Lion Man Re-imagined

In 1947, African-American writer, Orrin C. Evans, along with an all-Black creative team debuted the groundbreaking comics anthology, All-Negro Comics, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, when the paper manufacturer discovered that it was a Black project, he refused to sell the book. All-Negro Comics soon went out of print and few copies have survived. A couple years ago, Chris Robinson released a hardcover 75th anniversary edition of the anthology. This year, Rosarium Publishing has decided to bring one of its heroes, Lion Man, a United Nations scientists tasked to protect the uranium in Magic Mountain on Africa’s Gold Coast, back to life.

Two-time Eisner Award winner, John Jennings (The Blacker the Ink, Octavia Butler’s Kindred), Bill Campbell (The Day the Klan Came to Town), and up-and-coming Zimbabwean author, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (Drinking from Graveyard Wells), come together with Eisner Award-nominated artist, David Brame, come together to give you three new, remixed, reimagined tales of this legendary Black comics hero with “The Tower,” “A Plague on the Nation,” and “The Lion Outside.”

Also joining the party is Eisner Award winning author, Damian Duffy, with a fresh take on “the Mystery Woman of the Jungle” … Fantomah!!! With the ability to fly, levitate and transform objects, and mutate people into other forms, Fantomah has been described by Roy Thomas and Kurt Mitchell as “[s]imultaneously grotesque and goofy, horrific and hilarious, the strip truly defies description” Damian and David certainly had fun with this one.

Exploring Public Domain

While working on this project, we all discovered just how fun it is to play with and reinterpret some of these public domain characters. So, we invited some friends to put their own twists on these old tales and will be including their pin-ups in the trade paperback!

ARTISTS INCLUDE: Christa Cassano, Javier Cruz Winnick, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tim Fielder, Joel Christian Gill. Ashley Guillory, Jannie Ho, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Patrick Lay, Gigi Murakami, Jamie Noguchi, Olu Oke, Ben Passmore, Nate Powell, Jason Reeves, Stacey Robinson, Fabrice Sapolsky, Jocelyn Strong, and Anthony Summey.