AFROBLOT: THE EXPERIENCE

A while ago, Teambooktu covered Jogunomi – a comic which captured a novel art style in African Ninth Art called Afroblot. You might want to read that article to get a better appreciation of this style which uses only four colours- black, white, grey and red- to embellish. Coincidentally, we first bumped into the originator of this budding style at last year’s Lagos Comic Con. His name is Adedayo Erivic. Even more serendipitous, we had just concluded a 3-part critique on the major schools of Ninth Art, ending with a poser on whither an African style? Afroblot seemed to rise to the challenge and we have been monitoring its growth and popularity ever since.

Recently, they held a comic art exhibition at Krates called Afroblot: The Experience of which Teambooktu was a media partner. After a successful outing, we suggested to Erivic that he write briefly on Afroblot and his vision for the style. He obliged and here are some of his thoughts:-

African comics are experiencing incredible growth, however, it looks like there is a bar to how far we can go because of several challenges we face as an industry. Prints, production speed and consistency, distribution, and several others. That’s why I came up with the Afroblot idea. The Experience was built on what I’ve done with Afroblot: The Memoir. 

The memoir is an insight into what exactly was going through my mind when I was putting together the Afroblot concept, and the exhibition was more of a strategy to help people visualize the beauty and the practicality of Afroblot. Comic book creators, especially across Nigeria, are now picking up Afroblot and using it in their comics. A comic book reading platform now has Afroblot as one of its genres and more people are coming to an awareness of Afroblot, especially because of its aesthetics.

I understand I have a lot of work to do to popularize Afroblot and I’m very willing to do the work. When my new comic book, STREETZ KRONIKLES is out, I plan a nationwide tour. The exhibition was just to test the waters for what’s to come. And while “taking over” is not really my plan for Afroblot, I believe people will come to a realization. I believe its utility will gravitate more people towards it soon and I’m very patient to see it happen. Maybe in 10 years, or 20 or maybe not even in my lifetime, but I’m sure it’ll happen.