Marvel has it’s finger on the pulse of the culture and thanks to its innovative way of thinking, comic book collector and founder/president of Amalgam Comics & Coffehouse, Inc. Ariell Johnson is living the dream. The 33-year-old comic book head and entrepreneur has found her likeness on a variant cover of the first issue of Invincible Iron Man, a new Iron Man series which features a teenage Black girl as the titled superhero.
According to ABCNews, Johnson owes the honor to a colleague by the name of Randy Green, who threw the whole concept together.
“When the email went out about potential variants for stores, he was really excited and took it upon himself to work out the [details]. It was really his hard work,” she told ABC News. “I knew what it was supposed to look like, but having the actual art in front of you is so much different. It’s really exciting.”
When Johnson opened Amalgam last December she became the first Black woman-owned comic book store on the Beast coast.
Her obsession with comic books actually began at the tender age of 10 when she discovered an “X-Men” character by the name of Storm.
“To think I made it a decade-plus and I had never seen a black, woman superhero is crazy because little white boys have so many [with whom they identify]: ‘I want to be Iron Man!’ ‘I want to be Batman!’ ‘I want to be Superman.’ ‘I want to be Han Solo!’ When you are a person of color, you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel to find someone you can identify with. I always felt like I was watching other people’s adventures,” she explained. “Being introduced to Storm was a pivotal moment for me because had I not come across her, I might have grown out of my love for [comics].”
The popular X-Men character inspired the young entrepreneur to not only start collecting comic books, but also demonstrate that women have a place in this universe.
“I had a girl tell me I had an excellent book selection and she was 7 or 8. I don’t know how welcome she might feel in some other spaces,” she said. “Women exist in this space! We’ve always been reading comic books, we just may not have been as open about it. I definitely get very positive feedback from not just little girls, but grown women too.”
A world where women own their own businesses and love comic books? What’s not to love.
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Photos: Instagram
