We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Khalid Johnson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Khalid below.

Hi Khalid, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I’ve worked so far on has been Stay Woke. I love all of my projects and they all are close to me but Stay Woke feels the most comprehensive of my passion for comics and Black liberation. It brings those two things together in a way that is both very personal and reflective. My experience in undergrad at a PWI helped shape my ideologies and sharpened the lens through which I saw racism and inequality. I created a series of artworks for my undergraduate thesis that explored Blackness and policing. This set the pace for my comics work going forward. At the time of release (February 28th, 2021) America was in a reignited discussion about race and anti-Blackness. I’d been working on the story for roughly a year before that point while pursuing my M.F.A. at SCAD. Conversations with my late cousin Gina inspired me to write this story. I thought about police, I thought about appropriation and exploitation and I thought about liberation. Envisioning a dystopian future beyond the oppressive times that we’re in now gave me space to think about Black perseverance in spite of the systems and harm affecting us historically, modernly, and in the future. Outside of thinking about the struggle, I thought about the future and Black people shaping their future. I thought about Afrofuturism. The book would be nothing without that final image, and what I think it means most to me is hope.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Khalid Johnson and I’m a lifelong comics reader. Comics are literature and they employ images to communicate visually. I love this medium and the stories that are told through it. I was inspired by my dad’s love of comics and from a very young age I knew that I wanted to make comics. I first started making comics soon after graduating high school and I have been able to see my storytelling and my art progress. I wanted to see more people that looked like me in these stories and further, I wanted to see spotlight spread to the marginalized. As a creator I’m intentional about my messaging and I want to use my voice to advocate for the marginalized and to challenge the systems that keep us down. I’m constantly growing as a creator and I’m proud of my progress and as I continue to work I never want to stop growing. I intend to continue to use my voice and to let my comics be an extension of that.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think immediately, society can pay artists fairly and provide the space to create. I advocate for housing for all and UBI because having your needs met means you can create freely and make the things you want to make and are passionate about. It’s a job, and in many cases artists are juggling their creative endeavors with other jobs to support themselves and end up drained. I think society undervalues what the arts truly contribute, as we would not progress without them. Think about the brief reprieves we get from the hardships of reality through books, television, movies, or the way art inspires us and makes us feel. These things need funding, they need the space to be made and they need that support to allow them to be projects with heart and passion behind them. I think chasing passion has become a thing deemed “unrealistic” because passion often does not mean money and so we chase trends and likes and validation in the hopes to make more money. I think as we progress, we as a society and culture have become so used to instant gratification and a steady stream of content, so the space to create faces more pressure or becomes outsourced to AI potentially removing the soul from the arts.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I don’t care about getting rich, I want to tell stories. I want to raise awareness and challenge oppression and oppressive systems through my work. I want to create stories that empower and spotlight the marginalized. I want people who are often not in the media that we’ve been presented to be able to see themselves. I recognize that comics and media are not the end of the line for social change but I think that they can certainly be a step. My thesis for my M.F.A. was about Superman and the cultural and social relevance of that archetype. To that point, I think about the conception of that character during the Great Depression and how on comic pages he was combatting social inequality and political corruption. Within the Superman Radio Show he challenged the Klan and exposed fraudulent practices within that group, delegitimizing it. That’s the power of media, of comics. I believe that there is no such thing as an apolitical work and with that I intend to be meaningful with what my comics say and I can hope to bring about some social change with it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hypercomicsuniverse.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/khalidj16/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khalid-johnson-505746129
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhalidJohnson11