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Some people spend decades figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Eric Battle found his calling at a corner store in West Philadelphia when he was 5.
“I can still remember the day, like it was yesterday,” said Battle, now 59.
He was walking to the store with his mother and two sisters when he discovered a comic book spinner rack in the back.
“I ran over and flipped through the comics. And it’s been a love affair ever since, but that spawned my interest in drawing and reading and everything else,” he said.
That fascination grew into a career illustrating stories for Marvel and DC Comics, children’s books and graphic novels. Now, Battle is helping explore the history of Black characters and creators in comics through “The Black Hero’s Journey,” an exhibition that opened Oct. 15 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.
Battle is a co-curator of the exhibition, which runs through May 13, 2027, in the Goldstein Gallery at the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. The free exhibition traces the evolution of Black comic book heroes and the people who created them, with a particular connection to Philadelphia.
For Battle, its opening also comes as he prepares for the publication of “Framing Emmett Till: Exposing Dark Fear,” a graphic novel he spent more than five years illustrating.
Written by Christopher Benson, the book follows an anonymous Black writer investigating Till’s murder. It draws on Benson’s experience working with Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, on her memoir, “Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America.”
Till was a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was abducted and murdered in 1955 after a white woman accused him of making advances toward her.
His mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so the public could see what had been done to her son. An all-white jury acquitted the two white men charged with his murder. Till’s death and the images of his battered body helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.
Benson is a journalist, attorney and associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. The book is being published by Megascope, an Abrams ComicArts imprint curated by John Jennings, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, and a friend of Battle’s.
Jennings previously collaborated with writer Damian Duffy on a graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s “Kindred,” published by Abrams ComicArts in 2017.
Benson said Jennings recognized how his writing and Battle’s artwork could complement each other.
“The Megascope publisher, John Jennings, was familiar with Eric’s work and saw the possibility of a powerful match of his narrative ability through images with mine through words,” Benson said. “Clearly, John made a wonderful choice.”
For Battle, illustrating that history required both extensive research and careful attention to his own well-being.
“I tackled the tougher scenes early on, when I recognized that I was in a good headspace, mentally, physically, and creatively, to engage with that material,” he said.
The work involved gathering reference materials to accurately depict the people and places in the story.
“It took a little over five years to complete because there’s so much research that had to be done and just gathering all the reference materials for the places and people who make up the story,” Battle said.
Despite the years spent creating the book, Benson and Battle worked together entirely from a distance.
“Eric and I developed a sort of Elton John-Bernie Taupin two-rooms working relationship,” Benson said. “We actually never met in person during the several years of his illustration work.”
They communicated mostly by email, with Benson responding to preliminary drawings and Battle asking questions about the story.
“It was a fascinating collaboration as he interpreted the text that had been set out, asking follow-up questions about the storyline and meaning,” Benson said.
The two finally met in September, when they appeared with Jennings on a panel at the Mississippi Book Festival and shared advance copies of “Framing Emmett Till.”
“It was a fantastic event, and the first time Chris and I met in person,” Battle said.
“The crowd was engaged and asked genuinely thoughtful questions.”
The book is scheduled for publication Oct. 27.
Battle’s path to that project began as soon as he returned home from the corner store as a child. Seeing his enthusiasm for drawing, his mother supplied blank sheets of paper — a gift that, to him, “was like Christmas.”
He attended Overbrook High School’s magnet arts program and later earned a bachelor’s degree in illustration from University of the Arts.
Battle’s first published artwork appeared in The Welcomat, then the city’s alternative newspaper. He went on to draw editorial cartoons for The Philadelphia Inquirer, illustrate children’s books and create fashion illustrations.
To break into comics, he traveled to New York City to show editors his portfolios.
“It took quite a while before I was able to get my first job in comics, but that’s how it all really started,” Battle said.
His first Marvel assignment involved Cable, the X-Men character, in backup stories written by Jeph Loeb.
Battle returned to Philadelphia in 2004 after living in Denver and Weehawken, New Jersey. While in Weehawken, he continued making trips to New York to maintain relationships with comic book editors.
“I was going back and forth to New York, just trying to keep those relationships I had with those editors going,” he said.
Back in Philadelphia, Battle connected with the Celebration of Black Writers, an event series produced by author and Art Sanctuary founder Lorene Cary.
At a Franklin Institute event featuring writers Octavia Butler, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes and Samuel R. Delany, Battle met L.A. Banks, the West Philadelphia author of the Vampire Huntress Legend series.
“I started collaborating with her, creating illustrations,” he said.
Battle also reconnected with interdisciplinary artist and educator Homer Jackson. That relationship led to Battle curating, art directing and illustrating the first volume of “Philadelphia Jazz Stories,” a history of jazz in the city.
But the Till project carried a particular weight.
The graphic novel spans 272 pages, with Battle’s artwork appearing on 264 of them, he said.
“Illustrating this particular story had huge responsibility attached to it, because of the intense and sensitive subject matter and the need to accurately portray the events and individuals connected to it,” Battle said.
Benson said their exchanges sometimes involved correcting interpretations of the story.
“There were no disagreements. But there were times when we needed to make corrections in the interpretation,” he said. “That is only because, after more than 20 years of working on Emmett Till narratives and two other books, I had intimate knowledge of every single detail of the story that unfolds in this work.”
Battle said the editorial team also understood the emotional demands of depicting Till’s murder.
“When I first signed on to the project, the editor-in-chief of Abrams ComicArts, Charlie Kochman, apologized to me for what I was going to have to draw. Everyone involved with this project understood the gravity that came with it,” he said.
After years spent depicting that painful history, Battle welcomed a return to the imaginative worlds that first drew him to comics.
“As soon as I finished the Framing Emmett Till graphic novel, I needed to get back to drawing superheroes, monsters, and all kinds of imaginary chaos,” he said. “Thankfully, the ‘Black Hero’s Journey’ was the remedy that I was looking for.”
