Bill Masuku is the newest entrant into the Zimbabwean Comic Book market showing consistent growth in terms of level of artwork, production quality and pretty engaging content generation. Bill’s first characters’ debut have since taken off with tremendous popularity. We caught up with the Comic Book and Anime fanatic Bill Masuku for a poke around his journey and is career. This superhero creator took some time from creating perfect humans to answer a few questions from us. Kirkpatrick Chidamba (KC) chats to Bill.
Kirkpatrick Chidamba: How did you get it into art? Is it a passion for you or are you envisioning a career Comic Book creation?
Bill Masuku: It’s both. I love drawing. I don’t know how many sketch books I’ve owned.I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. Rather than just diving into it. I’d say it was a snowball. One minute you’re sketching. Next thing you know, you’re doing an 8 hour piece But more than the art itself I love the stories I create. And the business potential is unlimited.
KC: Tell us more about Razor-man.
BC: Razor-Man is my main story. Set in modern day Zimbabwe, Harare. It tells the story of a young Zimbabwean guy who has to drop out of school and return home when his father is mysteriously murdered. The police have no leads and no one has answers. So he does what any of us would do “make a plan” and becomes the Razor-Man to find out the dark truths about his city
KC: What’s the state of the Comic Book industry in Zimbabwe?
BM: It’s rather silent and one of the biggest issues around the silence is content generation and availability. The industry needs Comics that come out frequently and consistently. At the same time as being affordable and available at the drop of a hat. All these things require large sums of capital. Or a digital store like eugemedia.net/shop.
KC: On that note, are you working on any game changing projects?
BM: There are two projects which I’m working on that I think will get people excited and even more people into reading locally crafted stories. Black Zeus, which has been highly anticipated since the character launched in ComeXposed‘s Comic Up Vol 1. and the recently announced (via FB live), Arcadia Knights story will definitely get the average reader base to boom.
KC: Why isn’t the Zimbabwean Comic Book industry a little more…Urban?
BC: As far as I understand movements like ComeXposed and Enigma Comix Africa have set goals and market segments which they wish to target and each strategy has its pros and cons. I also think expanding to higher density areas would do wonders for revenue and eventually industry building. Ultimately we want to tell the stories of Zimbabwe and to do that, we need you to support the industry.
You can connect with Bill on Facebook here
