The untold story of Captain Africa

This article originally appeared on News24

This story was made possible by PhD researcher Tessa Pijnaker.

There was a running joke among western comic book artists and writers during the medium’s golden age in the latter part of the 20th Century, which went something like this:

When it came to pinning down regular work, a writer or artist had the responsibility of submitting quality work, a duty to make sure that it was on time, and a winning personality.

But, as the joke went, they only really needed two out of three: if the work was good and on time, publishers would forgive a droll demeanour; forgive late work if it was good and you were a nice person; and tolerate a dip in quality if the work was on time and it was always a pleasure to see you.

This story was made possible by PhD researcher Tessa Pijnaker.

There was a running joke among western comic book artists and writers during the medium’s golden age in the latter part of the 20th Century, which went something like this:

When it came to pinning down regular work, a writer or artist had the responsibility of submitting quality work, a duty to make sure that it was on time, and a winning personality.

But, as the joke went, they only really needed two out of three: if the work was good and on time, publishers would forgive a droll demeanour; forgive late work if it was good and you were a nice person; and tolerate a dip in quality if the work was on time and it was always a pleasure to see you.

But while western audiences were grappling with the horrors of the holocaust in Maus, cringed at a rape scene in Watchmen, and saw a Batman ally get shot in the back in The Killing Joke, history was being made in Africa: Ghanain artist and writer Andy Akman was formulating what some scholars believe to be the first true African superhero.

Decked in a spandex suit with a silhouette of the African continent displayed on his chest, Captain Africa sought to rid his beloved continent of corrupt politicians, violent cultists and child slavers.

A businessman by day, Captain Africa was intended as a role model for African people, with the comics featuring an idyllic portrayal of the continent - a far cry from the dominant idea of African countries as violent and poor.

He was an African hero for African people, made by African artists.

A title disputed

The title of Africa's first ever superhero is disputed.

If considered from a plainly historical point of view, Captain Africa would have no right to it.

There were ones long before him - but they were made by and large by westerners, who brought a Eurocentric representation of African countries and cultures.

Powerman, for instance, was published a good decade before Captain Africa. Published in Nigeria, it was illustrated in part by legendary British comic book artist Dave Gibbons, and was put together by white people. Gibbons would later admit that the creative team had trouble conceptualising an African hero.

Back home, there was Mighty Man.

Put together by the apartheid government and published by a US company in the 1970s, Mighty Man was revealed to have been used as an insidious ploy by the government to counter pushback against its fascist laws. It sought to spread a message of subservience from black people toward the government.

"It always goes back to the question: how do you define an African superhero?" Tessa Pijnaker, a PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham, told News24.

"It is usually seen as if there is a western definition and an African definition. That is a bit simplistic, but it is how the question is commonly phrased. But there is a longer history surrounding African superheroes.

"It is usually seen as if there's a western definition and Africans are borrowing from that - but there is a longer history of African superheroes being developed on the continent, which suggests that African superheroes should be considered their own genre."

Authentic African superheroes may also be cape-wearing and square-jawed like their western counterparts - but there is a greater focus on cultural heritage, as well as a desire to depict new perspectives of African life and its people, Pijnaker said.

"If you consider other aesthetics than styles inspired by the superheroes of DC and Marvel, then you can open the definition up, and more things will count as superheroes."

Stories created by Africans, for Africans, she says, use folklore and present heroes and African countries in ways that "contest colonial power and negative stereotypes Africa".

Another important characteristic of superhero comics produced by black Africans is that they tended to fight against everyday issues plaguing African countries, like corruption and child kidnappings.

"They use rich African history to create a sense of African agency," Pijnaker said. "They use cultural African heritage in their comics.

"When you look at [African] comics created in the '70s and '80s, they were actually made by people from abroad, like the US and UK, because publishers wrongly assumed there was no African talent to create superheroes.

She said, while these were comics that might have been well-meaning and did try to speak African audiences, their authenticity remained "questionable", and tended to "be culturally insensitive and problematic in how African people are portrayed".

Captain Africa

Captain Africa was first printed in 1987 by African Comics Ltd in Nigeria. It is unclear how many issues Akman had written at the time, though Pijnaker says there is evidence to suggest there were at least 15. Information on the comic remains scarce, and there has been no sign of Akman for years.

A Canadian artist, Scott Dutton, had produced reprints of the original comics a decade later, which featured cleaner lines and clearer text, although were in black and white.

He made about 100 copies which were sold or traded among other comic producers. The reprints were never distributed commercially.

In 1988, The New York Times published a feature on Captain Africa, arguing that it was part of a trend across Africa at the time of trying to "decolonise comics".

"Created as a role model for urban Africans, Captain Africa lives in an airbrushed Africa, a continent of comfortable villas, clean hospitals and vacations on imaginary tropical islands," the article stated.

Akman was quoted telling the paper: "Gone are the days of Africans wearing raffia skirts… We are living in modern houses. He must be a Superman, not a Tarzan."

The article explained that there was pushback among Africans over stories like Tarzan, which "revolved largely around the exploits of whites in Africa, with black Africans relegated to supporting roles."

Mbadiwe Emelumba, the then president of African Comics Ltd, told the paper that "we have our own culture, our own heritage. It's important to defend against cultural colonialism".

Inspiration for Captain Africa's foes came from real-life news stories, like ritual murders. It also took a stand against government corruption.

The Times' article said this interpretation of an African superhero "struck a chord among readers".

Pijnaker's research indicates that a version of Captain Africa appears to this day in a local Nigerian newspaper, although it does have differences between the original.

She has also found that, in the 1980s, there was a throng of artists and writers who became "first generation" creators of superheroes. However, information on these is hard to come by, with Pijnaker telling News24 that much of the information she encountered on African heroes came to her "by luck" and through personal connections.

Akman's own inspiration to use the medium of comics to make his point could have come from popular, although short lived, mimeographed comics which were distributed in the Ghanain cities of Accra and Kumasi in the mid-1970s.

These comics fused elements of indigenous folk tales with characters from the Marvel range, such as Spiderman and Ananse, a devious spider from west African lore. These stories were written in a mixture of English and Twi, a Ghanaian language.

British anthropologist Karin Barber wrote in 1987 that these stories featured a similar pattern, where ordinary Ghanaian people were preyed upon by scurrilous soldiers or politicians. Marvel and folk heroes would team up to rescue people by either "exercising superhuman strength or leading a popular revolt".

Pijnaker says a new generation of African superhero creators today are finding it difficult to connect with African audiences. She suggests that this might be due to a combination of factors, such as a lack of access to capital for marketing or market research, the reputation of comics among African audiences, and the generally privileged background of creators "who've had a middle-class upbringing and have had access to western heroes, resulting in a different taste than from those in other classes".

Their fortunes may see changes going forward, with the change slowly creeping along, thanks to the popularity of Marvel heroes like Black Panther.

Also, the past decade or so has seen a shift in public consciousness brought on by a global movement seeking to promote more inclusivity in politics, business and culture, making the potential of African people telling African stories greater than ever.

The history surrounding the creation of Captain Africa highlights the difficulty in making and distributing alternative, authentic African voices, especially when having to grapple with prevailing assumptions about African people having been strongly defined by those who aren’t African.

Akman's efforts would have gone some way to making a dent in the dominant western and colonial ideas of the continent.

Western superheroes have stood the test of time, and are rightly revered for an unparalleled level of narrative depth, complexity, reverence or influence, owing a great degree to what was produced in the 1970s and '80s.

But one thing isn't in doubt: Akman's stories have a historical significance that his western peers can only dream of.