"I am honored to be presenting the Launch, Life & Impact of the growing Black Age of Comics genre / movement at the prestigious ASALH Annual Conference this coming week. Thanks to positive folks like y'all a lot has happened in the industries related to comix and Graphic Novels since 1993. Every collector, creative contributor & indie publisher alike."

 LAMBIEK bio link!

 We plan to start offering for sell our vintage Black Age related products. Hard to find, Mint Condition and other rare items will be offered here in connection with Ebay. Or you can contact us directly via our Contact Us Tab at www.onlistudios.com.

"NOG The Protector of the Pyramides". 1981. Good Condition. This is the indie Graphic Novel the opened the door to the growing Black Age of Comics genre/movement. Long before the trending of Afrofuturism and the diversity we enjoy in the current comic book industry. 

(Onli uses the French spelling of Pramides as an homage to his late mentor Moebius and the French Bande-Dessinee explosion of the 1970s that gave us Heavy Metal Magazine, plus Tron, and Fifth Element movies.)

The first book published by ONLI STUDIOS during the classic "Black & White" Boom of the 1980s that included the likes of Teen-Aged Ninja Mutant Turtles and much more.

Its original content was reprinted in 2021 in the New Your Best-Selling Graphic Novels listed, "Its Life How I See it"!. 

Original art from NOG was featured mural-sized on the outer wall of the Musuem of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2021 for its blockbuster group exhibition, "CHICAGO COMICS"! 

NOG is pure innovative groundbreaking Rhythmism:Future-Primitif predating that trending of Afrofuturism in design, content, and flow. Making it historic in Art Terms along as the coming expansion of the comics; industry. 

Low original one-time press run of 3,000. A rare find!

This is a fantastic addition to any serious collection!

PRICE: $500.00. Ships insured, in archival secure packing per USPS. With our Certificate of Authenticity. (This price / value is expected to rise.)

It is ironic how so many celebrated Fine Artists claim to be inspired by comics or actually steal images and ideas from comic books to include in their works to amazing financial gain. Yet they have never actually worked in the comics related industry of even done their own indie comic book.  However, those amazing visual artists who do actually create comic books and indie Graphic Novels are diminished as somehow, not actually being true or credible artists. Thus, miss out on the money and celebrations.

With Prof. Onli we have a dynamic bold visual artist who has spent decades doing both and much more.  

Let the celebrations begin!

Afrofuturism, as we know it, would not have emerged 

without those real pioneers in the comics' industry.

FEAR NO INDIE BLACK AGE GRAPHIC NOVEL!

 

 

 

 

(Note: Each image will enlarge to enhance your viewing experience.)

The art of Turtel Onli is African Centered. Many who have seen it appear to be confused by it. The culture conscious African Americans find it unacceptable because it doesn’t bespeak the “traditional” African that they have come to know and love.  

The middle class find it difficult to accept because it is too African and not like what they have been told is “good art.  The Rhythm & Blues Hip-Hoppin’ Black Americans don’t know about him or his work.

As I stated earlier, his work is African-Centered. He has termed his style Rhythmism.  He coined the term in the early 1970s, and rightly so.

The paintings, wearable art and performances he creates are alive with RHYTHM.

His work is demonstrative in its force.

Prof. Turtel Onli with his showstopping "Rhythmistic Adinkra Bambara Madonna Quilt" in the "Parapluie" group exhibition at the Hyde Park Art center, Chicago. 2024.

 

Visual excursions: “Tanya” Oils on 24” X 36” canvas 1985. 

Akomo Colored pencil on 18” X 24” acid free paper 2015.

 

The colors appear to dance before you.  The eyes, the lips, the styles of hair pull you, cajole you, take you in, The colors are bright, vibrant, steamy as they vaporize into a thin layer of white heat and back the vibrantly charged colors.  The colors dare you to laugh, to play, to join in the high energy of life.  Life on a higher plane. Life in a new Africa, a futuristic Africa with a neo-tradition that doesn’t deny itself but digs down into itself to bare yet a new fruit for the future.  This future fruit, a Rhythmistic one, is a universal fruit to embellish the entire fabric of humanity.

!975 For Mile Davis.

Universal is mentioned because the reference to Onli’s work being African Centered and not generally accepted in that community is due to its power and influence being misunderstood.  There is another community into which Onli has yet to be accepted and that is the mainstream White Art Community. Onli is representative of a new age, a forward-thinking age. An age that has a vision of an Africanization of the future by an Africa that is viable in the global scheme of things.  And a world unified by its universal values.

 

The disparities between Blacks and Whites and specifically between White and Black males stumbles blindly over into the Art World.  The continuance of this practice inhibits the flow of contributions by Black artists creating voids of sterility.  

This disparity curtails the universals that we as a culture look for in the world of innovative artists like Onli.  

The works of artists like Turtel Onli must be reviewed because their universals will rhythmically pull at the ancestral memories that continue to make us human.  We can no longer afford the limitations of Euro-Centric Art as the only contemporary modernistic approach to unleash the potential power of Art.

 Onli and his Rhythmistic Future-Primitif visual art movement gives the art critics, patron, and maker the opportunity to expand their concept of the universal.

"Reach" Oils on 30" X 40" museum profiled archival canvas. Circa 1998.

Written by Marcia Hicks, PhD. Circa 1986