WORLD OF HURT is Super Fly meets The Equalizer.

 

WORLD OF HURT is the wayward step-child of Ernest Tidyman’s John Shaft and Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby, desperately trying to live up to the greatness of his forebears.

 

WORLD OF HURT is a comic strip love letter to the Black action films of the 1970s.  I’m not talking about the flicks with signifyin’ Technicolor pimps performing slow-motion karate or anything featuring Ray Milland’s head surgically attached to Rosie Grier’s body.  If you want to know where I’m coming from with WORLD OF HURT, check out flicks like Shaft, Superfly, The Mack, Trouble Man, Foxy Brown, or Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off.  Although none of these movies boasted massive budgets or flawless production values either, there was an undeniable edge and raw energy to them.  These were films that spoke to a previously untapped market of urban Black audiences, who finally got to see their own heroes, and a bit of their own turbulent world, refracted through the prism of the silver screen.  For instance, in Trouble Man, Robert Hooks’ character “Mr. T.” tracked down stick-up men and hustled pool sharks in a Los Angeles that was every bit as tough, seamy and hardboiled as the one where Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe hunted for missing dames and slugged it out with blackmailers.  The thing is, Mr. T. and the brothers (and sisters) did it with style, baby! 

 

However, I’m not a filmmaker.  Fortunately, I am trained in a form of visual, narrative storytelling with greater potential and an infinite budget:  I’m a cartoonist.  I’m an artist with a jones for classic comic artists such as Al Williamson, Alex Raymond, Jim Holdaway, Alex Toth, and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and their spiritual descendants, like John Paul Leon and Rodolpho Damaggio.  WORLD OF HURT is my humble attempt to tell the kind of stories I like in the format that I know best. 

 

I think that today, even when fans of Blaxploitation revisit the films, there is a tendency to focus on the comedic value of their sub-amateur production values or the outlandish 1970s fashions.  For me, WORLD OF HURT is an opportunity to tell exciting, action-adventure tales from a milieu and era that, for all its jive and flash, is bursting with storytelling potential.

 

That’s where I’m coming from.  That’s what it is.

 

- Jay Potts

April 9, 2009

Click here to learn more about the cast and plot of the current storyline, “The Thrill-Seekers.”