#  Video: Arts and the Moral Imagination: Comics 

 





May 12, 2025

 

 

     ![A poster featuring a page split up like a comic with images of different book covers from the various speakers.](/sites/g/files/omnuum8216/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/2025-05/Arts%20and%20the%20Moral%20Imagination%20Comics-update.png?h=e3c5b0f3&itok=ozLNXacA) 

 



 

Popular Culture is the space where shared civic visions are imagined and enacted. Using comics as a case study, this panel looked at how popular culture has shaped equitable futures, worked around censorship, and continues to provide space for moral imagination. Speakers referenced other complementary media and engaged with their experiences with their crafts.

Featuring:

- Alan Jenkins, Professor of Practice, Harvard Law School
- Christopher Robichaud, Senior Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Director of Pedagogical Innovation at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
- Angélique Roché, Arts and Popular Culture Fellow, Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School

Moderated by Assistant Dean of Religion and Public Life, Hussein Rashid

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Arts and the Moral Imagination-- Comics. April 2, 2025. I'm Hussein Rashid, Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral land of the Massachusett, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. We pay respect to the people of the Massachusett tribe, past and present, and honor the land itself, which remains sacred to the Massachusett people.

Welcome, and thank you for being here. Religion and Public Life is dedicated to the service of just world at peace. We work with a dynamic method that has religious literacy at its core, and brings in critical analysis to understand and challenge systems of inequity. Our focus on just peacebuilding recognizes that a peace without justice is not sustainable. The goal of RPL programming is to bring analysis from experts, including academics and practitioners and those living in inequitable systems, and offer some ways forward to build a more just world.

The program is currently led by interim director Dean David Holland and previously by Diane Elmore, former associate Dean for RPL. This series, like all our programming, would not be possible without the support of our team, including Ream, Hillary, Anna, Natalie, Tammy, Hisham, Rachelle, and Elise. Perlite tours of current student who's also helping in various capacities with this series. My thanks to them all.

Professor and advocate John Paul Lederach defines the moral imagination as, "the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenges of the real world, yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist." This idea of the moral imagination is core to how RPL approaches its critical work. What is it that we can give birth to that does not yet exist, while grounding ourselves in the reality of the real world? In response to that, this year RPL crafted a three part series looking at moral imagination in the arts.

These conversations engage elements of RPL's approach to just peace building by exposing power structures, understanding systems of violence, engaging relationally, being creative, and exploring the role of religion. The first event in the series was a modern dance interpretation of the 12th century Persian poem called "Conference of the Birds," where we partner with local dance theater company ANIKAYA. The second featured visual artist, John Halaka, linking Indigenous sovereignty in the US with Indigenous sovereignty in Palestine.

This event is our third in the series and looks at comics and the moral imagination. Popular culture is a space where shared civic visions are imagined and enacted. Using comics as a case study, this panel looks at how popular culture has shaped equitable futures, worked around censorship and continues to provide space for moral imagination. Hopefully, over the course of our conversation, we will also be making reference to complementary media to engage with our speakers experiences with their crafts. Today we have three amazing speakers Alan Jenkins, Angelique Roché, and Chris Robichaux.

Alan Jenkins is a Professor of practice at Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses on race and law, communication, and Supreme Court jurisprudence. Before joining the law school faculty, he was president and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication and culture lab. Jenkins is co-author with Gan Golan of One Six, The Graphic Novel, which explores the question what if January 6, 2021 insurrection had succeeded? His prior positions have included assistant to the Solicitor General at the US Department of Justice, director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, and associate counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Angelique Roché, Esq. LL.M is a lawyer, journalist, producer, author, and professional host from New Orleans, Louisiana, a multi-hyphenate storyteller, who works and sits at the crossroads of history, current events, and its impact on pop culture. She is the creator of Marvel Voices and the former host and producer of the podcast of the same name. In addition to hosting, Angelique has been the consulting editor and contributor to the Marvel Voices anthology series since 2020.

She made her Marvel writing debut as the lead writer and plotter of storm life dream number one, which came out early this year, actually. She's also the co-author of Marvel Entertainment and Simon Schuster's Gallery Books, My Superhero is Black, due out later this year. Her first graphic novel, Trinity City Number One, debuted in 2023 as a partnership with two non-profit organizations, YaYa Arts and the Black and Blue Project in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is part of Harvard Divinity Schools Religion and Public Life Program as the arts and popular culture fellow.

Christopher Robichaux is senior lecturer in ethics and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He received his doctorate in philosophy from MIT. Dr. Robichaux is dedicated to bringing philosophical ideas to wide audiences, and pursues this goal by looking at issues in moral and political philosophy that arise in pop culture stories, especially superhero narratives.

Some of his articles can be found in the volumes Superheroes and Philosophy, Supervillains and Philosophy, Batman and Philosophy, Iron Man and Philosophy, X-Men and Philosophy, which is a great anthology, as an X-Men fan, I will tell you I loved it cover to cover, Spider-Man and Philosophy, Superman and Philosophy, Watchmen and Philosophy and The Avengers and Philosophy. Dr. Robichaux worked with Stan Lee, Michael Uslan, and David Uslan on the Smithsonian course, the Rise of Superheroes, in addition to teaching his own Smithsonian course, Power and Responsibility-- Doing Philosophy with Superheroes.

Thank you all for being here and taking the time to be with us. As I mentioned, I am a huge fan of the X-Men. I grew up reading them in my twin age to my teenage years, and maybe a little bit later, and definitely back to it again much later in life. And for me, the X-Men are really formative because they represent an outsider group. The tagline in a world that hates and fears them, they still manage to do good. They still manage to find a moral compass. They still manage to be superheroes. And I always found that profoundly moving and incredible.

And I think what I want to start with all of you is what is that formative comic experience for you, or that defining comic experience, either from your youth or as people who are engaging in this work now more, perhaps more critically? What are those defining comments? And I'll start. Angelique, I'm going to start with you because you're just immediately to my right on the screen.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: Ah, the luck of the draw. Wow, there's so many. For comic book fans and for people who love stories, I know there are numerous touchstones. And please forgive me, the analogies here in Louisiana are terrible today. I am not crying because I am so happy. It's interesting. It always goes back to my love of stories. But Christmas was always a big deal in our family.

And one year, for those of us who remember Toys R Us and the Christmas rush. I have all of these presents on Christmas Day and my dad hands me this and I never had one before, but I know now it was a trade of the death of Superman. And I open it up. And I'm 9, 10-years-old. And at that point, he didn't have to go to a comic book shop because they carried it in Toys R Us as something special because of Christmas.

And I remember my dad giving me the comic book, and he said to me, I don't really know what it is. I haven't read comics in a very long time. But he told me that he could not afford comics, and so he would go into Woolworth in New Orleans, and he would read until they realized that he was African-American and they kicked him out. And so he said, this is something special for you. And it was also the first time I read Louise Simonson's work, which told me immediately that women belonged in comics because they were writing them.

And so that mixed with getting introduced, obviously, to the X-Men, like a lot of us in the animated series, my brother at the time introduced me to his crate, but it always went back to that trade, which I know you're wondering, do I still have it? And yes, I do still have that trade. It has gone through a lot.

But it is still in my collection and is something very special to me because I realized very early on the power of that story can be passed on from generation to generation because it meant something special to a parent or an uncle or a grandparent or a friend. And so many of us heard that story is like, oh, I learned of comics from a friend who said, you've got to read this. And so yeah, that's fine.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Alan, Chris, please.

ALAN JENKINS: Well, I can jump in. So my origin story with comics is I was in the Bahamas with my grandmother. That's where she was from. And after a few weeks was bored, even in the beautiful Bahamas. And so started consuming every comic book that was available there, which were all months to years old. But amongst the ones I picked up first were X-Men, to be sure, Spider-Man, The Hulk, all characters who were at times hated and feared.

And it gradually soaked in that because I was also a TV kid. And the superheroes you saw on TV were all heroes all the time, and everyone loved them. And in the comics, in Marvel Comics, there was a real contrast and a recognition. And Hussein, to your point, they were often hated and feared, but they still chose to be heroes, the Hulk most of the time. But Spider-Man and the X-Men virtually all of the time. And that very much reflected my experience and lived reality.

My dad was one of the first Black Marines, US Marines, in World War II, Montford Point Marine, which was in a segregated service in which all of his commanding officers were Southern white officers because they were believed in a segregated military to be better able to control the Negroes. And yet he and his fellow Marines chose to be heroes over and over again, even though they were hated and feared.

And so I can't claim that at age nine I put all of those things together. It's definitely happened since. But I had this sense that these were characters, although they were white and green and blue, that embodied a lot of my cultural experience. And I'll just throw in Daredevil. Great new series on Disney Plus. Daredevil reborn, who is a blind attorney I've constantly underestimated, but also a superhero. And that also spoke to me. I still have Daredevil number one in my attic.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Wow, that's amazing. For those who don't know, that's a retirement fund right there.

ALAN JENKINS: Yeah, it's a 5.5 grade at best. So maybe contribute to the kid's college. Yeah.

CHRISTOPHER ROBICHAUX: Alan, I'm just processing that. That's I'm very envious of Daredevil number one safely in your attic. For me, it was Spidey. I could call him Spider-Man, but I feel I've developed a relationship with him. It's Spidey. I was fed comic books by my parents who were just excited to have me reading anything at the time when I was starting to learn how to read. And so if it was reading with pictures, then so be it.

I was an only child. My mother was constantly looking around to her friends who had older kids, what they were reading. And so they would just pass along to my mother's stacks of comics. And I remember one of my first experiences, I'm dating myself here. One of the first experiences was reading some old Spider-Man comic books, and I just early on stumbled upon amazing Spider-Man What is it? 121-122. It's the death of Gwen Stacy.

And I remember this left a-- because in my head already I'd oriented myself much as Alan just described in terms of heroes. I'm reading this comic, I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. She's dead. Women like that. You just like you blew it Spider-Man. You like you tried to save Gwen Stacy, and she's dead. When does that happen? And I just tumbled into Spider-Man's world. And I loved reading these comics of this time Spider-Man was in college and half the time, he's screwing up. Half the time he's not making payments.

He's lashing out at his friends. Really ridiculous things happen to him. He's on a yacht one time, and he's halfway through fighting and he runs out of web-fluid and he's like, got to run home to get web-fluid. And when he's home getting web-fluid, Harry Osborn finds out that he's Spider-Man. And he's like, oh, there's this whole thing that happens, as we know, with the Osborn's. My point was this introduced a world to me where I was like, superheroes aren't larger than life.

Batman and Superman for me, I mean, they were in the background. And I loved him. I loved Batman. But here was someone I could relate to. He's a geek. He's trying to make ends meet. He's trying to impress the girls. He's trying to be one with the guys. He's trying to make-- and he's just like he's a screw up at the same time of trying to also be a superhero. And that I just tumbled into that story and have never left superhero stories ever, ever since.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Oh, thank you, three, for sharing those stories up that got personal, really, in ways I'm deeply appreciative of and that trust, but also illuminating what these stories mean. I think, Angelique, you said across generations, that these things have meaning and impact across time. And I think comics are not a new phenomenon. For some people the success of superhero movies on television or on the big screen may have raised consciousness, but these are, at least in the American context, decades old art form that go back.

Some of these are very long running series. And I think what I'd like to ask you is in the length of time you've been involved with comics, or for those of you who have generational connections to comics, how have comics spoken to questions of the reality in which they were being written? I mean, I think people tend to look at these worlds as fantastical. And they are. I mean, I think, Marvel is very well-known for a lot of the characters being placed in actual places in the United States, New York, New Jersey, California, the Great Lakes Avengers.

And then you've got DC, which is Batman, Superman being in more imaginative cities like Metropolis or Gotham, but they're clearly standards for real places. And so they're never absent. The politics of the time they're being written. And I'm talking about the two big houses. I think that's where most of our audience is. But please feel free if they're independent comics or places like image, which comes a little bit later that you want to talk about, feel free to set that background and go for it. But how do you feel comics have been historically dealt with the situation that they were in. And how they created space for conversations that maybe there wasn't space before?

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: Hussein, if you don't mind me jumping in for those because I know you mentioned most folks are at the two big houses, and we were also very specifically all three of us talking about one very narrow lane genre within the medium. So each one of us talked about superhero comics, but for those who may be more familiar or getting more familiar, because it's very easy to look up, comics in and of themselves used to be very controversial.

At the very inception, most comics were romance, westerns, horrors, pulp anthologies like Tales From the Crypt. Literally, Tales From the Crypt came from the comics, for those who may not know. And this is before the superhero was born. So many times folks will even look like the first Black artist at Marvel. And they will look at the superhero comics. But the first Black artist at Marvel was actually a man named Matt Baker, who did amazing romance and Western comics.

And so I think if we even look as far back as that, one of the things that eventually comics were able to-- not necessarily good and bad. So in these comics they are perpetuating a lot of stereotypes. Women are fainting all the time. There's a lot of near blackface in comics. And all of the subjects are women. A lot of very patriarchal things. The silent Native American is birthed through and supported in a lot of these comics.

But I do think that changed eventually. And just looking realistically, once the superhero is born, you do start seeing very big global issues being addressed. And Alan, you actually brought a memory back when you were talking about your dad and you were also talking about comics and you were talking about Daredevil. There's actually a character named William Lincoln, who is a Black soldier who fought in Vietnam, who lost his eyesight. And comes back to the United States and becomes an NYPD officer. And it helps Daredevil investigate crimes.

And being able to see that kind of diversity in a comic at that time was a big deal. Even more on the nose is comics were sold in South Africa, South Africa under apartheid. Originally, Marvel tried to stay out of the discussion, but they created a place called Rudyarda, which is named after Rudyard Kipling, which was a segregated country. In Marvel that looked just like South Africa. And there's a fantastic four episode that issue that literally the thing and Ben and Johnny go and get T'Challa out of jail.

And the last panel is the thing going-- can I do it? Can I do it now? And he rips off the colored sign and steps on it as they're walking out of the country. So I think I don't know if I answered your question, Hussein, but I think for a lot of folks, I also want to say there are a lot of other different types of comics. If you look at things like American Born Asian by Gene Luen Yang.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Sorry to interrupt. American Born Chinese.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: Thank you. I'm thinking about good Asian and American Born Chinese. And I was about to say both of them because I was actually just talking to Pornsak, the author on--

HUSSEIN RASHID: Good Asian,

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: --Good Asian. And there are these other historical works like March and these different other pieces with the comics as well.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Sorry, March is about John Lewis. For those of you who are unaware, it's a three volume set.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: Thank you. It's actually sitting behind me for making sure those who don't know it, know it. But yeah. And Good Trouble, which is where March came from it's still working on books that are in the New York City education system to help educate about history with an extremely diverse crew of artists, writers, and colorists.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you.

ALAN JENKINS: Well, I can go. I hope this is responsive, Hussein, to your question, but what your question brought to mind for me was a series. So when I got back from the Bahamas and my dad saw that I was reading comic books, like Chris, I think he was just glad I was reading something. And he introduced me to a series called Golden Legacy, I happen to have them right here, which was written in the late '60s, early '70s, and was essentially, Black History Month in every issue.

And so some of the people who were covered were the Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass, I think, got a three parter. But some were deeper cuts. So Robert Smalls, for example, a hero of reconstruction, someone whose work I now teach in my class on race and the law. Crispus Attucks, the first martyr of the American Revolution who was killed right here in Boston at the very beginning of the Revolutionary War. And the motivation of the creators there was very evident.

Those stories were not being told in school anywhere, really, in America. And comic books were still a very popular medium. They are today, but they were still wildly popular at that time, due in part to Marvel. And so this was a way of getting stories out and into the hands of people who might not otherwise have access to them, which was really critical. And one other thing I'll mention this was before my time, but some of you are familiar with All-Negro comics.

So there's a Black Dick Tracy character called Ace Harlem. Got to love that. There's Lion-Man precursor, I would argue, to T'Challa, to the Black Panthers. This was 1947. Just quickly, I'll say the foreword to Lion-Man, American-born, college educated Lion Man is a young scientist sent by the United Nations to watch over the fearsome Magic Mountain of the African Gold Coast, Ghana, soon to be Ghana. Within its crater lies the world's largest deposit of uranium, enough to make an atom bomb that could destroy the world.

So the hero of this story is a Black American who returns to his roots. So I think part of your question was about place both conceptually and geographically. And I think those choices. So important to the story that creators were to the goals that creators had for their readers. Obviously, they wanted to entertain. Obviously, they wanted to sell comic books and make some money. And they were also trying to infuse new narratives with audiences.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: And I just want to add to that, Alan, because a lot of those characters are now in the public domain. They are our artists and writers today who are looking at how they can revive those characters, how they can tell new stories because they were so good.

CHRISTOPHER ROBICHAUX: I think, for me, when I think about comic books, wading into the moment saying, which is where I'm hearing some of your question, I think back to some of the classic stories that I remember reading growing up and maybe not even understanding at first. But coming back to and here I'm thinking about the original secret empire run with Steve Englehart's story with Captain America. How do you tell Captain America story after Watergate, after Nixon, and that whole idea of Captain America fighting government corruption?

And I think it's one of the-- don't quote me on the history of this, but this is really where we start to see Captain America separate himself from being the good soldier to standing for an aspirational view of America, recognizing that the American reality is not up to snuff. And that was, I think, a big deal for Captain America, a mainstream Captain America comic book at the time was wrestling with that. I'm thinking of the decades long Green Arrow and Green Lantern going on the road and discussing the politics of the day.

And that wasn't like three or four parter. That was, I think, a decade. That was like the '70s worth of storytelling, trying to reflect superheroes wrestling with the problems. I'm thinking, I mean, I know it's obvious, but it's worth saying, I'm thinking of Alan Moore's Watchmen. It's hard. We love Watchmen now, but it's hard to appreciate that it was situated in the mid '80s when there was a lot of saber rattling between the USSR and the United States.

And I think in part it's Alan Moore's attempt to talk about that moment through superhero lens, as well as to criticize what I've always considered to be a challenge with superhero stories, especially American superhero stories, which is at least in some of the mainstream superheroes, the propagandistic nature of them. And by that, I just mean, there's this confidence in American superheroes that if you're just a good person, you will wield this power responsibly.

And I think Alan Moore looking-- Alan Moore, amongst others, gives us the story where he's like, maybe folks that pursue superhero lifestyle might be really problematic. Maybe they're a little bit closer to Rorschach than they are to Superman. Maybe the Superman character himself is losing it and disengaged. So I've always liked the superhero stories. You can see these moments when they're wrestling with the mood of the times and what's concerning people at the times. Those were some of the ones that stand out for me anyways.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: I would also say, Chris, sorry to hop in again, on the other side of it. And I think this is related to what Alan was talking about with pulling in the diversity because I actually-- that reminded me of the MLK comic book that was the reason why John Lewis learned more in detail about what Martin Luther King Jr. was doing because John Lewis was such a comic book fan. But, Chris, it reminds me of the story of Blue Marvel because on a very different side, Blue Marvel, who had his face covered--

So the story of Blue Marvel, for those who don't know, is a superhero in the Marvel Universe. He gets powers. He's former military. He dealt with a lot of racism. So when he uses his powers for good, he's great until people realize that he's African-American. And so I think it's also this interesting added perspective of Captain America being Captain America.

And then all of the different dialogues that have happened with characters like Sam Wilson, with characters like Rhodey, who was Iron Man for a short amount of time when Tony Stark could not be Iron Man due to needing to go to rehab. These other questions that I think have been particularly suited for comics, which is who can be a superhero? What does a superhero identity look like and who defines that?

HUSSEIN RASHID: I think that's a great segue because what I was hearing in this previous super conversation or a great wrap up, is who belonged? Who gets to be a superhero is actually a reflection of who belongs, who gets to be part of our body politic, because that tells you who then has the privilege or the right to be or the ability to be a superhero. And it's fascinating to me. I'm going to start, Alan, with All-Negro Comics.

I think when you and I first met, we were talking about the Kickstarter that we published. I think you were holding up the softback version of the reprint of All-Negro Comics, which comes with these great contextual essays. So not only is the public domain, but it's now a significant cultural artifact that could otherwise have been lost because it has this impact. It does tell these really rich stories. And then commercially I think the question of race has been navigated in so many interesting ways. And so much more to Marvel because that's my wheelhouse more than DC. But please feel free to bring in others.

But Angelique, you're talking about the thing and the Human Torch going to an analog of South Africa to rescue the Black Panther. And thinking about how race comes in there. But Chris, as you think talking about Captain America, one of the first Captain America stories I remember reading is when he's with Sam Wilson, the Falcon, and they're fighting this intense racial tension in New York. And it turns out that there's a man beaming rays, and Nazi hate rays.

And that's it's a way to say, OK, this ideology is still here, but it absolves people of their responsibility in that. But Captain America is also ridiculously complicated. Steve Rogers, in that he is critiquing the system that he's a part of. He still believes in his ideals. He wants to fight, which I think is admirable. But narratively, we talk about Steve Rogers, but there's Isaiah Washington, the Black Captain America, where they're doing this. He shows up in the movies and the recent movie and in the Falcon and Winter Soldier TV series as well.

But it's a reference to the Tuskegee airmen experiments that were done on these Black men without their knowledge and their experience regarding syphilis. And so you've got these really complicated navigations of race. And this isn't in the past, looking back. I'm reading this during the Crown Heights riots in New York. I'm reading this when Do the Right Thing spikes Do the Right Thing is coming out. It's present and it's palpable. We're not looking at a past a generation ago. We're looking at a past that remains unresolved.

And I think there's real power in that storytelling. And I wonder if there's a thread, a character that you've seen over the years that you feel has been doing justices. And again, for me, it's Captain America and race. I'm always amazed how well Captain America handles race. Not consistently, but enough that it's notable. Is there anything like that leaps out to you, character or storyline? It doesn't have to be about race, but these long-term social issues, these embedded social issues.

ALAN JENKINS: Well, I was waiting for Angelique to bring up Black Panther, but I'll jump in.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: I wasn't going to bring up that. Like that to that there is a long line of that, and it's all yours, Alan.

ALAN JENKINS: Thank you. So I'm not going to do the deep cuts because I'm not assuming that our viewers have read every page. So, and now, I'm talking about the comic book, not the films, although obviously, there's overlap. But the audacity in 1965 to, number one, so to create a Black superhero, to situate him in Africa.

But then, this goes to the moral imagination, right, the theme of our conversation. The idea of a sub-Saharan Black nation that has been free of the slave trade, free of imperialism, free of colonialism that is in control of its own natural resources, and its own genius. That's a remarkable statement.

And so, if that were the only thing that the Black Panther series was doing, to just constantly tell that story, I think, even today, maybe especially today, at a time when you have a president calling half the world, S hole countries, that we'd be telling that we have access to that story. But then of course, in its various runs, I think the Reggie Hudlin run of Black Panther, in which T'Challa is kind of going toe to toe with the Bush administration, the George W. Bush administration, I seem to remember Condoleezza Rice shows up.

The Ta-Nehisi Coates run is, of course, groundbreaking. And now more interesting things of playing with both dealing with some of the general issues that were problematic in some of the past runs dealing with the notion of patriarchy, which has its own problems. I think it's been really, really interesting. Obviously, a series created by white folks, including Stan Lee, at the I think right before the Black Panther Party was created, if I remember correctly.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: \[INAUDIBLE\] year.

ALAN JENKINS: Yeah. And just a remarkable evolution and power. And Black Panther was pretty low profile as a comic book, as a Marvel hero until the film series. So I think, the films, which I love, also did a real service by lifting up comic book content. So I'm going to go with that one.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: I love the way you say that. I love the fact that you shouted out, Ta-Nehisi's run. And I think it's interesting, yes, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created Black Panther. But I have to give a lot of credit-- I think we need to give a lot of credit also to the writers who were writing The Avengers during that time. Although Steve Englehart, not so much.

Steve Englehart has made some very interesting decisions with Black characters, including making Sam Wilson cluck like a chicken, which is why a lot of African-American males in the '70s did not necessarily like Sam Wilson because they were not introduced to his original canon. Because back then, you couldn't just pick up a comic book on digital, and you didn't have massive libraries that you could go to and get old comics.

But I also do want to shout out, yes, those runs dealt with LGBTQ issues because Ta-Nehisi also brought in people like Roxane Gay, Yona Harvey, Alitha Martinez, my friend, Evan, and diversified that entire core. When you have artists who are from Haiti or who are from the Midwest and California and these different places who are also African-American bringing in stories, it really does shape it.

And now, under Eve Ewing, the first Black woman to have the Black Panther mantle, it shifted a little bit. I would say that I would also give credit to Christopher Priest, known as Priest, for his Black Panther run under Marvel Knights because I did bring Black Panther out of the closet.

And then Reggie was actually responsible the BET cartoon and meeting a whole other generation, which I think I want to add to this conversation in that we're talking about comics that these stories start having this multiple impact when people like Nic Stone are writing a three-book YA novel on Shuri, it changes when and how people are exposed to these characters.

Now, my personal one that I wanted to add flipping out is Echo. So Maya Lopez, out of the Daredevil pantheon created mostly under the Marvel Knights ish, is a Indigenous American character who has-- and I say this in the best way possible-- has fumbled into her identity. She started off as half Native American, half Latino.

And then it was never discussed anything else. Was she Puerto Rican? Was she Honduran? Was she Dominican? Was she Cheyenne? Was she Mohawk? None of this was discussed because that's the level of intent. And I say this to say when you're thinking about who created T'Challa. And then you think about Don McGregor taking over T'Challa. And then Graham being able to draw the maps.

The first Asian-American literate Marvel, Janice Chang making these epic splash pages. That ability to bring things in, I think, is also the beauty of what we're talking about in these evolving characters. Who are the artists? Who are the writers? Who are the people bringing their lived experiences in to shaping and building these characters?

And so Echo is one of those characters. Echo has slowly but surely developed. So she's Cheyenne and Mexican. And when you're able to bring in things like the epic writer Rebecca Roanhorse, who brought in a sign language expert.

So for those who don't know, Daredevil is visually impaired. Maya's hearing impaired. But her superpower is a mimic. She can literally mimic anything. She can watch someone's hands. She can read mouths and read lips. And previously in the comic books, it was of conceit that she could read what everybody was saying, unless you were not facing her.

With Rebecca Roanhorse, she brought in an ASL interpreter, and it was the first time in comics we saw Maya Lopez sign. Then we get to journey to Maya Lopez's other side of her family and discover that she's Cheyenne. And we start going into the matriarchal history of her tribe and the power of her mother.

The beautiful thing about that and why I connect that is that Rebecca Roanhorse eventually ends up writing on the Echo series. And so I think when you are talking about characters who have really evolved while she is younger, she was created in 1999, much younger than Black Panther. Because if I were to go there, I'd be talking about Misty knight, which is a much more complicated history.

I think Echo is such a beautiful articulation of how someone can imagine, create a character, and deal with these issues. But as society evolves, as we start becoming more knowledgeable, as we start having more opportunities to tell these stories, the stories get more in depth and involved and more intricate. And the identity, particularly I think of characters of color, of women characters, is able to shine through so much.

And speaking of women characters, and I won't talk about it, I think Carol Danvers is a beautiful example of where she started off as Ms. Marvel and how Kelly Sue DeConnick and all of the amazing women who have written on Captain Marvel have been able to flesh out her story and evolve it.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you. Chris, before you hop in, I just want to clarify. Rebecca Roanhorse wrote both for the comic and the TV series when you said she ended up writing the series. I just want to make clear. That you're talking about the TV series at that point.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: She wrote for Marvel's Voices. Then she had a miniseries for Echo, Phoenix Force, and then she wrote on the TV series Marvel Studios' Echo.

CHRISTOPHER ROBICHAUD: I think I'll just compliment all the nice things that have been said with adding another layer of dimension. And this is the Spider-Man influence on me. I like that we get superheroes who are poor and working class. It really works against the Batman story. And I love that Absolute Batman is now playing with that.

The Absolute Batman Dark Side creates this universe. And Absolute Batman is in a universe where we take away Bruce Wayne's wealth. The Dark Side, thinking that maybe that's going to be enough to take away Batman. It turns out not to be the case. I have to read more about in that series to see if I really love it or not. I'm just sort of playing around with it right now.

But I like I like that Spider-Man Peter Parker, Spider-Man Miles Morales come from working class families. I like that Jessica Jones can barely scrape two pennies together and is trying to do some good detective work just to make ends meet.

I think this also speaks to some folks. I think it's important for a lot of people to say, look, I don't need to be Bruce Wayne to be a superhero. I don't need to have-- I mean, Clark Kent comes from rural portion of the country, but he's got all these powers. It's a hard balance. But I just like these stories where we do see we do see superheroes struggling to get by economically, in addition to all the other ways that we've heard about and see that struggle, something even with powers that is still very real.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thanks, Chris. I want to come back, just as a roundabout way of plugging into the next big theme. But Angelique, you pointed out correctly that we are talking a lot about story right now, story arcs, which is putting a lot of weight on writers. But comics is a mixed medium. It is very artistically visually oriented.

And one of the things the four of us spoke about prior to this webinar was a G.I. Joe comic, which was I believe, written by Larry Hama, involving the figure, the character of Snake Eyes, who never speaks in the comics, at least in the early parts of the comic, he never speaks. And the entire comic is written with no words. And it relies on the artists to convey the story. There's not a word anywhere in there or spoken word anywhere in there. And it's just conveyed by what's happening on the page.

And I'm also thinking, speaking of non-superhero books, Shaun Tan's book The Arrival, about immigration, which also has no words in a recognizable language or in a real language. And how the visual elements of these help tell a story. So, Angelique, you talked about The Death of Superman trade.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, The Death of Superman comic was a visual interpretation of the Pieta, where Superman was the Jesus figure and Lois Lane was Mary, mother of God. And--

CHRISTOPHER ROBICHAUD: It was very subtle, wasn't it, Hussein? It was very--

HUSSEIN RASHID: Yeah, it was as subtle as a hammer to your head.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: Or a LEGO in the foot. Yeah.

HUSSEIN RASHID: LEGO in the foot, exactly. Yeah, no, there was no-- but that you do have these arts. And just as a quick chop, are there any panels or covers that stick with you that are like, oh, yes, this.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: Yes. I know everybody's got like 12 of them. So I will tell you, there are actually two behind me. If you let me adjust myself trying to make myself prettier for the Zooms.

So this right here, it is The Amazing Spider-Man annual number 16, which is the introduction of Monica Rambeau, which for me, is the first Black woman superhero from New Orleans right here. But this is also an absolutely gorgeous cover, hand-painted, like seeing her with her Afro on a cover as the lead of the Avengers is incredible, right?

But I also pair that with something that was very near and dear to me that we're glad we were able to bring into Storm Lifedream. Number one, it's from Lifedeath, where they panel, where Storm is laid out on a bed, exhausted with her Mohawk. And she sleep. And it was just so incredible to me to allow her to be exhausted.

Like, when do we see superheroes sleep? Like the X-Men, we get it. It's a soap opera. They sleep. But normally, until recently, and we're talking about-- this was in the '80s. It's a lot of action. It's not a step back. And at this time, for those who have not read Lifedeath, she had lost her powers. And she was going through an identity crisis and was extremely exhausted. And she was resting.

And that's unfathomable to me that a superhero would get exhausted and need to rest. And I'm like, well, if Storm is tired, I, too, can be tired and take a nap. So that panel for me is very much become a reminder that you rest. But it's a gorgeous panel. It's a gorgeous book. I'm going to stop talking now.

ALAN JENKINS: Well, so minor basic, but they build on Angelique's comments. So one is the classic Spider-Man No More. So it's just the cover image of Spider-Man walking away from the trash can with his mask thrown away. And it's been recreated. And Spider-Man 2, what I would argue was the best, second best Spider-Man of the 10,000 films that have been made.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: You seem very unsure, Alan.

ALAN JENKINS: Yeah, I know, maybe three. Maybe number three. But to your point, Angelique, this idea that it was too much. Being a hero, worrying about his family, not being able to pay his bills. Plus, Doc Ock's trying to kill his Aunt May. It's a lot. And he walks away from it. And then he can't. He has to go back.

And I'm no Spider-Man. But as a recovering civil rights lawyer and as a social justice advocate, especially in times like these, man, I get it. Sometimes, you just like, it's too much. But then you always come back because it's your identity is to seek to uphold certain values. So that's on my list.

And then the other ones even more basic, which is Captain America number one. So Captain America, this is before the US goes into to World War II. Captain America is socking Adolf Hitler on the front cover. I don't think Hitler actually appears in Captain America number one in the interior pages.

But the creators of Captain America, two young Jewish Americans who had family in Europe, who they knew that Hitler was a villain. Their publisher, also a Jewish American who had the courage to choose that as a cover, for sure, to attract attention and money. But they were very prominent people.

Charles Lindbergh, for example, arguing at the time that Hitler was a hero of the story. Even some people, like Sergeant Shriver, as I remember, was arguing for neutrality and that maybe the party, the Nazi party was not so bad at that time. And the offices of Timely Comics that would become Marvel were threatened. There were goons outside. They were American Bund.

They weren't neo-Nazis. They were just Nazis outside of their offices threatening them. Mayor LaGuardia had to intervene. And that was all image. Hitler doesn't appear in the comic book at all. But it was incredibly powerful image who told us who the villain was of this global story. And it was threatening enough that the American Nazi party sent their goons to try to shut it down. So those are my nominees.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: I love that you put that in there, Alan. Because a lot of people don't understand, and I'm not going to get dark. But it's the history of the United States and eugenics. Because there are going to be two different sides and how brave it can be.

Because you also made me remember in-- between you, Chris, Hussein, and Alan, when you were talking about Isaiah, the first chronological Captain America, when you look at issue number one of red, white, and black, this was an opportunity to blend together a little bit of what you're talking about, Alan and Christopher, with the psychology of it all. The artist and the writer chose to base the first part of that book at the World's Fair in 1939 in Queens.

And one of the most notable well known pieces, but also the only one left standing of the Black artists that were showcased was by Augusta Savage. And it takes a prominent spot in the artwork. And they talk specifically about W.E.B. Du Bois speaking that day. And so it also is this other narrative before we even get to the analogy and the allergories of the disease experiment and the Middle Passage and everything else that's in the series, really. If you've not read the series, you should read it. It's amazing how panels, even though they're not our favorite panels, can also speak volumes.

CHRISTOPHER ROBICHAUD: I just have two covers that stand out for me. And they're just indulgent. I'll just share that. They're just indulgent. But one is Amazing Spider-Man number 39, the first John Romita cover. Because this is the end of the Ditko run. And who can draw Spider-Man after Ditko? And I was too young for the Ditko run. But looking back, his Spider-Man is creepy in the best of ways.

But that's the cover to 39 is when we get the new artist, who becomes one of the most famous artists of Spider-Man. It's also where the Green Goblin has revealed that Spider-Man is Peter Parker. So it's where he's carrying him around on his bat glider with Peter Parker sort of in tow. For me. It was such a mind blowing cover when I first saw it.

First of all, the new artist of Spider-Man. Second of all, I was like, oh, my God, his secret identity is out. I'm obsessed with that cover. I have the little toy that reflects that cover. I have several versions of the toy that reflects that cover. To me, it's just one of those great moments.

The other one, and this hasn't come up in the conversation so far. It's a me thing, which is unsurprising given the monster that I have behind me. But I love monster heroes. So I love Swamp Thing, for instance. Swamp Thing is one of my favorite characters.

And the Bernie Wrightson run on drawing Swamp Thing in those early Swamp Thing with Len Wein comic books are just spectacular. There's one, I think it's Swamp Thing number 9, where Swamp Thing sort of emerging out of the swamps. And he's got the Bernie Wrightson musculature. And he's just he's just mammothly monstrous. But Wrightson always manages to capture this sort of nobility in Swamp Thing's gaze, even though he's a muck monster. He's made he's made of muck.

Alec Holland is long gone. Alan Moore eventually decides that Alec Holland is truly long gone. But we get such a foreboding presence with all of Wrightson's drawings of Swamp thing that I absolutely fell in love with them. I don't know if there's anything deeper in those two covers than just my love of them. But they are covers that I have reproductions of. And maybe one day, I'll save up to get actual good copies of the comics themselves.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you all. And Chris, there's nothing wrong with valuing things just for their aesthetics. That is deep enough. That is good enough. But I am taken by all your responses, actually, how well they fit in with this idea of the moral imagination, what are the real world context in which we're operating and what is it we can imagine beyond that. Like the humanity of Aurora slash Storm and how that creates not just seeing superheroes, but seeing a Black woman rest in popular culture.

I don't even think we saw that on Living Single. And that is significant and important and what does it make possible. Or the idea that can you walk away from your calling? Whether you are Spider-Man or Captain America number one. There is a quest or call to justice that you may need to step back from, but that does not leave you. That there is this pull to a greater world.

And I would argue, Chris, even with Swamp Thing, that struggle between monstrosity and humanity, to have that balance is inherent in so much of the work that we do. Because we see the reality of the world and we hold on to our humanity and push for humanity throughout that. I would argue that whether you mean it or not, that's how I understand the Swamp Thing visualizations that you're talking about.

And I think the idea of talking about arts is important because for a long time, comics were under the Comics Code Authority where they couldn't say certain things. They couldn't speak to certain things. And this was not censorship in perhaps the legal sense and the government wasn't coming down. But this was to preempt government control and sort of a willful self-censoring. And yet, comics ended up being incredibly creative.

You see so many people writing stories for things that they felt were hidden under the Comics Code, characters who were queer. And it was OK for Ben Grimm the thing to be Jewish. But he actually was never canonically Jewish until 40 years after he was first introduced. So people are always looking back and writing these stories into the present.

But there's something about now where people are looking back at the Comics Code Authority era, and saying, no, this is what was being done through the art. This is what was being-- when two characters went off to the side and you stop seeing them, it's because you weren't allowed to see them making out. And they happen to be queer then. And so these relationships or these friendships are really an important part of it.

But there's so many other things that come through. And for me, I'm fascinated by how art works through restrictions and limitations. So think about comics and the Comics Code. Not a specific question, but just general thoughts about this idea.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: Well, it's interesting because, yeah, the Comics Code was something that all of the companies came together and said, hey, we're going to adhere to this so that we can get this stamp on our comics so people will sell it. I think it's also important to note that comics were-- there was a conservative movement specifically targeting comics and having comics burnings.

I'm sure there wasn't a lot but they happened because they did not want their kids being influenced and ruined by these ideas in the comics. And so when we're talking about restrictions, you can never paint the police in a bad light. Paraphrasing, every family has to be a nuclear family.

Drug use is prohibited. And slowly but surely, they stopped adhering to them until Marvel was like, F it. And then there were several covers that basically just said, now, without the Comics Code to get excite people about, oh, what's in here, that it's not adhering to the Comics Code?

I will also say the Comics Code wasn't always fair. I think in talking with some writers, they were much more granular when it came to Black Panther or Luke Cage or The Avengers than they were Tomb of Dracula. Because if you look at the character development of Blade in Tomb of Dracula-- not to mention all the other stuff that was happening in Tomb of Dracula. He had a girlfriend. And they weren't married. And they lived together.

But I think it's interesting because you do have these little moments where Destiny and Mystique, who live in the same apartment or sitting at breakfast together in the morning. And that's how you got around it.

The first two gay characters in Black Panther, Venomm with two M's and Taku, they're standing next to each other in a panel. And the statement is choosing Venomm as a companion. In your mind, you're like, oh, a companion.

And so there have been a lot of moments where there's been these very interesting flirtations, obviously, until we get to Northstar. But I think it's both and particularly on the writer and the artist just to make a statement, particularly towards the panels. The writer writes it. And the artist has to find a way to bring it to the front.

But it's really working as a team location. Are they standing next to each other? Or are they off in the corner? Or their hands close to each other? Because from day one, characters like Destiny and Mystique were always intimately involved. If you ask Chris Claremont, day one, always.

ALAN JENKINS: So I'm going to be tangentially responsive to your question, Hussein. But I do want to get to how does art work around censorship point, which I think is important. And I actually don't have a comic book example here, although I'm sure there are many. But I think, for example, of Pablo Neruda, the poet, writing in the context of totalitarian Pinochet regime in Chile. And he uses poetry to invent this, the moral imagination, to envision a nation rooted in justice and freedom when there is not space to directly criticize the regime.

I think about, the artist Ai Weiwei and his sunflower seeds, where he had commissioned the creation of tens of thousands of sunflower seeds, which are both individual and the collective. And it's a statement about contemporary China and its practices. But having been jailed and house arrest and the like, he's operating in a narrow context.

The comic book example that I want to mention is not quite the same, but I think it's pertinent to today, which is William Gaines, who was the publisher of EC Comics, which was primarily a horror publisher who caught hell from the comic books code, had to testify in hearings. He was a firebrand and told them all but to shove it.

And one of his classic clashes with the Comics Code was a story, Judgment Day. And he was reprinted ultimately. And I think was one of my notes say, Incredible Science Fiction, number 33. I actually have it on my wall at home.

And so it's a science fiction story, but it's about bigotry. And at the very end, spoiler alert, this astronaut who has experienced all this kind of petty bigotry amongst aliens takes off his helmet, and he's Black. This is in 1956.

And the Comics Code, Charles Murphy tried to stop it. But there were no rules in the comics code about showing Black people. So it was really a clash with the content, which was about racism. So this is 1956. So it's two years after Brown versus Board of Education. One year after the Montgomery bus boycott and the lynching of Emmett Till.

And so Gaines says, look, if you censor this, I'm going to go to the press. And I'm going to tell them that at a time when the country is moving towards racial equality, you're trying to censor a story that is obliquely about racial equality. And Murphy and the Code relent.

The important point here is, had this been three years earlier, Gaines probably would have lost that argument. But it was the context of social movement. It's not that racial equality was a popular idea in 1956. But rather that movement had opened up enough space, including through the Montgomery story comic book about Dr. King and Rosa Parks that he could leverage the moment.

And I think here is an important moment for me to say, I'm speaking in my individual capacity, not for Harvard or Harvard Law School. This is a moment for that kind of courage and creativity and standing up to say what's right. Recognizing that there may or may not be a majority that supports your position. But that a significant portion of the American people understand your values and will respect you for upholding them, and for not knuckling under to bullying.

The last coda about Gaines is he eventually closed shop in the comic book business and started Mad magazine. And so here, this circles back, Hussein, to your question, which is because Mad magazine was a magazine, it was not under the Comics Code. And he could do as much-- he couldn't run afoul of obscenity laws of the time. But he was not being muzzled under by the self-censorship. Because remember, the comics code was self-censorship by the industry of itself. And he found a way to get out from under it.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: I think it's also interesting to add, Alan, that Marvel followed suit. And Marvel had a number of magazines and Black and white magazines and ventured out even into comics. Because they knew it was a space where they weren't censored in the same way. So that work with Mad actually influenced the rest of the industry.

CHRISTOPHER ROBICHAUD: I'll just quickly add. And this is also a bit tangential. But I hope, Hussein, it gets in the vicinity. I'm interested in the way that creators find ways to bring audiences to think about difficult political and social questions without repelling them.

In other words, there's the kind of censorship that is imposed by consumers. I don't want to read about this. I don't want to think about this. But there's something to me really creative of how comic books can provide a space to do that. Sometimes well, sometimes not.

I mean, obviously examples of the X-Men. I know it's a heavy handed example and that's an imperfect. But showing Magneto and Professor X sort of going at it with their theory of what is the best way forward for Mutants is a way to lure audience members into a conversation that otherwise they wouldn't even want to get into in the first place.

And I think it's very, very inventive and creative if you can create comic book spaces and stories where, now, you're willing to have this conversation and maybe you weren't willing to have it before. Even though I think it fails more than it succeeds, which breaks my heart a little bit because I love Nick Spencer. But Nick Spencer's attempt in the fairly recent Captain America run, before Ta-Nehisi Coates takes it over, Captain America becomes a HYDRA agent.

But not really. Yo, really, Captain America becomes an agent of HYDRA, is hijacked by HYDRA is trying to lead, I think, a lot of comic book readers into a consideration of how the American brand can be hijacked by some extraordinarily nefarious places. Here, I see a lot of inventiveness, I guess, is what I'm saying. And comic book writers and artists and trying to bring people into conversations that they may be resistant to having at the most basic level.

But they'll talk about Professor X and Magneto ad nauseam. They'll talk about Captain America being hijacked by HYDRA. They'll talk about Lex Luthor becoming president. They'll talk about Marvel's Civil War and what the constraints of oversight should be. So to me, there's some real inventiveness that we see in this medium, I feel, where writers and artists are encouraging people to maybe think about things that they otherwise would not want to be thinking about.

And to me, that's something I hope we do more of to try to answer Alan's rallying cry. I want to see more of that as well to use this medium to hopefully facilitate hard conversations that we may be resistant to having until we get them into an imaginative space. And then we can tolerate them a little bit more and hopefully draw some connections coming out of those imaginative spaces.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you, Chris. That's a great segue. I'm going to ask this to be a lightning round because I do want to get some time for questions from the audience. This will be the last question for me. One thing I want to mention, when Chris is talking about HYDRA, in the Marvel universe, they are the descendants that are founded out of the Nazi party, and they are the modern Nazi party operating behind the scenes in the Marvel universe.

We've talked a lot about the past. We've talked a little bit about contemporary issues. But this idea of inviting people into conversations, both directly and indirectly is so important. What are in this-- now, what are comics in general talking about that invite us to the modern conversation?

So, I mean, Alan, I think your series 1/6, what I've read of it so far. I know it's an ongoing right now. It's another issue to go. But you're obviously imagining the speculative future. What if the January 6 insurrection had been successful? And it actually ended up predicting a lot of what's happening in Trump's second term in very real and practical ways.

But I think if people have been reading it ahead of time, it is a way to think about and plan for. The imaginative space is a creative space. Sorry, that's a tautology. The imaginative space is a predictive space because it is about creativity. It is about grounded in our current context and what could happen. So what's the future? What's being projected right now? What are we being invited to talk about?

ALAN JENKINS: Can you say one more sentence about that? I want to make sure I understand the question part.

HUSSEIN RASHID: We talked a lot in the past about how comics were addressing contemporary context, but trying to look a little bit to the future. Either through allegory or to invite. You talked about the space astronaut reminded me of the Deep Space Nine episode where Captain Benjamin Sisko is thrown in the past. And he's a science fiction writer, can't publish because he's Black.

And it's happening in a particular time in American history where we're dealing with questions of race, surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly. In ways that were predictive of, I would argue, what Ta-Nehisi Coates who we brought up before, MacArthur Genius Award winning writer, has faced as a backlash to almost all of his books as a Black man writing about these very sensitive subjects.

So what are the comics talking about? What are comics talking about now that are inviting us to use Chris's language into conversation? Having us talk about, think about that maybe we couldn't talk about in the real world. But through fiction, we can address and talk about. And what are they predicting for us?

CHRISTOPHER ROBICHAUD: This is imperfect start to this. And it's a little bit in the weeds. But one of the stories that I've really enjoyed over the past couple of years, a little bit older now, but I think it's still relevant saying to your thing is superior Spider-Man. Where Spider-Man and his arch nemesis Doc Ock. Doc Ock, basically becomes Spider-Man. It's a body switch dying thing.

They might think, what in the world does this have to do? Well, I actually do think that part of what that series is trying to explore, in a fun and entertaining way, is swapping perspectives of enemies and adversaries, taking on different points of view, reassessing who our adversaries and enemies are, and nuancing them in some pretty fundamental ways. Because Doc Ock has been such a one dimensional villain for Spider-Man over so many years.

And I think that could be an invitation to depolarize or-- I don't want to wish too much into Superior Spider-Man. But I do think it's an arena in which it offers a conversation about adversaries and enemies and nuance. And not everyone is one dimensional in this way. And the series does a great job with that sort of thing.

And I could imagine that those being hard conversations to have in an extremely polarized, extremely adversarial, extremely antagonistic moment. But they are important to have. And it has to be done with finesse. And I think Superior Spider-Man is a great example. It's my recommendation. Superior Spider-Man is a great example of trying to Wade into that space and see what you can make of it.

ALAN JENKINS: Yeah, I second your endorsement. I think it's a great series, including for the reason you described. I think the saga, Brian K. Vaughan, is also along that theme. It's basically Romeo and Juliet with a baby and horns and wings.

But it's a star-crossed couple. And their baby making their way across the universe where each of their worlds are at war with each other. And it's hilarious and also is a constant test of empathy and understanding and pacifism in the face of war.

I think in contrast, the graphic novel Bitch Planet, really interesting. I mean, in some ways, it has a lot of parallels with Handmaid's Tale, but I think told in a much more contemporary way and including body shaming and a range of issues that we haven't seen much of in comics, or at least in-- we've seen them in memoir comics, but not in serialized narrative comics. So I think those are two that are really important.

And then I have to take advantage of the plug you gave me, Hussein, to say that our series, 1/6, about what if the insurrection had been successful, which started out feeling like science fiction. And now, it just feels prediction. But issue 4, which we're working on now, is about the rise of the resistance of our fictional characters. And it's an opportunity for us, hopefully in an entertaining way. Because entertainment always has to come first.

Nobody wants to read a comic book to get a lecture or for the Wikipedia entry. But it's about what have democracy movements in other countries done when, suddenly or gradually, their democracy becomes an autocracy. And there's a lot of great comic books series that we've drawn on. We've also drawn on real life.

And one of the reasons why it's not done yet is because every week, something new happens. And we have to decide whether to incorporate it into the comic book. But we've gotten a fantastic response, in part, because we've really worked hard to make it an entertaining comic book. And it's speaking to issues of today. And as you noted, Hussein, some things that unfortunately we predicted when we started the series two years ago that have come to pass.

ANGELIQUE ROCHE: So I'm going to try to talk about some indie comics that I think are bringing an interesting side to it. So Mat Groom's Self/Made is literally about a character within a game, AI setting that is becoming conscious and is realizing that they are set in a structure and is breaking their code. Particularly looking at the goal of making completely autonomous AI and what that means and going through what are the ethics when you start making something that has a conscience.

Does it have a conscience? Does it not have a conscience? Can you just throw it away? And so one of my other favorites, which is a lot funnier, is called Crowded. It takes the crowd funding culture a step forward where it has legalized crowd funding, assassinations. Where you have 30 days to survive or not survive. And you can hire a bodyguard to keep you safe and do whatever it is that you need to do.

But the funny thing about it is that it has a very strong commentary on influencer culture and making a career out of being an assassin. And so there are all of these interesting things about who's the world's top assassin? And how are they getting sponsorships? And what does that look like?

And the ironic part-- and I won't blow it-- is that there's a real, relatable human story in the middle of these two people who really dislike each other. And through all of it, that's going on around them, find their humanity. But it's really great. I love it.

Also, Diary of a Mad Black Werewolf, which I did a short for it into a video plug. But it talks about basically a group of Black werewolves that only feed on hate and bigotry and anger. And so they're not just willy-nilly out here in the streets.

There's like one scene where they've been around for so long. And it's during slavery. And the KKK is burning a cross. And they go ham on the KKK.

And so it's very much like these places where people have been able to discuss these harder concepts. But I think with things like Crowded and Self/Made-- I'm not saying that's the future we're going to have. But it is a cultural shift that they're looking at, particularly with the influencer culture and what is that evolve into.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you again all so much to the audience, to our panelists. So grateful for you being here, spending the time with us and really engaging such a rich conversation. I'm looking forward to continuing this online and offline. And with that, we bid you adieu.

MALE ANNOUNCER: Sponsor, Religion and Public Life.

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