Black Comic Book Festival draws thousands in Harlem

Hari Sreenivasan:

This weekend, New York Schomburg Library in Harlem celebrated the tradition of black comics with its annual Black Comic Book Festival. Thousands attend the two day exhibition, which also features screenings, panel discussions and a cosplay competition. And for fans both young and old, it's a chance to meet some of their favorite comic creators and maybe find some new superheroes.

Organizer:

The Black Comic Book Festival will started eight years ago and it was smaller as a start. Now we get about 8000 people. What's been really exciting is to see the ways that black creativity in black culture is being celebrated.

Participant:

Have young kids come up and get really excited about the books. Is really the point of it all. Our main character is a strong black teenage girl who's getting a team together to help her save the world.

Child:

There's a comic called the Tuskegee Airmen, and that's my favorite comic.

Mother:

His great-uncle, my uncle, was a Tuskegee Airmen. It's amazing that my uncle is represented in a comic book.

Participant:

It's MLK weekend and we think of comics and Martin Luther King is very different, but I think they're both about heroism and thinking about ways that heroes can be everyday people. That hero can be you.