THE PENULTIMATE CHAPTER BEGINS OCTOBER 31st!

Welcome to the NINTH volume and TENTH anniversary of the Cypher!

4 Pages 16 Bars: A Visual Mixtape began in 2013 as an art installation that ran for four months at Chicago institution The Silver Room. The event celebrated the cultural diversity of the independent comic book scene… And, was a stone groove, baby.

In 2015, the first volume of the 4 Pages 16 Bars: A Visual Mixtape anthology series hit the stands. They said it couldn’t be done, but eight volumes later, 4 Pages 16 Bars has become the longest-running anthology series celebrating independent works from creators of color!

2023 is also the 50^th anniversary of Hip Hop and this volume, ’23 Til Infinity, not only celebrates the resiliency of the culture, but also reflects the endurance of the Black Comix movement.

So, peep game, and let’s welcome the people who decided to grab the mic…

COMICS

Troy Jeffrey-Allen tells the tale of your favorite MC’s favorite MC, MF DOOM, in ALL CAPS edited by the First Lady of Black Comix, Maia “Crown” Williams!

Colleen Douglas provides a tale of spiritual horror with the atmospheric Silk Cotton!

Chuck Cox brings the high-fantasy with The Band of the Black Fist!

Ramel Hill makes an appearance with the family-friendly Pinkwing and the Prime Controller!

And, Jiba Molei Anderson comes with Paid In Full, the crime drama based on the classic track by the immortal Eric B. and Rakim!

ARTICLES

Legendary publisher Joe Illidge (Milestone Media, DC Comics, Heavy Metal, Lion Forge) reminds us why Luke Cage is a revolutionary, and necessary, portrayal of Black heroism in Real Life Proves Why Luke Cage Endures!

Fellow Blaxis member Marcus H. Roberts (Second Sight Publishing) shines a light on all things that go bump in the night with his essay Dark Legacy: Black Characters, Comics, and Creators in Horror!

And, the architect of the Blaxis, Jiba Molei Anderson pops up again breaking down the union of Hip hop and Comics with The Other Element!

GALLERIES

4 Pages 16 Bars has been blessed with the Afro Mech stylings of Christopher Taylor as ’23 Til Infinity’s cover artist!

From Canada, we are more than amped to have Beddo bless us with his Hip Hop/Marvel Comics’ cover mash-ups!

And, yes! The Father of the Black Age of Comics, Turtel Onli, has decided to pick up the mic and show us young thundercats how it’s done!

So come on and pop a bottle for the Visual MCs and Literary DJs that continue to move the needle. 4 Pages 16 Bars: A Visual Mixtape a celebration of where the true diversity in the comic book industry resides. It is a living historical document, a sampler for potential fans to enjoy these intellectual properties, a showcase for existing & upcoming talent, and a source guide for those fans to purchase these books.

 Sign up now to be notified when the Cypher begins… Let’s go!

4 Pages 16 Bars Vol. 09 Pre-Launch page

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY… FOR THE RIGHT PERSON…

Professor Ellen Wetmore

“In the 1980’s, from 7th to 12th grade, I went to an art magnet school, entry by portfolio only, with a student population of mixed races and cultures that reflected our community in Saginaw, Michigan. When I went to my BFA program in 1990 at the University of Michigan, my freshman class featured exactly two Brown students and one Brown professor.”

“Where did everyone else go?”

It was this personal observation that would lead Ellen Wetmore, Professor and Department Chair of College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Massachusetts – Lowell, to create her first graphic novel Dante: A Divine Comedy.

Dante: A Divine Comedy follows Dante Alighieri, an African American English professor, through an arcane faculty job interview at a predominately white institution. From the customs line at Logan airport to a meeting in the Ninth Ring of Hell, Dante has to figure out how to survive at Everwhite, and the surrounding Commonwealth, without the privilege of being white.

Dante: A Divine Comedy

“Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy is a central structure for this book,” Wetmore explains. “Alighieri’s work was made while he was a war refugee from his native city. This work first struck me as a litany of revenge against social and political rivals from a creative, if impotent artist.”

“As the American political and social scene heated up, I returned to these creative depictions of anger as imagery for my own growing anger,” Wetmore continues.

“Many of my 21st century visual fantasies of hell come from Dante, Virgil, and Bosch. Satan eating a faculty member is based on the Satan at San Pietro Cathedral in Bologna, Italy, by Giovanni da Modena. My first funding request for this project was rejected as depicting something too dire, too horrific. It was an image from the Dante’s Inferno.”

Page from Dante: A Divine Comedy

Through the development of the project, Wetmore had to face some hard truths when dealing with subjects of race and class within the graphic novel.

“I had to face my whiteness to understand more about what I’ve done to reinforce the violence we Whites use to preserve for ourselves the golden tickets of professional tenured teaching jobs,” Wetmore opines. “This is a book for younger me and for my white colleagues. My black colleagues and students ‘have been black a long time’. They don’t need this book. This is a bird watching guide of the racisms we perform. The faculty behaviors in this book are based on personal observations, especially of myself.”

Page from Dante: A Divine Comedy

Despite this, Dante: A Divine Comedy is more humorous surrealistic satire than horror story. Wetmore was inspired by works such as Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You, Donald Glover’s Atlanta series and Jordan Peele’s Get Out in the development of her tale.

“Comedy is important to me because it speaks truth to power,” Wetmore states. “Black comedians whose work may be influential here, more or less in order of my awareness of them, are Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes, Dave Chappelle, Moms Mabley, Katt Williams, DL Hughley, and Aries Spears. All of these comedians have discussed institutional violence and police violence decades before whites could see it.”

Page from Dante: A Divine Comedy

Dante: A Divine Comedy is published by Griot Enterprises and available now on Amazon. Visit the Griot Enterprises website for more information.

www.griotenterprises.com