Comic Book Resources

"A lack of exposure to artists from that region of the world and the extremely jarring, culturally specific art styles of those we did find made the search difficult"

Hey, let's find an African to draw this story, just make sure he draws like an American. I'm glad they are trying to get Patrice's work into the American market, and it does sound like he's a good choice, but that statement is just infuriating. I can understand that you aren't too familiar with the artists from the region, but that you're so quick to marginalize them when you do start to familiarize yourself with them makes me wonder why you're doing this all in the first place.

I'm willing to bet cold, hard cash that you have no idea what your talking about or to the lengths of which my editor and I had to go to both find and employ an artist from this region (Pat is currently a politically refugee living in France after fleeing for his life, the article misstates that he is still living in DRC).

The art styles of the East and Central African artists are drastically, DRASTICALLY, different than anything we could viably publish for this particular kind of material. I would almost guarantee that if you had any knowledge whatsoever of a single artist from that region you would be far more empathetic to the difficulties of our search and far more understanding of my original statement. The quote you are referencing had to do with the market realities we had to face, not with my editor and I's understanding of African artists and their styles. We were looking for an artist that was RIGHT FOR THIS BOOK. To suggest we marginalized artists based on any other principle is insulting.

We are actually very familiar with artists from several regions of the continent because the search was difficult and consuming. While traveling through East Africa I spent a lot of time collecting information on artists who could possibly fit our bill. And I've got news for you, war zones don't produce a hell of a lot of culture. People are too busy surviving. In finding Pat we are amazingly fortunate. His is a uniquely African style with a strong visual sensibility and yet, still, the only way he came to our attention was through his work in Europe where he is currently living in political exile due to his art.

The next time you go through the massive effort of searching for just the right artist to help bridge the Western/African divide while still matching the spirit of a book currently in the middle of its run and then go before a juggernaut of a corporation like Warner Brothers/DC Comics and ask them to jump through special hoops to pay and support an unproven artist so he can negotiate the madness of a refugee tax status... I'll make sure to give you the benefit of the doubt instead of kick out some guttersnipe complaint on the internet.

Sorry about the passion, but finding and hiring Pat was something I care about and worked hard at, only to met with this crap. You say you're infuriated. Well, I'm pretty infuriated now too.

(From the writer of Unknown Soldier)

"the article misstates that he is still living in DRC"

My mistake. It's been corrected.

Thanks for the correction, JK. I notice my above rant is riddled with late-night-grammar. Agh! Never post after midnight! Peace!