A few years back, during Obama's candidacy, I floated the idea of creating a self-consciously liberal super hero. I teach superhero comics for a living, and my dissertation and subsequent work drew me away from the project, but with DKos's new interest in getting comics onto the front page, I am prompted to dust the concept off and show it around to see if there is interest.
I'm a writer, not an artist, and that means this comic needs to be collaborative. If you're interested in comics and in the way comics intersect with liberal politics, and especially if you are an artist who is interested in superhero comics, this project might interest you.
A bit of background on where I am coming from. I have been a DKos reader for almost ten years now, but have never been more than a sporadic poster. Because I have so much respect for the DKos community, I have always been a bit intimidated about posting here. But the new site's format seems to have relaxed the requirements for posting a diary.
There's only one topic I feel more qualified to blog about here, and that's superhero comics. A couple of years ago I completed my Ph.D. in English at the University of California Riverside and my dissertation was on superhero comics and how they interact with Medieval and Renaissance literature. Finishing that monster is the main thing that pulled me away from the Americana project in the first place.
But I never felt she was not needed. Indeed, in the first months of Obama's presidency, it seemed increasingly clear that if we wanted liberal change we were going to have to hold his feet to the fire, and there was still plenty to do in the name of "more and better Democrats." Recently, Kos has brought comic artists to the front page, and I love this move. It's great to see Tom Tomorrow, and now a broader cast, on our front pages.
All of this has led me to bring the Americana concept back to the public eye here on DKos. You can read the pitch for the character here. Although no work has been done on Americana in two years, I did begin writing her first script and I got some initial concept art from a pair of talented artists. This is David Acosta's beautiful piece.
Are you an artist who is interested in superheroes and looking for a way to interact with the liberal community? Perhaps you're just a comics fan and you'd like to give me your two cents. That's awesome. I'd love to hear it. To make that easier, I have posted a number of documents which encapsulate Americana's status so far, and show you where she is coming from.
* Here's the Pitch in PDF form.
* Here's David's sketch.
* Another artist made a stab at Americana here.
* This is the Character Bible, a work in progress.
* The first four pages of scriptare here. Written originally for David Acosta.
* And this is the essay that started it all, "Michael Moore in Tights", by a wonderful scholar and friend, Matt Pustz
I hope I've gotten your interest. Thanks for reading.