Cheddar News correspondent Shannon LaNier visits the 11th Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. 

Cheddar News correspondent Shannon LaNier visits the 11th Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem.&nbsp;

Wake Up With Cheddar

Festival in Harlem Celebrates History of Black Superheroes 

Welcome back to wake up with chatter everybody. I'm Hannah Do and I'm Shannon Lane. Thanks again for joining us. All right. So I got a chance to indulge in my inner comic book nerd. We are both comic book nerds. So I love that. This was awesome. I had a great time at the Black Comic book Festival at the Schomburg Center in Harlem where I got a chance to meet some talented amazing artists. Check them out when I was a kid. They didn't have people that look like me in comic books, but thanks to a lot of amazing creators they do now. So we're here at the Schomburg Center in New York City for Black comic con. Let's check out some of the creators Shana. I love your work here. Tell me about your comics. I love making comics that are starring like just cute black girls being joyful and also comics that show black girls being, you know, empowering. I've been an artist my entire life. I think I was born with a gene to just create and tell stories. And for me, comics is like the perfect medium. It's essentially like a gateway drug for all the good stuff, games, movie, animation, everything starts here. So whether you have a script for a movie or a television show, they do storyboards, they do essentially comic book style storytelling to kind of give people that visual cue. So for me, this is my way of telling my stories to you guys, the world. What do you think the importance is for people color and see themselves represented in comics? Absolutely. So, you know, Ryan, the tape back to like 88 89 I was a young kid. There were no comics like this on the shelves anywhere. So we obviously want to be the change we see, we want to create the disparity that we are missing. So this is really my attempt to actually create and fulfill that gap that I saw, you know, when I was a kid. And so when someone comes to my table, they can get inspired, they can see someone that looks like them creating something like this and then get inspired to create their own. And what do you that people take away from your amazing comments? Honestly, you know, I want them to be entertained, but I also want them to be uplifted. I want them to be inspired creatively. I mean, each book we have is a little different. OK. This is our sci fi martial art action story. OK. A history is our dystopian time travel story where we deal with like monsters pandemics. And then this one is our Space Oper book to the game where we talk about black Children in space is being brilliant, being cool. So for them, it's like I want them to come to the table, be inspired and be excited.