New Masters is Much More Than Africa’s Star Wars

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What began life as Outcasts of Jupiter, a Kickstarter campaign back in 2014, has grown wings and soared through the comicsphere under a new title. New Masters hit stores and digital February 2, 2022, as the first installment of six. Brothers, Shobo and Shof Coker, combine an unapologetically African perspective with the trappings of fantasy sci-fi and have concocted a genuinely human story — maybe a little alien, too.

From the title page, the reader is invited to wonder what life would be like out in the world alone. Little does the reader know, the world is about to get a lot bigger, and the protagonist swallowed up in a gargantuan plot that’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, A New Hope, and a little Ocean’s 11. Chapter 01 of New Masters asks the question, “What would happen if Earth was Africa and the galaxy was Europe,” and further, “How does a girl survive when everyone — from her village to the leaders of the galaxy — couldn’t care less?”

Your introduction to the vast imaginations of Shobo and Shof begins with a plunge deep into the West African underground. The dead keep watch over its entrances. Below lie deposits of valuable resources; both the next day’s meal ticket for a poor scavenger and a galaxy-wide commodity whose price just went up.

Layer upon complex layer is added to create a story that is as beautiful as it is rich in lore. Every page adds to the wonder and asks more questions of the writers than one single issue can answer. The Afrofuturistic aesthetic is completely captivating. The use of onomatopoeia within the panels blends sound with movement and invokes the feeling of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy or George Herriman’s Krazy Kat (for you cool cats in the know). The lived-in atmosphere that Star Wars introduced to the cinemas in 1977 is alive in New Masters. Every character has a tell-tale sign that their lives didn’t begin when the reader happened upon them — gapped-tooth smiles; a missing arm; the reader wondering "Who braided her hair?"

New Masters is the story of a government that feeds itself and the rich off the backs of those scuttling to make ends meet. It’s the tale of the organic versus the mechanical — the ocean crashing against the rocky shore. When you get right down to it, it’s the place we’ve found ourselves too often throughout human history. A planet and its people are at risk, and there may be no way to save those at the bottom. And the rich are too absorbed in the decadence of greed and accumulation to see the judge standing at the door. The illegal obsidian trade is all that separates the poor from death and the rich from more riches.

Someone has to go, because whoever has the money has the power. And whoever has the power — lives.

Take this fantastic voyage from Earth to Jupiter and everywhere in between with Shobo and Shof’s New Masters. Find your local comic book shop or head over to Comixology to pick up Chapter 01. Chapter 02 of this six-issue miniseries hits stores and digital March 9th.