There are not many black superheroes—and even fewer that have taken the lead in their own movies. The artist Kerry James Marshall, whose retrospective opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago this month (23 April-25 September), wants to change that.
Since the late 1990s, he has been working on the comic book series Rythm Mastr, which like all his other work focuses entirely on African-American culture and subjects. The series follows a number of characters in Black Metropolis, and features sculptures of African deities that come to life.
“Ideally, it would be fully realised as an animated feature film,” Marshall told us. “Really, it would have to be epic in scope. It’s on the scale of something like Star Wars… or Blade Runner or the Alien cycle. If I’m looking at touchstones in movies that I think do what I think this one should do, it sort of fits into those kind of mythic arcs.”
• A full interview with Kerry James Marshall will appear in our May issue
