WE ON https://t.co/M2rNlpeR1U !!! Of Tenants And Tentacles: 'BTTM FDRS' Confronts Gentrification In Comic Horror Form https://t.co/rmphp1C3k1
— Ezra Claytan Daniels @ SDCC (@ezracdaniels) June 27, 2019
Many cities and neighborhoods nowadays are getting gentrified and there are some real horrors that come about with those kinds of developments especially for people who are still struggling to get by in life.
Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore wanted to talk about that in a way that wouldn't alienate people but also show them the reality of the situation. And that's why they decided to create a graphic novel about it called BTTM FDRS.
Daniels shares his inspiration to writing about gentrification:
A lot of the book is a love letter to my time in my early 20s in Chicago. It's very true to my experience of Chicago, which obviously isn't everyone's experience. I moved to Chicago from Portland, Oregon, and I'm a person of color. I was moving to neighborhoods that were cheap because that's all I could afford.
And why they chose horror as the genre to write with:
Well, first of all I just like horror and I feel really comfortable with that genre. But I think historically, horror and science fiction have both been used to approach difficult topics ... look at something like The Twilight Zone, which was historically a way Rod Sterling could approach ideas like race, racial inequality, gender inequality through the sci-fi lens so he could get it past the censors; so he could actually get these ideas aired ... That's always been a huge influence on my work.
Read more on NPR.
(Image credit: Ezra Claytan Daniels/Twitter via Fantagraphics)