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I'm not entirely certain how this comic found its way into my collection. Every now and again I find stacks of FCBD comics in our free lending libraries around Calgary. I usually take one or two, and I think that must be the origin of this piece.
Today's featured creator is cover and interior artist Alitha Martinez, one of the few Black women I could find represented in my collection. I read Jada Pinkett's Menace for my last look at Black creators, and I'm sure there must be more Black women in the industry, but the sad fact of the matter is that, as with most things in Western society, there is a systemic bias against POC, and Black women often feel the brunt of their dually-oppressed existence.
The Barbie stories in this comic are parts of larger graphic novels from Papercutz (who I just found out is an imprint of NBM, a really great publisher of European comics and of excellent erotica). What I do like about the comic is that it eschews the traditional Barbie look for something a little more relatable to the people who are going to be reading the comic. The first story, the one illustrated by Ms. Martinez, also features a prominent Black character as Barbie's more pragmatic foil. Of late, I wonder who it is that decides on the skin colours of characters in comics. I wondered about this a few days back with The Atom special, and the fact that literally every character, foreground, background, or otherwise, was white in a comic illustrated by a Black man. Is it the writer who decides? Or is the character description relatively vague and the artist decides? Or there's no guide, so the colorist decides? I have to believe that with newer comics like this Barbie one, there is a concerted effort to include diverse representation. The lack of it in older comics is simply a very blatant example of the racism that permeates not only comics, but culture.
Ms. Martinez's career in comics is relatively brief, compared with some of the other creators I've looked at, but she's made a mark in some really important comics, some of which I own and had no idea she was involved with. From art assists on the Christopher Priest-helmed Black Panther to work on the new(ish) line of Archie comics, she appears to be climbing through the ranks quite agilely, a feat we should be thoroughly impressed with given the oppressions with which she has likely had to deal. One of my favourite pieces of her work is this cover for Betty and Veronica #264. Just beautiful.
More to follow.
Further Reading and Related Posts
I've only read one issue of the Priest Black Panther for the project, and here it is, with Ms. Martinez's art on the backgrounds.
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