COLUMBIA — One man’s artwork is inspiring confidence from colleagues and awe from “anyone with eyeballs,” as his editor puts it.
Columbia resident and Benedict College alumnus Sanford Greene is illustrating the award-winning “Bitter Root” comic book series, infusing supernatural forces into the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement. His art also graces the covers of DC Comics’ “Absolute” line, a reimagining of Superman, Wonder Woman and other heroes.
Greene’s work has been coveted by big-screen filmmakers who put him on design work for the animated Marvel Spider-Man trilogy that launched with “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” in 2018. The third installment is slated for 2027.
Now, Greene’s work is on display in museums. He announced June 21 at the Heroes Convention in Charlotte that the South Carolina State Museum has acquired his art from a Harriet Tubman story. Museum curators saw the pages on display at an art gallery in the spring and inquired about presenting the work.
The images that caught their attention were from a comic book compilation, “Femme Magnifique: 50 Magnificent Women Who Changed the World,” put together by Greene’s longtime collaborator and admirer, editor Shelly Bond.
“You are so inspiring to so many of us who’ve been in the comic book industry for decades,” Bond said at a panel with Greene at Heroes Con. “We’re jaded and we’re bored, and you keep things so fresh in comics.”
The process is reciprocal, Greene said at the panel, as he welcomed an editor who would push his capabilities. Bond did just that when she assigned him a short story about DC Comics’ Nightwing in 2013. The editor praised his artwork as the coolest Dick Grayson — Nightwing’s alter ego — has ever looked. That’s because she challenged him to do so, Greene said.
“When you’re breaking into comics, your first assignments, more than likely, will be those tighter deadline assignments, because that’s just how you prove your worth,” Greene said. “I was so used to finishing a page, move on to the next page, and doing a page, maybe two pages a day. Shelly was like, ‘Nope, let’s slow down and let’s make this really work.’ “
He joked about Bond’s heavy use of her red marker on his drafts. Intimidating at first, he’s come to welcome the red ink.
“I never had an editor pay attention to every panel of my storytelling before,” Greene said. “I realized that, okay, I’m working with a real editor. Throw out all the stuff that I knew, and now I’m gonna learn.”
More than a decade later, what he’s learned has earned him continued accolades and more Hollywood attention. “Bitter Root” won two Eisner Awards, the comic industry’s most prestigious recognition program. The series is now being adapted into a movie by Regina King and Ryan Coogler. Greene said the movie is still in early development stages.
“Bitter Root” itself is a happenstance creation of Greene joining other creators who were also seeking to tell stories of Black cultural life in 1920s New York City.
“(Writer) David Walker and I had an idea of doing something with Luke Cage that takes his story back to the Harlem Renaissance,” Greene said. “Marvel said, ‘No, we’re not interested in that.’ But we thought that was a really cool idea. We learned (artist) Chuck Brown had an idea about this family that hunts monsters during the Harlem Renaissance. And I’m like, ‘Whoa, that’s crazy.’ We’re over here thinking of something similar. So we were off to the races.”
There are more “Bitter Root” stories to come from Greene and his team, plus at least one comic project from a major publisher. He can’t release any details yet, but readers and colleagues will watch and anticipate, nonetheless.
“I know you’re going to knock this out of the park,” writer Jonathan Hickman wrote in notes to Greene as they plotted a Doctor Doom story for Marvel Comics last year. “Can’t wait to see what you put down.”