THE ADVENTURES OF LION MAN brings one of America's first Black superheroes back to life! From the minds of Eisner Award winners John Jennings and Damian Duffy, Bill Campbell, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, and Eisner Award nominated artist, David Brame.
AND ROSARIUM PUBLISHING HAS BROUGHT ONE OF AMERICA'S FIRST BACK TO LIFE
LION MAN!!!
Lion Man by David Brame
In 1947, African-American writer, Orrin C. Evans, along with an all-Black creative team debuted the groundbreaking comics anthology, All-Negro Comics, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, when the paper manufacturer discovered that it was a Black project, he refused to sell the book. All-Negro Comics soon went out of print and few copies have survived. A couple years ago, Chris Robinson released a hardcover 75th anniversary edition of the anthology. This year, Rosarium Publishing has decided to bring one of its heroes, Lion Man, a United Nations scientists tasked to protect the uranium in Magic Mountain on Africa's Gold Coast, back to life.
Two-time Eisner Award winner, John Jennings (The Blacker the Ink, Octavia Butler's Kindred), Bill Campbell (The Day the Klan Came to Town), and up-and-coming Zimbabwean author, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (Drinking from Graveyard Wells), come together with Eisner Award-nominated artist, David Brame, come together to give you three new, remixed, reimagined tales of this legendary Black comics hero with "The Tower," "A Plague on the Nation," and "The Lion Outside."
Also joining the party is Eisner Award winning author, Damian Duffy, with a fresh take on "the Mystery Woman of the Jungle" ... Fantomah!!! With the ability to fly, levitate and transform objects, and mutate people into other forms, Fantomah has been described by Roy Thomas and Kurt Mitchell as "[s]imultaneously grotesque and goofy, horrific and hilarious, the strip truly defies description" Damian and David certainly had fun with this one.
The underlying theme of this entire project is "The past is our playground." Though the centuries of America media has not been too kind to us, we wanted you to see one of the alternative playgrounds that had remained buried for years. So, we've included the original Lion Man comic in this trade paperback. Be a witness to what started it all. We hope this helps repay the debt we owe to Orrin C. Evans and all the other Black pioneers who tried to create a different path.
The Lion Outside Words by John Jennings Art by David Brame
The Lion Outside features an adventure with a version of Lion Man and his sidekick, Bubba, who are tasked with guarding the portal to the dreaming city of Leonopolis. Blut Sangro makes a pact with the evil god Apep to take over this sacred place and exploit its technology. Lion Man must defend this gate or all is lost!
A Plague on the Nation Words by Bill Campbell and Yvette Lisa Ndlovu Art by David Brame Colors by Alexandria Batchelor and John Jennings
The small, west African nation of Xare is currently plagued by pandemic, a raging rebellion, and a doddering old dictator, all being manipulated by the nefarious Dr. Blut Sangre. Secret agent Lion Man of the NDGI (Nkruma-Dubois-Garvey Institute) must depend on his skills, wiles, and the determined Dr. Promise Moyo to save the day and the nation.
The Tower Words by John Jennings Art by David Brame
Scientist Micheal Orrin must use his amazing technology to travel into the Dreamlands to find not only a group of lost children but also himself. In dreams, he is Lion Man, protector of sleepers and dreamers. He must brave the perils of The Tower to face his fears and defeat his mortal enemy; the great usurper Blut Sangro.
Fantomah: Squared Circle Words by Damian Duffy Art by David Brame
Fantomah is the tale of a young Black woman wrestler whose talents attract an audience of a different sort. Join our high-flying heroine as she leaps from the top rope onto evil and puts a coven of villainous vampires in a chokehold of justice!
While working on this project, we all discovered just how fun it is to play with and reinterpret some of these public domain characters. So, we invited some friends to put their own twists on these old tales and will be including their pin-ups in the trade paperback!
ARTISTS INCLUDE: Christa Cassano, Javier Cruz Winnick, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tim Fielder, Joel Christian Gill. Ashley Guillory, Jannie Ho, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Patrick Lay, Gigi Murakami, Jamie Noguchi, Olu Oke, Ben Passmore, Nate Powell, Jason Reeves, Stacey Robinson, Fabrice Sapolsky, Jocelyn Strong, and Anthony Summey.
Jamie Noguchi -- Iron Lady
Ashley Guillory -- Ace Harlem
Gigi Murakami -- Madame Satan
Tim Fielder -- Space Hawk
John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, two-time Eisner Award winner, and all-around champion of Black culture.
As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. His research interests include the visual culture of Hip Hop, Afrofuturism and politics, Visual Literacy, Horror, and the EthnoGothic, and Speculative Design and its applications to visual rhetoric.
Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers), artist/author of Blue Hand Mojo, co-creator behind the Box of Bones series, writer of After the Rain, the artist on Octavia Butler's Kindred and Parable of the Sower, and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University.
Damian Duffy
Damian Duffy is a cartoonist, scholar, writer, curator, lecturer, teacher, and a Glyph Comics, Eisner Comics, Bram Stoker, and Hugo Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novelist. He holds a MS and PhD in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches courses on computers & culture, and social media & global change.
His many publications range from academic essays (in comics form) on new media & learning, to art books about underrepresentation in comics culture, to editorial comics, to a graphic novel adaptation of Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, with his J2D2 Arts counterpart John Jennings. Kindred: A graphic novel adaptation (Abrams ComicArts) was awarded the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel, and the 2018 Eisner Comics Award for Best Adaptation From Another Medium. Their follow-up, Parable of the Sower: A graphic novel adaptation (Abrams ComicArts) won the 2021 Ignyte Award for Best Comics Team, and the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic.
The co-editor of the Black Comix Returns art book from the Magnetic Collection at Lion Forge Comics, Damian has given talks and lead workshops about comics, art, and education internationally.
Bill Campbell
Bill Campbell is the author of Sunshine Patriots, Koontown Killing Kaper, Baaaad Muthaz, The Day the Klan Came to Town, and Refuge. Along with Edward Austin Hall, he co-edited the groundbreaking anthology, Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond. He also co-edited Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany with Nisi Shawl, Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction and Fantasy with Francesco Verso, and APB: Artists against Police Brutality with Jason Rodriguez and John Jennings. Campbell lives in Washington, DC, where he spends his time with his family and helms Rosarium Publishing.
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean sarungano. Her debut short story collection Drinking from Graveyard Wells (University Press of Kentucky) was selected for the 2021 UPK New Poetry & Prose Series, and her novel manuscript-in-progress was selected by George RR Martin for the Worldbuilder Scholarship. She earned her BA at Cornell University and her MFA at UMass Amherst. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Tin House Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers Workshop, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She is the Newhouse Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Wellesley College and has taught at UMass Amherst, Clarion West online, and the Juniper Institute for Young Writers. She is the co-founder of the Voodoonauts Summer Fellowship for Black SFF writers. Her work has been anthologized in the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2021 and the NAACP award-nominated Africa Risen (Tor). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Columbia Journal, F&SF, Tor.com, Lightspeed, FANTASY Magazine, and Fiyah Literary Magazine for Black Speculative Fiction. She is currently at work on a novel.
David Brame
David Brame is originally from Charleston, SC, and now a full time resident of Cohoe. David says, "I am an afro-surrealist, educator, comic creator, and illustrator... dedicated to equity and equality in the arts.” His current work includes After the Rain, Baaaad Muthaz, Dusty Funk, and collaboration on Wildmen of Denali and Wintermoot: Fresh Pleistocene comics
The Adventures of Lion Man is Rosarium Publishing's eighth crowdfunding campaign and our first through BackerKit. The graphic novel is near completion and almost ready to go to the printer. The only problems that we can foresee are the occasional errors that may occur with the postal service (mistaken or misspelled addresses or people moving), which can be easily remedied.
The Adventures of Lion Man has already been drawn and lettered. It is in final edits and will be ready for the printers by the end of the campaign. When exactly the book will be printed will be dependent upon the printer's schedule. However, we will be keeping you fully updated on the process. We fully expect to receive the books and have them out to you before summer.
Estimates for the costs for mailing a single book are as follows:
If you add-on additional physical copies of this book or any others, your shipping costs will most likely increase. These are our best estimates only. Shipping will be calculated and collected after the campaign through the Pledge Manager.
“Somebody should do something about the lack of diversity in publishing.”
“...”
“I guess that somebody might be me.”
With that thought, Rosarium Publishing was born. Established in 2013, Rosarium Publishing is a small, independent house, publishing comics and speculative fiction focused on Brown people with an international scope. Starting with the groundbreaking Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, Rosarium has been steadfastly “Introducing the World to Itself.”
From horror (Box of Bones) to humor (American Candide), from protest (APB: Artists against Police Brutality) to celebration (Gender Studies), Rosarium publishesa wide array of works from a wide range of places: from Uganda to Italy and Sri Lanka, from Mexico to South Africa and now the Czech Republic!
