Black Comic Books: Novelist Mat Johnson

Cover of Incognegro: Renaissance Issue No. 1
Cover of Incognegro: Renaissance Issue No. 1 by author Mat Johnson. Warren Pleece / courtesy of Dark Horse Comics
Cover of Incognegro: Renaissance Issue No. 1
Cover of Incognegro: Renaissance Issue No. 1 by author Mat Johnson. Warren Pleece / courtesy of Dark Horse Comics

Black Comic Books: Novelist Mat Johnson

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Next week on the show, we have a series of conversations with Black comic book writers, how they look at the world, and what informs their art. Mat Johnson is an award-winning writer and the author of the new comic series, Incognegro: Renaissance. The first issue of Incognegro: Renaissance was published in February 2018, during Black History Month, 10 years after Johnson first introduced Zane Pinchback to readers in the original Incognegro series. Pinchback, a Black newspaper reporter in the 1930s used his white-passing “superpower” to investigate lynchings in the South. In 2007, Johnson became the first James Baldwin Fellow by United States Artists. He’s an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Houston, Department of English. Johnson joins us to discuss Incognegro, Twitter, and his unintentional comedic writing style.


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