“…I’ve always tried to market my strip to newspapers and magazines that run in Black communities because they ‘get it.’ It wasn’t until I began to talk to comic strip syndicates that I first started hearing negative comments. The worst part was that I tried so hard to make it a positive strip and was STILL met with comments that people in the midwest would never be able to identify with the characters because they lived in such a ‘bad neighborhood.’

“The problem was that a lot of these comments were editors dealing with their own preconceived notions of Black teenagers. Because when I looked at the samples that I sent around, 99% of them took place inside of the boys’ living room, or in the bookstore that the family owns and operates. I never understood where the ‘bad neighborhood’ comments came from.

“Then when I wanted to do a Mama’s Boyz book, I quickly found out that publishers REALLY didn’t get was I wasn’t trying to do. One compared it to a Black sitcom, which was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to hear. So I published my books myself.”

Jerry Craft