Religion & Spirituality
Alex Smith is a sci-fi writer who is on the show today to promote Black Vans: LGBTQ/People of color Cyberpunk Super Hero Comic Series. Alex is in the process of having this project published through a kickstarter campaign. The link to this campaign is included in the show notes. To date, Alex has raised approximately $15,426 towards this project and it is set to be released in September 2021. Alex is a musician (art-punk bands Solarized, Rainbow Crimes), activist (Metropolarity queer sci-fi collective) and cultural/arts critic (Pitchfork, The Key, Bandcamp, Philly Gay News). He is a recipient of the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and soon to be published author of the sci-fi/cyberpunk/super-hero/afrofuturist short story collection ARKDUST, forthcoming from Rosarium Publishing. Alex’s contact information is below: IG: @Theyarebirds, Website: https://www.alexoteric.com Email: theyarebirds@gmail.com BLACK VANS is a comic book a cyberpunk, super-hero mash up, a strange tale about pharmaceutical companies run amok in a Phuture Philadelphia, where hackers provide intel, communications, and surveillance for the slowly disappearing super-hero community. The hackers, called EQ's, are a wild bunch--they fall along the queer/LGBT spectrum, their ranks reflecting the ethnic diversity of the city they're from and of the larger world. Artist James Dillenbeck (@jamesdillenbeck on Instagram) and writer Alex Smith met through instagram-- Smith was fascinated with Dillenbeck's fantastic work, admiring the strange and surreal worlds he created that combined 80's retrofuturism, weird fantasy elements inspired by HEAVY METAL magazine, Mad Max and Bladerunner. SUPPORT OUR ARTISTS!