Afua Richardson
Quick Facts
Biography
Afua Richardson is an African-Native American artist best known for her comic book illustration for Marvel's World of Wakanda. Her comic, Genius, with writers Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman won Top Cow’s 2008 Pilot Season. Some of her other works include work with NPR's Black History Month, All Star Batman for DC comics, Attack on Titan for Kodansha, Mad Max for Vertigo, and cover art for X-Men '92, Totally Awesome Hulk and Captain America and the Mighty Avengers. Marvel recently chose Richardson as the artist for a new comic featuring the character Blade. She is one of a small group of African American women artists who are employed by the "big two" comic publishers in the United States.
Biography
Richardson was raised in New York City. From a family of scientists, she started to play classical flute at age nine. She has performed at Carnegie Hall and on Soul Train. She has also performed with Sheila E. and Parliament-Funkadelic. Other music-related jobs she has held include being a backup singer, a beatboxer, a background dancer on MTV Jams and has appeared in an off-Broadway show with Melvin Van Peebles. She is part of the musical collective Future Soul Society, and has recorded with Alexa Edmonds Lima under the name 'Afua & Alexa'.
Richardson is a self-trained artist. She is a member of the Ormes Society, which promotes African-American women in the comics industry.
In working on the series, Genius (2007), she decided along with the two writers to tell the story through the voice of a black woman, Destiny Ajaye. Richardson's experience of being a minority in the United States has influenced her artistic work. In Genius, she draws violent acts in a way that is both "matter-of-fact and highly stylized," according to ComicsAlliance. Her visual style also helps portray Ajaye's thought processes and David Brothers call it "instantly understandable and worthy of poring over."
Awards
In 2011, Richardson received the Nina Simone Award for Artistic Achievement as one of the few African-American women comic book artists to work for the leading publishers in the field.