In the 1850s, Araminta Ross, better known as Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom and started a legend that endures almost 175 years later. She is attributed with freeing 70 slaves including many members of her own family. Over the years, she would be connected with John Brown, as well as serving as spy for the Union Army during the Civil War. While that is not all she is known to have done, it seems that it is about time that this superheroine joins the ranks of the fictional vampire slaying Abraham Lincoln and do some fictional demon slaying. Enter stage right David Crownson, a talented and gifted writer back in 2016. BGN ran into Crownson at New York Comic Con 2023, after finding (and purchasing) a wonderful foil variant of Issue 1 of Harriet Tubman: Demon Slayer.
What possessed you to connect Harriet Tubman and Demon Slayer?
I wanted to scare racist white people. That was it. I wanted to make Black people feel good and scare racist whites. I’m half kidding.
Why Harriet Tubman: Demon Slayer?
It happened by accident. It was a random day where I was watching a Harriet Tubman documentary, and after the documentary was over, I was channel surfing and I landed on the ending of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with the katana fight scene with Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi. And then after that ended, I was watching Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and it was a terrible movie. It was one of the worst films. I mean, no disrespect to any filmmaker because it’s hard to make a thing. So, I was just writing in my journal. Because the movie was so bad, I made a whole journal entry about it — just stream of conscious writing. And these three things stood out and there was Harriet Tubman, a katana fight scene and witch hunters, and I was like, “Wait, Harriet Tubman: Demon Slayer. What if Harriet Tubman knows martial arts and beats up a racist werewolf? I don’t know.” And that was it. That was the journey.
How did you end up getting published with Massive?
I self-published the comic and self-financed it and did Kickstarters back in 2016. And then I just kept creating it. And I had offers and talks with other big publishers, but they never panned out. So, I just kept doing it by myself. And I think after the TV show announcement with Prentice Penny and Sebastian Jones and Disney, I got even more eyes on me. And then the book was already selling out in a bunch of places, but I didn’t have any distribution partnerships. There was no Diamond, there was no Penguin Random House. It was just my 2010 Mazda. So Massive…I think Kevin Roditeli, he saw me at a show and I had sold out and he asked me, “Hey man, do you go through Diamond?” “Nah, nah.” And I just told him what I just told you, and he said, “Hey look, let’s partner up. Let’s get your book into a couple of thousand comic bookshops.” And, so that’s been recent.
You said that it was going to be made into a television show?
Yes.
What can you tell us about that? What’s your progress? I know that’s not always as quick as people would like to see.
I saw a good friend. Basically, we were on Writers’ Strike, but now we’re not on Writers’ Strike and we go back to work next week. I can’t say much about it. All I can say it’s a Black writer’s room, it’s a Black showrunner, and we’re really excited about it. It’s going to be live action. That’s it. That’s all I can say.
It’s not even like a year or so estimate, maybe?
As soon as possible…But the good thing is that they want to get it right. They said, “Hey, we can make this come out really fast, but we want to get this done not just well.” They want it to be the best TV show because it’s going to be on Disney’s Onyx Collective, which is a Black owned studio hybrid of Disney. So, basically Prentice Penny, Ryan Coogler, Natasha Rothwell.
You let us know what’s going on?
Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There’ll be a nice little announcement probably in February of next year, and we’ll have a nice conversation.
It is great to watch hard work result in such a good outcome. We’ll keep in touch and hopefully have something to report on this February. But in the interim, Issue 2 of Harriet Tubman: Demon Slayer came out on October 25 and Issue 3 is due out in your local comic shop right before Thanksgiving.
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