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Back in early May, I had the chance to write about Free Comic Book Day. For that article, I was able to investigate a number of incredible artists, illustrators and colorists who were going to be on hand at Neighborhood Comics’ celebration of the event, creators who’d worked on huge projects in the industry, lending their talents to characters like Superman and Spider-Gwen, amongst other high-profile titles.
Interestingly enough, however, out of all of the artists I profiled, it was the work of self-published indie creator Kevin Betou that really stuck with me. The young artist had funded the first three issues of his series “Tempo” through Kickstarter, but I purchased the collected volume of the “story so far” from the aforementioned local comic shop. It’s a fantasy story revolving around a character named Baako, who possesses the magical/musical power after which the series is named, and her quest to reclaim it after it’s stolen from her by a famous rapper.
How could the work of a relatively unknown artist distinguish itself when compared to so many pre-established comic book creators? Because I love what I love, and one of the great joys of writing this column is to shine a light on the work of artists readers may not be familiar with.
Afrofuturism
I’ve hungrily consumed fantasy in all its forms since I randomly picked up a copy of Richard A. Knaak’s “The Legend of Huma” from a used book store near my house when I was 11 years old. It’s a story about a brave knight, an enigmatic wizard, and their battle against a dragon. In the years since then, I’ve read literally hundreds of similarly euro-centric, good versus evil fantasy novels.
As noted above, Betou’s “Tempo” is fantasy as well, but falls into a relatively new category of the genre: Afrofuturism. In simple terms, Afrofuturism looks at the subject through the lens of the African diaspora. Reading his book and exploring these fresh creative perspectives that he’s offering in it, it reminded me of how tired I am of the same old tropes.
“I definitely wanted to do fantasy, but I wanted to add something that was me to it,” he explained over coffee as I tried hard not to talk over him in my excitement for his book. “There’s tons of fantasy content out there already, and I wanted to do my own twist on it.”
Betou was born in Paris, but his mother is Ukrainian and his father is from the Congo. They ultimately split, and he ended up moving to Oakland, California, when he was 7 years old. But in between, he visited the country of his African roots, and while it didn’t resonate with him as a young child, it stuck with him into adulthood, and has profoundly impacted his work as a comic book artist, especially in the case of “Tempo.”
“I visited Congo before going to California for like two months, and I was too young to appreciate it, so I thought it was lame,” he admitted. “But in hindsight, everyone was dressed cool as hell. They would have crazy West African masks that were so sick.”
Along with his father, his grandmother was also out in Oakland, and she still held a strong connection to the land of her birth. She would often wear traditional Congolese garb, and the stories she and his father told of West Africa described a world filled with mysticism and enigmatic characters.
“I remember there was one about a dog that was somehow gifted or blessed with something that he can track any prey hundreds of miles and bring it back to the village,” Betou recalled. “We’d be at, like, TJ Maxx or something, and they’d throw out some crazy s[tuff]. It’s literally magic, but they didn’t consider it magic. For them, it’s just normal; it’s how the world works.”
There isn’t an enchanted hound in “Tempo” yet, but there are callbacks to the childhood stories the illustrator grew up with throughout the book, strange things that just kind of happen and are almost taken for granted in the context of the narrative and the world that he has created. Like Betou experienced with the stories his family told him when he was a child, however, they only seem strange because the kind of fantasy that has dominated popular culture is the kind featured in books like “The Legend of Huma.” Of course, the enormous barbed-tailed birds and voluminously-robed swordsman in “Tempo” are out of the ordinary, because it seems the entertainment industry would rather force feed us another “Game of Thrones” or “Lord of the Rings” derivation rather than take a risk on something new and different, something with just as much magic, mystery and intrigue, but which we’re not yet “comfortable” with.
Love what you love
In spite of his propensity to self-publish, Betou isn’t new to comics, and “Tempo” isn’t his only success story. Back in his senior year of high school, he won a grant to print his first comic creation, “Blackman,” which has now had three print runs completely sell out, with the first print selling out on the first day of its release. A couple of years later, after he’d moved to Savannah to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), he was selected as one of Neighborhood Comics’ Artists in Residence. And in late 2023, he picked up several, as he described them, “real comics jobs,” including a series for a major publication that he’s not allowed to talk yet about because of a non-disclosure agreement.
To be honest, however, I don’t actually care about any of that. Yes, I’m excited for him, and I want to eventually read all of his work, but I didn’t fall in love with “Tempo” because of the artist’s resume, or because someone else said I should read it, or because Amazon or Netflix spent $500 million developing a series about his work (although I wish they would). And you shouldn’t care about that stuff either.
I fell in love with “Tempo” because it looked cool to me, was well-written, and presented something new. Love what you love because you love it. You don’t have to listen to anyone when exploring what the art world has to offer, including me.
But you should absolutely check out “Tempo.”
Find “Tempo” at Neighborhood Comics in Savannah at 1205 Bull St., where all of the copies on the shelf as of this writing are signed by the artist. You can also purchase copies from Betou’s website kevinbetou.com/. Follow him on Instagram @kb2draws.
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