Joel Christian Gill (Strange Fruit, Fast Enough) and Oni Press have announced their next collaboration, Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence, a graphic memoir documenting the creator’s childhood to be released in 2020.
Oni’s description of the comic reads: “Fights is Joel Christian Gill’s visceral and deeply affecting memoir chronicling his youth and coming of age as a poor Black child in a chaotic southern landscape of rough city streets and foreboding backwoods during the crack cocaine boom of the 1980s.”
Senior editor Shawna Gore, who joined the editorial team last year, said, “Oni is incredibly proud to include Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence as a lead title in our 2020 slate. Joel tells his story with astonishing nuance and clarity – the story of the troubled and conflicted boy he once was, told by the brave and compassionate man he became. Fights is an important and imposing book, both in size and what it aspires to reach in its readers.”
In the comic, a young Joel Christian Gill deals with living in a world where doling out violence is a way to solve your problems, and how those on the more sensitive side deal with living with violence while trying to make a better life for themselves.
On the challenge of making this comic, Gill said, “Fights is the hardest thing I’ve done. However, I felt like documenting the abuse and trauma [I] survived could help others in similar situations. As much as this is personal and terrifying I feel like there is someone out there who will benefit from hearing my story.”
Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence hits shelves on January 2020.
Disclosure: The Beat is owned by Polarity, which also owns Oni Press.
