Alternative Press Expo, Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA.
Ajuan Mance
Category Archives: Alternative Press Expo
1001 Black Men #803
Why can’t the brothers at the comic book and zine conventions get a little media love? We’ve got the NFL Network, the NBA Network, the Summer Olympics, Baseball Season, the evening news, and reality television shows. But where’s the Black dungeon masters network? If we have the Summer Olympics, then why not the Black cosplayers Olympics? Baseball season? How about comic book convention season? And if you think reality shows like Cops and Love and Hip Hop are entertaining, then you’ll love the drama that unfolds among the hardcore fans who camp out all night at Comic-Con, just to get into Big Bang Theory panel.
Until programming like this becomes a little more commonplace, I hope these portraits from the 2014 comic convention season will help fill the gap.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #802
I’m a little backlogged on drawings, and this represents my continuing effort to catch up. I still have another drawing or two from October’s Alternative Press Expo, but I have also continued to create current drawings, most of which I’ve already posted here.
This guy caught my attention because of his facial symmetry, his amazing cheekbones, his impressively full and well-groomed beard, and his unusual height and muscularity. This Alternative Press Expo shopper was, from the looks of the items in his hands, really interested in indie super hero zines and comics. He must have had about 20 different publications in his clear plastic backpack.
The aspect of nerd culture that I love most is its contradiction, and this guy was a perfect example. He had the body of an athlete and, in fact, he did play Division III football in college; but he had the passions of a geek, the focus of a nerd, and (truth be told) the social awkwardness of a total dork.
Movies like Revenge of the Nerds, aside, nerd/geek/dork culture doesn’t have a single specific look. It’s more a feeling that’s mapped out in the subtleties of body movement, facial express, and the places where we gather. Those of us who are real, true nerds/geeks/dorks can recognize our brethren and sistren when we see them. Outsiders are distracted by things like beauty, fashion, athleticism, and physical size. True insiders know that, just as nerdiness and geekiness and dorkiness have no color, they also have no sexual orientation, no gender, no body type, and no single style or fashion aesthetic. We are everywhere, and we do everything. Nerds, geeks, and dorks cannot be placed in a box. We are bigger, broader, and more diverse than our collective stereotypes. We are everything you’d expect we are and nothing you could imagine. (But almost all of us love Star Trek, so that stereotype is kind of correct.)
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #801
There are many ways of wearing dreadlocks. This brother prefers the free and easy, low-maintenance way. Hi locks are each a different thickness, and they’re fuzzy at the roots; but the effect is fiercely, fabulously, and unapologetically Black.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #794
Everybody would say “of course all lives matter”. Our philosophical, religious and moral sensibilities would all say that, but in fact, many people don’t matter. When we say “black lives matter”, it’s a hashtag. It’s a movement. Die-ins are happening all over the country, protest movements around that phrase “black lives matter” because young black men haven’t mattered in the country and the criminal justice system has treated them very differently than my young white sons.
–“Jim Wallis: ‘Ferguson is a parable about how black men are treated’“, an interview by Alec Hogg
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Posted by Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #793
Unfortunately, the patterns that we’ve been seeing recently are consistent: The police don’t show as much care when they are handling incidents that involve young black men and women, and so they do shoot and kill … And then for whatever reason, juries and prosecutor’s offices are much less likely to indict or convict.
–Professor Delores Jones-Brown, Director of the Center on Race, Crime, and Statistics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and a former assistant prosecutor in Monmouth County, New Jersey, from “Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?” by Jaeah Lee
Posted by Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #792
[Y]ou know what they had in their minds that made them act out and beat a black suspect unwarrentedly? They had fear. They were afraid of black men. I know a lot of white cops who have told me. And I interviewed over 900 police officers in 18 months and they started talking to me. It was almost like a therapy session for them.
They would say things like, “Ms. Rice I’m scared of black men. Black men terrify me. I’m really scared of them. Ms. Rice, you know black men who come out of prison, they’ve got great hulk strength and I’m afraid they’re going to kill me. Ms. Rice, can you teach me how not to be afraid of black men.” I mean these [are] cops who are 6’4″. You know, the cop in Ferguson was 6’4″ talking about he was terrified. But when cops are scared, they kill and they do things that don’t make sense to you and me.
–Interview with Constance Rice, NPR
Posted by Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #791
[I]f we keep killing Black men, if we keep placing targets on their backs, how will young Black boys begin to see themselves other than disposable?
–Eternity E. Martis, “What the Michael Brown Case Tells Us About Women, Fear, and Black Males“
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Posted by Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #790
As a nation we seem to have very short memories. Fear of the black man just didn’t start overnight, and it didn’t just happen during the course of our lifetime; like any singularity it has to have a beginning. Its origin has been embedded in this nation’s consciousness since the Nat Turner revolt; a pathological fear that the oppressed will one day rise up and inflict vengeance upon the oppressor.
–M. Gibson, “Fear Black Men (Oscar Grant Open Thread)“
1001 Black Men #726
I was introduced to this young man at last year’s Alternative Press Expo. He was strolling by my table with Tofu a gifted and wonderfully down-to-earth mixed-media artist working out of the Bay Area. The man in this picture had a camera around his neck, and I recall asking him whether or not he was a photographer. His answer, if memory serves, was unclear. This, in my estimation, probably means he is a photographer, but that he is modest about his talents.
I hope to run into him at the coming year’s APE, to learn more about his involvement in the arts and especially his relationship to photography.
Ajuan Mance