8 Books Published by Cedar Grove Publishing on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

After narrowly escaping with their lives with the magical mouthpiece from Demonica Shadows and her Minions of Darkness, Harmony, Eazy, and Juan Carlos find refuge in the attic of small bakery owned by a sweet, elderly widower named Miss Sweetbread. She seems to understand their plight and offers to help in any way she can. But there is another reason why she wants to help. She is an angel secretly working to get the mouthpiece back to the Horn of Gabriel. With Demonica in hot pursuit, The Walkers and Juan Carlos need all the help they can get. Eazy even finds work in a jazz and blues club called The Carnation Club, owned by an unscrupulous Frenchman, Jean-Pierre, who will do anything to get the horn for himself. Harmony must find a way to get rid of Demonica and help her dad become young again. But, most of all, she must return the sacred and magical mouthpiece to the Horn of Gabriel and reunite her family. It’s all up to Harmony!

This sampler provides readers with a showcase for existing and upcoming talent as well as a source guide for those fans to purchase books. The term the black age of comics was coined in 1992. With the emergence of Milestone Media, Brotherman, Tribe, and other entitles in the early nineties, the presence of the African American in sequential art could not be denied. Diversity has become the buzzword in the comic book industry with large comic book companies claiming to lead the charge, but merely scratching the surface of the complexity and intersection of race, culture, and gender. This book provides a rich variety that is a visual form of jazz, rock, funk, hip hop and electronic music. This is art for the people.

The 4 Pages | 16 Bars: A Visual Mixtape trade paperback series is a celebration of where true diversity exists in this industry, a sampler for potential fans to enjoy unique intellectual properties, a showcase for existing and upcoming talent as well as a source guide for those fans to purchase these books. The contributors for third first volume include Nigel Flood (The Globalists), David Walker (Number 13) and many more. Each of the artists and writers in this series bring a unique, but shared viewpoint, in the creation of their work. The comic book industry is more than DC or Marvel. The scene is more diverse than Image or Dark Horse. This is visual Jazz, Rock, Funk, Hip Hop and electronic music. This is art for the people.

“Sycorax’s Daughters introduces us to a whole new legion of gothic writers. Their stories drip with history and blood leaving us with searing images and a chill emanating from shadows gathered in the corner. This anthology is historic in its recognition of women of color writers in a genre that usually doesn’t know what to do with us.” Jewelle Gomez, author, The Gilda Stories

A powerful, revealing anthology of dark fiction and poetry by Black women writers. The tales of what scares, threatens and shocks them will enlighten and entertain you.

Sycorax’s Daughters’ stories and poems delve into demons and shape shifters from Carole McDonnell’s “How to Speak to the Bogeyman” and Sheree Renée Thomas’ “Tree of the Forest Seven Bells Turns the World Round Midnight” to far future offerings from Kiini Ibura Salaam’s “The Malady of Need”, Valjeanne Jeffers’ steampunk female detective in “Mona Livelong: Paranormal Detective II” and others.

These thought-provoking twenty-eight stories and fourteen poems cover creatures imagined— vampires, ghosts, and mermaids, as well as the unexpected price paid by women struggling for freedom and validation in the past—slavery to science-fiction futures with transhumans and alternate realities.

Leave the lights on and join these amazing authors as they share their unique vision of fear.

Contributors include:

1. Tiffany Austin,
2. Tracey Baptiste,
 
3. Regina N. Bradley,
4. Patricia E. Canterbury,
 
5. Crystal Connor,
6. Joy M. Copeland,
7. Amber Doe,
8. Tish Jackson,
9. Valjeanne Jeffers,
10. Tenea D. Johnson,
 
11. R. J. Joseph,
12. A. D. Koboah,
13. Nicole Givens Kurtz,
 
14. Kai Leakes,
15. A. J. Locke,
16. Carole McDonnell,
 
17. Dana T. McKnight,
18. LH Moore,
19. L. Penelope,
20. Zin E. Rocklyn,
21. Eden Royce,
22. Kiini Ibura Salaam,
23. Andrea Vocab Sanderson,
 
24. Nicole D. Sconiers,
25. Cherene Sherrard
26. RaShell R. Smith-Spears,
27. Sheree Renée Thomas,
28. Lori Titus,
29. Tanesha Nicole Tyler,
30. Deborah Elizabeth Whaley,
31. L. Marie Wood,
32. K. Ceres Wright, and
33. Deana Zhollis

This music-driven action adventure follows the near capture of young Harmony Walker and her famous dad, blues and jazz musician, John "Eazy" Walker. Seduced by promises of fame and fortune, Harmony enters into a pact with a mysterious woman and accepts possession of a magical mouthpiece, with the promise to return it in one year. Unbeknownst to the Walkers, the mouthpiece was stolen from the Horn of Gabriel by the woman who is actually an evil demon in disguise named Demonica Shadows. After one year of fame, fortune, and travels, Harmony refuses to return the ancient artifact thinking the woman has forgotten about it, but the evil woman finds Harmony and uses her demonic powers to change Eazy into an old man and tries to claim Harmony’s soul. Narrowly escaping with their lives and finally understanding the power of the mouthpiece, the Walkers run from the forces of evil that are waiting and watching for their chance to regain possession of the magical artifact.

A catalog of primarily visual artworks-on-paper, this collection is the work of a creative duo that makes up the collaborative entity, Black Kirby. Their art celebrates the groundbreaking work of legendary comic creator Jack Kirby and functions as a highly syncretic mytho-poetic framework by appropriating Kirby’s bold forms and revolutionary ideas combined with themes centered on AfroFuturism, social justice, Black history, media criticism, science fiction, magical realism, and the utilization of Hip Hop culture as a methodology for creating visual expression. Their work also focuses on the digital medium: how its inherent affordances offer much more flexibility in the expression of visual communication and what that means in its production and consumption in the public sphere. In a sense, Black Kirby appropriates the gallery as a conceptual crossroads to examine identity as a socialized concept, and to show the commonalities between Black comics creators and Jewish comics creators and how both utilize the medium of comics as space of resistance. The duo attempts to re-medicate blackness and other identity contexts as sublime technologies that produce experiences that can limit human progress and possibility.

This sampler provides readers with a showcase for existing and upcoming talent as well as a source guide for those fans to purchase books. The term the black age of comics was coined in 1992. With the emergence of Milestone Media, Brotherman, Tribe, and other entitles in the early nineties, the presence of the African American in sequential art could not be denied. Diversity has become the buzzword in the comic book industry with large comic book companies claiming to lead the charge, but merely scratching the surface of the complexity and intersection of race, culture, and gender. This book provides a rich variety that is a visual form of jazz, rock, funk, hip hop and electronic music. This is art for the people.

This sampler provides readers with a showcase for existing and upcoming talent, and provides them with a source guide to purchase books. Diversity has become the buzzword in the comic book industry with large comic book companies claiming to lead the charge, but merely scratching the surface of the complexity and intersection of race, culture, and gender. This book provides a rich variety that is a visual form of jazz, rock, funk, hip hop and electronic music. This is art for the people.