A volcanic explosion 2,900 feet beneath Jackson forged the capital city’s very own superhero, Captain Jackson.
The immortal man – born 1822, the year Jackson was founded – wears a green suit inspired by the city’s flag and takes to the skies in the inaugural issue of Jackson Comics. He fights fire with fire to defend the city from flamethrower-wielding villains who seek the downfall of Jackson.
“He’s protecting not just the people of Jackson, but also the idea of Jackson,” said Blake Barnes, the writer behind Captain Jackson and the founder of Jackson Comics. “The villains show up in Jackson and they want to just burn the whole place down. They’re like, let’s just start from scratch, let’s burn it all up.”
Barnes said he wanted readers to be able to imagine their own villains, so he gave the antagonists stormtrooper-esque outfits to mask their identities.
“But I like to think they’re from Rankin County,” he said jokingly.
Barnes, a Mississippian who has lived in Jackson about five years, wanted to give local writers and artists a space to create comics about their home. Since launching in 2022, he’s published two issues of Jackson Comics so far, featuring short illustrated stories that explore a perennial topic for Mississippi writers – the relationship between the state’s past, present and future. A third installment is due to publish this spring.
The stories also consider Jackson’s relationship to the state of Mississippi.
“Faulkner was the one who said to understand a place like America you have to first understand a place like Mississippi, and I think it can be said on a smaller note to understand Mississippi you have to understand Jackson,” he said.
When Barnes envisioned Captain Jackson, he knew he wanted the superhero to be a Black man in his mid 40s. He teamed up with local comic book legend Steven Butler, who has drawn for Marvel and DC Comics, to bring the character to the page.
While Jackson is a city so often associated with the issue of access to water, Barnes turned to another key element in Jackson’s past: Fire. He drew inspiration from the dormant volcano beneath Jackson, the Civil War-era moniker “Chimneyville,” a reference to Union troops burning Jackson to the ground, and the fires that so many abandoned homes succumb to today.
Barnes wanted Captain Jackson to be able to use this element to protect the city.
A television producer at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Barnes said he was also inspired by an oft-repeated description of civil rights icon Medgar Evers.
“We just kept hearing all these people say that Medgar Evers had this fire inside him and he wanted to keep going,” he said. “I liked the idea of fire being a motivator and not necessarily something that was destructive.”
Captain Jackson belongs to the city in more ways than one: When Barnes held an exhibition at the Municipal Art Gallery in October last year, he donated a character sketch, created by Butler, to the city.
For the second issue, Barnes turned the clock forward, curating stories from students of all ages about the future of Mississippi.
“Most of it was dystopian,” he said. “But they all ended on some good note. … They haven’t lost hope, so that’s good.”
The stories contain imaginative plots: A bomb has fallen on the state, and a young boy discovers a ragged state flag among the ashes. Magnolia trees come to life and attack. The end times have come, but a biker and the owner of a home cooking restaurant still make conversation over a biscuit.
For his contribution, Barnes imagined Captain Jackson accompanying a group of students to a museum, where they encounter a man from the future who has traveled back in time to punish people for their historical wrongdoings.
The villain was inspired by Barnes’ own complicated feelings about Mississippi’s history. He challenged himself to embody that idea in a character.
“That’s something I have felt for some time,” he said. “We’re always having to pay the dues of people who came before us, and I wish we could just restart with every generation, have it be our own way.”
But Captain Jackson teaches the students that they can’t change the past.
“They go off with this idea that they can change the future and that’s really what they have to work for,” he said.
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