WonderCon Anaheim 2018

The genre of horror can be a useful tool to unravel some of the complex systems surrounding representations of race and how to unpack how those systems cause serious complications in the lives of real people. We can see the simmering tensions between white liberal ideologies and the lived fears of black people in Jordan Peele's film Get Out (2017); traumas of sexual abuse, suicide, and familial upheaval in Where Children Play (2015); and fears around the erasure of white identity and interracial sexual tensions in Clive Barker's Candyman (1992). Join WonderCon special guest John Jennings (Kindred; University of California at Riverside) for a conversation that takes inspirations from such cinematic narratives and pushes them into the surreal world of the graphic novel, focusing on how comics and graphic novels have created ample spaces to critique systems of racism. Frances Gateward (California State University at Northridge) moderates.