This Is How It Begins

Kerry James Marshall, widely considered one of America's greatest living painters and an inspired chronicler of the African-American experience, has sought to diversify the art-historical canon. In the late 1990s, he began working on a series of comics in response to the absence of authentic Black characters and authors in the mainstream. Marshall's comic offers an alternative reality focused on the main character, Rythm Mastr, his young protégé, Farrell, and computer whiz, Stasha - superheroes whose powers derive from the seven gods of the Yoruba pantheon. The characters debate history, philosophy, and politics in vernacular Black English, using the graphic novel medium to create an empowering, utopian blend of science fiction and Afrofuturism. This volume is the most comprehensive look at the series, its genesis, and its evolution.