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During the 2010s, adult animation was the only place Black animated shows were welcomed, specifically under Adult Swim. Aaron McGruder’s hilarious satire “The Boondocks” was one of the block’s most popular marquee titles, the television adaptation of the Blackspoitation parody film “Black Dynamite” became a cartoon, “Mike Tyson Mysteries” was a funny riff on Scooby-Doo, and musician Tyler the Creator made his mark with “The Jellies.” While there was variety, hardly any of those shows ran in conjunction with each other. At the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, Tyler the Creator discussed the lack of Black representation when asked why his lead character Cornell went from white in the shorts to Black on the show. He replied:
“How many Black cartoon characters are on TV right now? Name five. I’ll give you time. No cartoons. It is none. They cancelled Static Shock. Nobody remembers Fillmore. So I said [bleep] that, we about to make them Black. He ain’t got no guns, he ain’t shooting no basketball, and he’s a goober, and we gon’ put him on TV. And he’s the lead character, he ain’t the comic relief, he ain’t the sidekick, he’s lead.”
The following year, Sony Pictures Animation released “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which changed the game. Besides being a breathtaking, stylish film that called for more visual variety in the medium, it wove a tight-knit message about how anyone from any background can become Spider-Man.
Because of “Spider-Verse”‘s success, we’ve seen a major boom in animation. Now more than ever, Black animators, writers, creators, and directors are in the rooms they want to be in and are enlarging the pool with an assortment of shows, short films, specials, and films, aimed toward multiple demographics. Just this past February, we saw the release of “Proud Family: Louder and Prouder,” the beautiful, kaleidoscopic, CG sci-fi action series “My Dad the Bounty Hunter,” and the delightfully charming and colorful 2D-animated superhero cartoon “Moon-Girl and Devil Dinosaur.”
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