graphic novel

Telling Charlotte’s Stories of COVID-19

August 02, 2021 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

I am sure that most of us have read news accounts about the impact of the COVID-19 on the residents of Charlotte.  For the most part, these accounts focus on statistical information, such as the latest trends related to the number and severity of COVID-19 cases reported in the Charlotte area. Statistics, however, only tell part of the story.  Behind the statistics are real people with personal and often gut-wrenching stories about their experiences with COVID-19.  These personal stories are the focus of a new book titled PANDEM!C:  Stories of COVID-19. 

A joint project of the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative and BOOM Charlotte, PANDEM!C:  Stories of COVID 19 has the look of a graphic novel.  Each of the stories is told by a Charlotte journalist and illustrated by a Charlotte artist, and each of the stories is told in both English and Spanish.  Most of the stories are about individual Charlotte residents and their particular experiences with the pandemic.  Chapter 1, for example, is about Cedric Meekins, a Charlotte music teacher who contracted COVID-19 while attending a music conference in Cincinnati in March 2020.  The story tells about his harrowing experience in the hospital and his long struggle to regain his strength and relearn how to do basic activities, such as walking and holding a pen.

Many people contributed to PANDEM!C:  Stories of COVID-19, but the project was coordinated by Chris Rudisill, the Director of the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative.  Chris’s Charlotte connections extend beyond his work as a journalist.  He grew up in the Charlotte area, graduated from UNC Charlotte, and founded a Charlotte company called Artstreet Creative.  I contacted Chris and asked him for more information about how this project came to be.  Here is what he sent to me:

In October 2020, the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative (CJC) launched PANDEM!C: Stories of COVID-19, an innovative project that brought together Charlotte’s art and local news communities to share stories of COVID-19. The CJC was formed in 2019 as a partnership of six major media companies and other local institutions focusing on issues of major importance to the Charlotte region. It has been focused primarily on the topic of affordable housing and modeled on the Solutions Journalism Network method of investigating and reporting news with a primary focus on solutions to community problems.

When the pandemic surge occurred in Charlotte, the collaborative (whose members include The Charlotte Observer, WCNC-TV, WFAE 90.7, QCityMetro.com, Qnotes, La Noticia, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, Queens University and Free Press) saw the importance of producing stories that would keep citizens informed and safe. Chris Rudisill, the director of CJC, told The Charlotte Observer’s Liz Rothaus that they “wanted a creative way to get relevant, reliable information to people who might not be reading or tuning into traditional news sources … something that combined the visual punch of a 1950s-style monster movie poster with the integrity of solid news reporting.”

The answer was a graphic novel and in the spirit of collaboration CJC found a partner in local arts organization BOOM Charlotte.  PANDEM!C brought together eight local artists and reporters from each news outlet to translate news stories into a comic book form. With new installments every two weeks the project tackled the challenges of contact tracing, wearing masks, homelessness and the pandemic’s impact on minority communities. These stories were published online in both English and Spanish on https://digitalbranch.cmlibrary.org/cjc/graphic-novel/, on the organization’s Instagram @CLTJournalism and through an app called WebToon. Participating artist Wolly McNair described the collaboration as a “game changer and hopefully will be something others use to model ways they can tell stories.” Each artist worked directly with a journalist to produce a graphic version of the published news stories.

Those installments are now part of a print edition that will be distributed through the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library this month. With support from a Cultural Vision Grant from Charlotte’s Arts & Science Council (ASC), the CJC will distribute over 2,000 free copies to local residents and has produced a series of programming that highlighted the experience, including an online forum with reporters Nate Morabito and David Boraks and artists Marcus Kiser, Makayla Binter and McNair. As the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative continues to grow, it remains focused on bridging the gap between the local news ecosystem and the community to tackle important issues. The group just released its 2021-2022 Strategic Plan which outlines its future development and the creation of a $1.5 million sustainability fund to support the local news ecosystem.

For readers who want to know more about the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative, please click on the following link:  www.charlottejournalism.org  For readers who want to know more about Charlotte BOOM Charlotte, please click on the following link:  www.boomcharlotte.org  For readers who want to know more about Artstreet Creative, please click on the following link:  www.artstcreative.com

While reading PANDEM!C:  Stories of COVID-19, I was reminded of the following quotation by Daniel Kahneman:  “No one ever made a decision because of a number.  They need a story.” The individual stories included in this book transcend all of the numbers associated with the pandemic.  In the face of the current pandemic, all of us have to make decisions about getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and maintaining social distancing.  The stories in this book help readers make better-informed decisions about their own responses to the pandemic.  In so doing, this book makes an important contribution to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: COVID-19graphic novel

Shelton Drum, the Founder of Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find

June 15, 2020 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

For Charlotte’s readers of comic books, graphic novels and manga, Shelton Drum has achieved the status of a local legend.  Forty years ago, Shelton founded Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find, an independent comics shop, which is now located at 417 Pecan Avenue in Charlotte’s Plaza-Midwood neighborhood. Although he was only in his twenties at the time, he already had extensive experience collecting comic books.  His customers appreciated his expertise and enjoyed talking with a fellow comic book fan, and he soon developed a loyal customer base.  Nowadays Heroes (as the store is generally known) ranks among America’s most influential comic book retailers.  For more information about Heroes, please click on the following link:  http://www.heroesonline.com/about/

Two years after Shelton opened his store, he founded his annual HeroesCon. This family-friendly event has grown into one of the nation’s largest and best-run comic book conventions, and it regularly attracts many of the top comic book artists and writers.  HeroesCon usually takes place over the Father’s Day weekend, but this year Shelton had to cancel his convention because of the coronavirus pandemic.  However, next year’s HeroesCon is already set to take place at the Charlotte Convention Center on June 18-20, 2021. 

Shelton’s store and convention attract a wide range of patrons, including children who are just getting into collecting comics, long-time fans of particular comic book lines, and readers of graphic novels.  Alan Rauch, one of my colleagues in the English Department at UNC Charlotte, is an example of a customer who goes to Heroes to purchase graphic novels.  He often teaches courses on graphic novels, including an honors course titled  “Jewish Identity and the Graphic Novel.”  For the purposes of today’s Storied Charlotte blog post, I contacted Alan and asked him to comment on his experiences as a frequent customer at Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find.  Here is what he sent to me:

Most Charlotteans are probably only familiar with Comic Book Stores from venturing into Stuart Bloom’s “Comic Center of Pasadena” in “The Big Bang Theory.”  To be sure, it is a parody of that type of store, and like most parodies it gets a lot of things right… but also just as many things wrong.  Where it goes wrong is where Charlotte’s own comic bookstore Heroes aren’t Hard to Find goes right.  Now in its 40th year, Heroes (as it’s popularly known) is still owned and managed by the remarkable Shelton Drum, who brings self-confidence, vision, and knowledge to his work where poor Stuart could only bring a sense of despair and insecurity.  Forty years ago, we were all—young and old—in need of comic-book stores, as we watched mom and pop stores, with racks of magazines and comic book,s give way to corporate chains that could never thrive on the profits from the sale of a (then) 40¢ comic.  The opening of Heroes also coincided with new visions of what comics should look like.  The graphic novel, a now established genre of literature, was just emerging in works such as Will Eisner’s Contract with God and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and Watchmen would be published within a decade.  While it’s true that comics also became darker, more thoughtful, and more complex, they were always—from their inception– as Shelton understood, a vital part of the culture.  (He might deny being a “scholar,” but engage Shelton in a brief conversation about comic history and you’ll see that the title fits.)

Shelton’s store was (and continues to be) a meeting place for everyone, whether they are children searching for delightful entertainment, adolescents looking for escape and validation, or adults eager to immerse themselves in new and challenging narratives.  And yes, the audience includes girls, women, and persons of color too, as the genre has developed important characters who are strong, independent, and self-determining.  One sees this not only in Shelton’s store, but in the remarkable annual conference called HeroesCon, which has drawn (before Covid) thousands and thousands of people, from artist and writers to cos-players to parents and kids, to Charlotte every year. Shelton recently made the conference free to children under 18, recognizing that all kids should be a part of the Heroes-Con experience. For me, Heroes (only blocks away from where I live), is a neighborhood experience. But I have come to depend on the store, with Shelton and the remarkably loyal staff he has assembled, including Seth, Elias, Karla, Samuel, and Phil, as a source of knowledge for the works that will appear in my Graphic Novel course syllabus.  But the reach of Heroes and of Shelton’s impact extends beyond the neighborhood, not only to Charlotte, where it is a legitimate “institution” (sometimes a bit crazy, though certainly not like Arkham), but to North Carolina, the southeast, and across the country. So, Happy Birthday Shelton and “Heroes,” and thank you for making Charlotte a little weirder and a lot better!

As Alan’s comments indicate, Shelton Drum is much more than a successful business person.  Many of Shelton’s customers see their weekly visits to Heroes as both a cultural and a community-building experience, and many families in the southeast incorporate HeroesCon into their Father’s Day celebrations.  In the past forty years, Shelton Drum has contributed in countless ways to Charlotte’s community of readers and writers. He is one of Storied Charlotte’s heroes. 

Tags: comicscos-playgraphic novelheroes