Kab Comics
Being a person that’s always been intrigued by anything African, Cherotich was fascinated when she first met the creatives at Kab Comics with their displayed work at the Digiart Fest. For her it was the the equivalent of love at first sight, except she wasn’t stupidly falling in love with a prince in shining armor or something; she fell in love with the courage of these story tellers who tapped into their African heritage and told an African story...boldly.
Cherotich spoke with Brian Humura, Creator and Publisher at Kab Comics, in a bid of understanding and chatting with a fellow lover of African stories to bring to light what goes in the incredible mind of such an artiste and with the hopes that more Ugandans and Africans will get to see and appreciate what these two conversationalists appreciate, as Humura stated “One of the main purposes of me doing this story is so that people can pick interest in our history and heritage and delve deeper into it.”
- Cherotich: I know this is going to come off very cliché but here goes the question; Who is Brian Humura?
- Humura: In a nutshell, Brian Humura is a story teller at heart, entrepreneur and a huge fan of anything that’s artsy and pop culture. I like to think of myself as a story teller because I’ve been telling stories for as long as I can remember; from the first time I could hold a pencil and illustrate, I’ve been drawing comic books, loads of fan art and characters in movies. I am also one of the founders of Kab Inc. which started out as Kab Comics.
- Cherotich: I’m going to be honest, I haven't really read any other work of yours except for “Ndahura”. So why the title “Ndahura”?
- Humura: First things first, I grew up reading comic books from the West, Europe and Japan and one thing I realised is we don’t really have anything African that’s represented out there. That really struck a chord with me. As a kid one of the stories that fascinated me was the story about the Batembuzi; these gods and demi gods that lived in Uganda, one of them being Ndahura. And truth be told when you look into their history there’s not much known about them. I actually thought of this as an awesome and huge opportunity to exploit something really cool because it gives any story teller a lot of creative freedom to work with. So that’s what inspired “Ndahura”; it’s an explosive story about a Ugandan demi god living in a modern time with a super hero genre attached to it.
- Cherotich: Exciting! So would you call yourself a Pan African or do you think that’s a bit too political?
- Humura: Pan African?! Whoa...that’s a huge one! One thing I can say for certain is I’m very big on legacy, it’s the one thing that keeps me up at night; how will I be remembered? So I’d like to think the future generations who’ll read my work will perhaps label me as a Pan African or just an artiste telling a story because that’s really up to them to decide. In some ways that’s what it means to be a story teller; for you to let your audience read a story and decide what they think.
- Cherotich: At the back of your comic book you made a beautiful statement that stuck with me; you said “Everything simply tastes a little better when you’re home”. This is why I asked if you’d consider yourself a Pan African or someone that’s just trying to tap into Africa’s stories because for so long they’ve been hidden and, unarguably, you did a great job in modernising an African story.
- Humura: Firstly, thank you, that is very sweet of you! Here’s the thing, for the longest time in our history as Africans we’ve been looked down upon, for example, being categorised as savages or illiterates. And unfortunately this mentality has bled into so many generations; they think whatever comes out from the West and isn’t African is superior to what we have here. I think it’s high time we learn to appreciate who we are; our people, our history and our heritage. But in order to do that we must first acknowledge our past that, yes we were colonised...we can’t run away from that, now how do we move past that? It’s time we become self reliant in, let’s say, our creativity, our story telling, our trade, our production of goods. So, without being so preachy, there’s so many themes in my books that I want to talk about and get people to think about and that’s probably the main reason the book may pass off as Pan African. But, as I said, that’s up to the audience to decide.
- Cherotich: As a story teller, I’m of the opinion your mediums of story telling are diverse. So what other format of story telling do you use aside from comic books?
- Humura: Yes, of course, there are other formats we specialise in as Kab Inc. We produce concept art and we do story boards and quite recently we’ve been working on our first animation project; I think it’s going to be awesome. We’re expanding our portfolio right now so I’m confident big things are on the horizon.
- Cherotich: For the sakes of those that may have very little knowledge of Uganda’s history and myths,kindly give us a little story of who Ndahura was to the Batembuzi.
- Humura: Ndahura was one of the most influential kings of the Batembuzi Dynasty. The Batembuzi were demi gods and gods who ruled over the Great Lakes region for some time and they were powerful and all knowing. They can be traced back to around 1100 AD; that’s how ancient they are and that means there’s not much known about them so imagine the creative freedom I have as a story teller with just that bit of information.
- Cherotich: So something stood out for me in this comic book; Marcus, an African man with afro- textured hair, dark skin and typical Afrocentric features has blue eyes! Why? I know Africans with natural blonde hair and blue eyes exist but they probably constitute 1% of the entire continental population; so I’m curious as to why you chose blue eyes for Marcus.
- Humura: I have a lot of influences and one of them is manga and anime (Japanese animation). Typically, Japanese naturally have jet black hair and either black or brown eyes, but in anime and manga you’ll find that their characters are portrayed flamboyantly; they’re blondes and red heads and have all these colourations in their eyes. I thought that was cool because as story tellers they explored their creative freedom. But I will not explain why Marcus has blue eyes because I think that’s part of the story that the readers will get to discover and I don’t want to give any spoilers, but trust there’s an explanation for everything I’ve written or drawn.
- Cherotich: Do you think your work would speak to a child deep down in Masaka or a teenager in the heart of Kasese that has never seen a blackboard nor set foot in a classroom?
- Humura: I remember I attended a small convention, Alliance Francais I think, and after my presentation the audience was asking me questions. A lady asked me why I chose to use English as my medium in my comic book and not a local language, and I thought that was a very good and valid question. Trust me, one thing we have considered is translating these books but in most cases either the resources or the budgets are limited so we are forced to use a common language but the goal is to eventually translate everything. And I think as long as someone can understand what they’re consuming then they can pretty much enjoy reading Ndahura; so yes I think my message would cut across all, whether someone is in a rural setting, in town or abroad. I’d hope that if they read it they’d relate to it in some way.
- Cherotich: As a story teller, what are you trying to achieve with your story telling?
- Humura: For the longest time I thought I wanted to be a lawyer until I was in A’ level when it finally dawned on me and I had an epiphany. I was like “Hold up Brian! Do you actually like reading? Do you really think you want to be a lawyer? Really, what do you love doing?” and that’s when it hit me that I’ve always drawn comic books, I’ve always loved reading them and I was like I’m going to be a comic book artiste! Everyone I told this said to me “you’re never going to make it in this country” or “you’re going to die poor” and I’d always just be like okay let’s wait and see. So when I started this I knew that I will be playing the long game and I had to be patient and consistent and eventually things will pay off. And over the years I’ve seen my career grow and flourish in ways I never thought possible, well I did imagine and dream about them, but now they’ve started coming to fruition. Legacy is the most important thing to me, as I’d mentioned earlier, and eventually my legacy will do all the talking.
- Cherotich: It’s no secret we are in tough economic times and I bet many people wonder how you make money out of the story telling that you do. I’m one of those people so please do kindly fill us in on how this may have become a lucrative venture for you.
- Humura: When we started Kab Inc the idea was to start something that was fresh and new and I didn’t really think we were going to start making money immediately because like I said, this was a long shot and we were playing the long game. I remember during that time I was focusing on the stories while I was doing some finance as a side hustle that kept me afloat; that was what was keeping me alive and what was pushing the dream. When COVID hit and a lot of businesses fell that’s when I decided to put out the call; “Officially Kab Comics is taking on client/client work. If you guys are interested please holla” and surprisingly the reception was good and ever since then it has been crazy. So we do a lot of client work now, like I had mentioned earlier, comic book colouring, concept art, our first animation project and our flagship. So the business end of the thing facilitates creation of stories; when we take on clients, the client work helps us facilitate the story telling so it’s a win-win for everyone.
- Cherotich: One thing I have learnt with artistes is they will work with things where they see their identity; a painter will paint a character that probably embodies a part of their personality. What character do you see yourself in in the comic book “Ndahura”?
- Humura: I think it was Davis (Editor in Chief at Kab Comics) who said Ndahura and some of the characters look like me because I’m the one who illustrates them and I keep denying that but maybe he does have a point. The truth is we do channel a lot of what we create from our inner selves so whatever you’re writing or illustrating there’ll always be a little bit of you in them, because whatever you create is coming from this whole universe you’ve created in your mind. So to answer your question, I think each and every one of those characters embody a little bit of me because in some way I’m putting out questions I have, hopefully looking for some kind of answer.
- Cherotich: Consider this final question as one from a fan to a creator; is Ruhanga’s armor actually real or it’s just fiction? Because at one point or another we’ve all heard of the Batembuzi, Ndahura and other demi gods but I don’t recall hearing of their weapons; so were the artefacts in the book purely a work of your creativity?
- Humura: Ruhanga’s armor is very real!! (Goes ahead to admit he’s just kidding after saying that in the most serious voice) The artefacts, Ruhanga’s armor included, are all something I just came up with, of course, inspired by some of the tools and weapons the demi gods used like spears, shields and the likes of it. I thought the fact that they had weapons and tools at their disposal was an interesting story in and of itself. I wouldn’t say they actually existed but I’d like to think that logically they used some kind of tools and I thought that would be very interesting to explore in the story.
