More Black and Brown Faces in the Comic Books: An Interview with Flashbang’s Rorie Still

About a year ago, I interviewed Rorie Still about her self-published prose and poetry book Flashbang: Sci-Fi Stories That Will Blow Your Mind, an Afrofuturist collection of short stories. Now she’s back with a graphic novel adaptation of that book. We talked a bit about adapting her own work, working with a lot of moving parts, and the rewards of owning your work. Flashbang Black Nerd Problems: For those that haven’t read your first book, what is Flashbang all about? Rorie Still: The Afrofuturist short story collection is about an unseen but heard benevolent trickster Goddess who is giving wayward blessings to people in an alternate Philadelphia. BNP: What’s the relation to your first book which was prose, and this new one that is a graphic novel? RS: The first edition of Flashbang is written in both poetry and prose. The graphic novel is based on the first edition of Flashbang, and it utilizes both poetry and prose as well. BNP: What are some short synopses for a few of the stories within Flashbang? RS: Blowup: A young woman’s chance and intimate encounter with her favorite celebrity goes terribly wrong and highly bizarre, becoming a web from which she cannot escape.

My So-Called Power: A teenage boy, named Jared, bullied both at home and at school, must piece together how to use his new and chaotic powers to make a difference in the world and in his own life.

Taking Wing: A teenage girl, must find the courage to face her heroine, a public guardian angel doing bad to do go…