Box of Bones: Book Two

John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and all-around champion of Black culture. As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. His research interests include the visual culture of Hip Hop, Afrofuturism and politics, Visual Literacy, Horror, and the EthnoGothic, and Speculative Design and its applications to visual rhetoric. Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and cofounder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University.Ayize Jama-Everett was born in 1974 and raised in Harlem, New York. Since then he has traveled extensively in Northern Africa, New Hampshire, and Northern California. He holds a Master’s in Clinical Psychology and a Master’s in Divinity. He teaches religion and psychology at Starr King School for the Ministry when he’s not working as a school therapist at the College Preparatory School. He is the author of three novels, The Liminal People, The Liminal War, and The Entropy of Bones, as well as an upcoming graphic novel with illustrator John Jennings entitled Box of Bones. When not educating, studying, or beating himself up for not writing enough, he’s usually enjoying aged rums and practicing his aim.

"This mesmerizing blend of Black American folk tradition and dark fantasy provides much food for thought, as well as edgy entertainment." —Library Journal (starred review)“As a lifelong horror lover who savors stories where horror intersects with Black history and family lore, I devoured Box of Bones and marveled at every page. Ayize Jama-Everett and John Jennings have created a revolutionary, unforgettable journey I was happy to risk the nightmares for.” —Tananarive Due“Centuries of oppression, of violence, of torture, but still we don’t let it loose. What might happen if we did? The price for revenge is too high, this is the thing we guard. The real helter skelter. This is the Box of Bones. ” —Nalo Hopkinson“Box of Bones is a brilliantly disturbing nightmare. It manages to be both beautiful and disgusting with every turn of the page as it explores a gruesome horror that I’ve never seen in comics before.” —David Walker"Box of Bones is the type of book that invites readers to confront that which lurks in their own personal shadows, forcing them to decide whether or not to befriend what lives there." —Shawn Taylor, East Bay Express"This spirited project is part of the trend of ethno-gothic fiction in the comics market, and offers a landscape ripe to contemplate such spooky and strange fruit." —Publishers Weekly