When Ronald Wimberly told me that aside from being the new wonder boy for Vertigo, rocking covers of their "Deadman" comic and drawing the entirety of their most ground breaking new graphic novel Sentences: the life and times of M.F. Grimm; he also silk screens, I called him a Renaissance man. Without a hint of aggression he responded. "Hopefully one day we'll have another name that will supersede renaissance for this current movement". I agreed, sharing with him how some of my kin get frustrated with the term "enlightened". Ronald affirms, "Man... we really need to get past it, because a lot of those movements are seriously flawed or birthed from ideas that are married to anti-black/Eurocentric ideas. Not that those things are one and the same, but they went hand in hand for hundred of years. Ronald Wimberly draws comics for a living. It's a new day for comics."
I screwed up again in referencing him as the black Paul Pope , the alterna comic poster child. Again, with nothing but humor and compassion he chides me. "I resent and respect that. Paul Pope's was the work that made me think that I could make a living in comics. I saw his work and thought... ok... people are eating this up... and he's doing something smart and different... Until then, I assumed that that type of comic making was dead but... I don't want to be the black version of anyone... or the second version of anyone... even if it's comic's little prince."
Don't get it twitted, he's well trained and versed in the language of fine art. Mr. Wimberly is a graduate of Pratt after all. But his references might just as likely be from musicians as visual artists. The short list looks like Warhol, Simplissimus, Paul Bruno, Basquiat, Leutrec, Hokusai, Kuniyoshi, Yoshitoshi, Bebop, Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Run Dmc, Bad Brains, Stranglers, Buzzcocks, Ramones, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Melt Banana, and the New York dolls. And before you think its just a random assemblage of cool sounding references, peep one of his pages. It's all there. The sonic improve of 'Trane, the staggered vibrancy of Bad Brains, the collage of Basquiat,
the formalized mess of hip-hop. Wimberley is no poser. He knows his shit. Even before I question his qualifications for taking on the biography of the only hip-hop grand puba to drop a triple album, he drops knowledge about his two favorite djs that spin in his neighborhood in Brooklyn ( http://www.icdcpublishing.com/_overlay/audio/and http://brooklynradio.net/the-rub) For those interested) Wimberly is bonafide. I asked him what the cross over of hip-hop and comics was and he snidely replied, "It's [Comics] one of the few joints where you really DONT need anyone else... maybe for the book design, but not even that really. Splitting up comics [Having a writer and an artists] is asinine to me... to be honest, The MC just needs a mic, the artist just needs a pen". It's a cold fusion that works if and only if you're talented as all get out. Like I said Wimberly is on it.
He also knows the limits of the comic medium. "I'm jealous of music and film in terms of its impact on people," he laments. Perhaps its his lack of exposure to the medium at a young age. He came from the hinterlands of the comic game, a drawing contest from Dark Horse comics. Afterwards he did what he considered some of his best colored work for Metal hurlant (Heavy Metal for the old school heads). Soon came a full issue of Mike Carey's amazing Lucifer, then Swamp Thing, and the covers to the Hellblazer spin off Papa Midnight, and most recently covers for Deadman.
He hit the graphic illustration pavement running full tilt without a basis in the current trends or the classic illustrators like Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, and Steve Ditko. "I didn't really know about who those guys were until, Floyd Hughes, my graphic storytelling professor at Pratt institute, put me onto them. I was familiar with the iconography... I mean Kirby, Ditko, Kirby, Kriegstein, Bob Kane, Milton Caniff really are powerful to me right now as I look back at them... but I didn't know them as I developed as a young artist. At least not by name. In fact, I didn't really know comic book properties as comic books until like Jim Lee's X-men. I am a product of the video game generation. In fact, the first comic books I picked up on my own were Moebius reprints, and stuff like that. I'm from the generation that watched anime on tapes that had Korean and Chinese subtitles (but no English) on the tapes...When Vampire hunter D and Clash of the bionoids was the only 'japanimation' in the Erols Video... The kids who remember when Aeon Flux came in bite size portions with no words... and when we would go to these things called arcades, where smack talk could get you punched in REAL life."
He seems such an unlikely candidate as the artist most likely to pull new readers into comics if you believe that one must be fully versed the semantics of the genre. But Wimberly is that type of poly-linguist code switcher that crosses genres the way Rupaul cross dresses. But whatever he crosses goes through the post soul archival filtered hip-hop informed aesthetic. A prime example is a nine page short called Africa that Wimberley did for Meathaus this summer. I tried to use a structure similar to poetry or music, except it's like I take cues from postmodernism via hip hop... so like in Africa, I used one of my favorite French New Wave films as a beat (so to speak) and laced another idea and theme over the narrative devices structure of the film, Alphaville. "I mean... sometimes I feel like hip hop is comics because, like... if you make a film, you got all types of crew and resources... but hip hop is comics because in hip hop you can steal a Motown band or the JBs and make some new music.... well, I don't have a crew or a camera, but I'm gonna steal the dialogue and the crew and put my own stuff over the top... like ghost and that delfonics track... or even Bebop, flowing into a standard inbetween a Cray improvisation... evoking through association and
shit too real post modern dialogue and hopefully the true successor to that post modernism non-movement bullshit.
It's about recreating myself in an image other than what pop culture has told
me I am supposed to be... in my own image painting myself in the place of Bogart,
Belmondo or Eastwood...
Just as it might seem slightly off that Vertigo comics, home of The Sandman, Preacher, and other primarily Caucasoid rooted mythologies would be publishing the true life and times of the semi-legendary Mf Grimm, a man shot more times than 50 cent, whose recorded with everyone from Dr. Dre to Mf Doom (Peep other pages if you want to read about their drama), it might seem odd that Ronald Wimberley, the post modern African-American negro counter-hegemony poster child to be the artist for the venture. But his approach(es), far from the hard graffiti influence of others who've attempted such projects, invigorate the novel with something hip-hop is in desperate need of, authenticity. I mean... if it's a cliché in Grimm's life, it's because it's an epidemic in the black community, nahmean... not because of a lack of creativity. "Sentences was ill because, I got to flip styles a few times; so for instance, Grimm's life in Sentences starts on the set of Sesame Street (Grimm's childhood neighbor was Morgan Freeman who got him on Sesame street for a few years) the style reflects this. Sometimes things are not as serious... just like in real life. There's some Playstation in here."
I asked Ronald how he got hooked up with the project in the first place, imaging some old school bond between him and Grimm. "I was the last to the show on that one, but it seems like it was orchestrated by Casey Seijas over at Vertigo. He knew Grimm, He knew Grimm's life as relayed to him firsthand. There really aint much to sell.... that is to say, it sells itself. They brought me aboard later... and I was glad to be a part of it. I had heard of Grimm from M.I.C. and some tracks here and there. Grimm is a really cool and serious dude in a strange and compelling combination. He's very creative and was a rich source of material... I just wanted to do it justice..."
And he has.
What next? Where does the new style black artists go when they are down to confront their game like they are an underground hip-hop artist, but can also quote Franz Fanon? He's definitely got plans, and they will all be informed at least in part by his culture. "It's undeniable, my work definitely is influenced by my life as a black American. I mean... it's all about adding something to the conversation... being there for the next black man to see and say, 'Hey, I can be more than an extra or a villain in the theatre of life' or black woman. It's about recreating myself in an image other than what pop culture has told me I am supposed to be... in my own image painting myself in the place of Bogart, Belmondo or Eastwood... telling some stories. It's because I am not trying to be anything overtly black... I also try to understand blackness and it's overall place in visual culture in general... like in a real humanistic kinda way..."
"I'd love to work with Plastic Little, or Melt Banana or some bands or
something... that would be cool... or visual artists(group shows), toy makers
or game/interactive cats... that's what I'm hype on in terms of a collabo. But
splitting up comics is asinine to me... to be honest. It's one of the few joints
where you really DONT need anyone else... maybe for the book design, but not
even that really... I feel like for me, I'd like to see more cats excel in writing
and drawing... this type of comics is transcendent to me... But to totally contradict
myself like Anansi/Tupac: I am open to finding the Jodorowsky to my Moebius
or the Stan Lee to my Kirby... I'd even be open to playing Hugo Pratt to someone's
Milo Manara on occasion, if you get what I'm saying. Maybe I'm not familiar
enough with comics to know of the contemporary equivalent of these cats yet,
though... still young in the game.
...I have been nagging an editor at Marvel to field my idea for Cloak and Dagger...
it's so sick. And it should be because no other writer they have can bring what
I can to those characters. Really, I am an American black man who grew up in
south east DC and Montgomery County Md and moved to Brooklyn (time spit equally)...
which means, I know what it means to be around nothing but black people and
to be the ONLY black person in a group of white people. I was breaking new ground
on that inter-racial (an outmoded concept birthed from eugenics) relationship
shit before it was tre chic, in music videos and when Jungle Fever's premise
was a radical idea. I've got the story. I've got something real to counteract
the fantastic. They really need to bring me on board, I'll bring a new readership.
That's probably the only rubber suit job I can imagine saying yes to, but I
am open to surprises."
As with most up and coming geniuses the question is not what he can produce next but rather, what are the audiences ready for. It could be a gallery show, it could be a comic, it could be a ghetto baroque project he's playing with. It's all based on what we can take in. I asked Wimberly what advice he would give to up and coming artist, and as usual, it was brilliant and simple. "Educate yourselves in museums and life experience, a school will charge you 40g to teach you what you can pay $5 to learn at the Met or $0 to draw on the street."
