States, which has a long legacy of anti-Blackness. That’s why they made a point to ensure that Nyta had a language system, because African languages were lost during the transatlantic slave trade and as Black people were forced to assimilate to English.
While Nyta fits the “timely” pop culture interest in Afrofuturism, the name “Fear of a Black Planet,” inspired by Public Enemy’s album of the same name, also ignites tension, Jennings adds. “There is a fear of a Black planet,” Jennings says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a brown planet, if it ain’t white, it’s Black — that’s the way whiteness looks at it.
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