When Comics or comic books were launched in the United States in the 1930s, they were considered a lesser form of literature and entertainment, meant for kids and people who did not want any form of ‘real’ mental stimulation.
This perception of the art form persisted, and justly so, because most of the stories told through this medium at the time lacked the artistic depth of other forms of literature, such as novels, poetry, or even film.
Nevertheless, comics still held a significant place in the literary ecosystem at the time because they provided a ‘lost generation’ (people of the World Wars era) with superheroes and other characters who offered escapism and hope during extremely dark times.
Many years later, comics have evolved significantly. Firstly, the storytelling in comics has changed significantly, such that a comic book like Maus by Art Spiegelman was able to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, an award usually reserved for highly respected novels. Moreover, comics art has evolved significantly to incorporate complex techniques typically found in painting and other forms of illustration.
To crown it all, the staggering increase in the penetration of smartphones, tablets, PCs, and the internet across the world has enabled the creation of new digital comic formats. The most prominent among them is the webtoon format, which makes reading comics on smartphones very convenient.
Every day, digital comics, webtoon, and manga platforms like Naver Webtoon, TapToon, and Bilibili Comics draw in millions of readers from different parts of the world, making digital comics a billion-dollar industry. Great evolution!
This evolution, nevertheless, does not fully capture the significance of comics to humanity. Comics remain highly relevant and important because they use images to tell stories, and images are powerful tools for disseminating knowledge and ideologies.
This is because whatever we see, we hardly forget. Add complex narratives, relevant subject matter, and important themes treated in comics, and you have a veritable tool for education and effective communication.
It is with this interesting background that Zebra Comics PLC came into existence. Zebra Comics PLC is a Cameroonian digital media company based in Douala that specializes in creating and commercializing digital comics, webtoons, and manga.
Founded in 2016 by Ejob Nathanael and propelled by seven co-founders, Zebra Comics set out to provide a breath of fresh air to the African comic book landscape. To be candid, the comic book industry in Africa is relatively young. Until the 2010s, there were few African publications on the market; the distribution of available comics was catastrophic; prices were very high; and their perceived value among African consumers was low.
Beyond classics like Kouakou, Super Strikas, or Vie de Jeunes in Cameroon, the only places where people could read comics were in magazines like 100% Jeune and newspapers like Popoli. Except for Popoli (which is mostly a newspaper that focuses on caricature to satirize daily happenings in the country), other magazines and papers used comics only for comic relief.
Much of what Cameroonian and African millennials grew up reading in comics was therefore imported: Marvel and DC Comics (Batman, Superman, the Avengers), Franco-Belgian comics (Tintin, Titeuf, Blek), and Japanese manga (Dragon Ball Z, Naruto).
In an era of deep identity crisis, the decline of reading culture across Africa and the proliferation of easy, unhealthy escapism through social media and smartphones, Zebra Comics PLC therefore decided to invest in this powerful art form to drive meaningful change in the minds of young Africans. In that light, for the past two years, Zebra Comics PLC worked on creating a long list of original and authentic African comics, webtoon and manga in English and French, developed a digital comics distribution platform (app and website) for reading of comics and made it available to the world through a subscriptions system (like Netflix) where fees are very affordable.
On the Zebra Comics digital platform (app and website), readers will find a catalog of original African stories, delivered weekly as episodes. The stories therein treat themes which include religion vs. passion, witchcraft in modern warfare, African spirituality in its purest forms, love and family in the social media era, African feminism in ancient Africa, and much more.
These stories fall under popular literary categories such as Romance, Afrofuturism, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Humour, and Slice of Life. With stories like KHADIJA that presents the ordeals of a young muslim girl who wants to pursue a career in football; ANAKI that puts forth a young woman struggling to survive in a futuristic version of Africa; and WRONG DIAL that presents a situation where African governments resort to witchcraft in warfare against terrorists, there is no shortage of entertainment on the Zebra Comics Platform (app and website).
To enjoy all these comics, webtoons, and manga, you just need to download the ZEBRA COMICS app from Google Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details…) or visit our website https://zebra-comics.com/#/home.
With the different mind-bending worlds, complex characters, and explosive action within the comics, webtoons, and manga Zebra Comics is offering, your imagination is bound to go bonkers when you get into this ecosystem.
