Mini Interview: Jesse J. Holland: This was a really hard story to tell

Jesse J. Holland is awarded journalist and novelist. He wrote novelization of Reginald Hudlin´s comics Who Is the Black Panther? for which he was nominated for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Awards. Now he is editing prose Black Panther anthology. I gave him three questions regarding his yesterday´s digital comics in anthology Represent! #2 (mini review you can find here)

 

Is you comics completely autobiographical? What were your emotions when you were writing it?

You can say it is based on my life! Everything is true, but I’ve compressed some things for narrative purposes. The dialogue from my grandfather and father telling our family history is true, and you can find that same story on our family farm website, http://hollandfamilyfarms.com. This was a really hard story to tell for me, partly because it was so personal and partly because of my training as a journalist which says that the writer is NEVER part of the story. I always get a little queasy writing about myself but I’m proud to say that I showed it to my parents and siblings who still live on the farm in Mississippi and they loved it. So I guess I did it right!

Will there be more comics from you? Some from DC?

I love to write, so I’m always looking for the next thing. I can’t announce anything yet, but I’m working on something right now that could show up soon from DC Comics not only in digital but in hard copy as well. And of course, I have my next big Black Panther project coming out (I wrote the first Black Panther prose novel back in 2017, Black Panther: Who Is the Black Panther?) at the end of this month called Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda. It’s a collection of short prose stories about T’Challa and other characters from the world of Wakanda told by me and other science fiction and fantasy writers from across the African Diaspora. It’s available in e-book, Kindle and other electronic book formats, as well as hardcover from Titan Books and Marvel Entertainment! https://bit.ly/talesofwakandaAm

Do you like digital comics? How did you enjoyed reading this comics?

I have been a fan of digital comics for an extremely long time. I still have a closet full of comic books, and a bookcase with several shelves of graphic novels, but the majority of my current reading list is all digital. I’m a longtime subscriber to Marvel Unlimited (to the point where I have almost 275,000 points!), DC Universe, which is now DC Universe Infinite, and Comixology for everything else. This way, my collection is always with me on my iPad and MacBook Air (it’s really frustrating trying to read on an iPhone) and I don’t have to worry about storage space anymore! I still buy hardcopies when I’m at a convention and can get it signed, but the majority of my up-to-date collection is digital.