Before he ever picked up a pen and worked with DC Comics and Marvel Comics to illustrate stories like “Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive” and “Batman: The Hill,” Shawn Martinbrough was a little boy in the Bronx, New York reading “X-Men” and “Superman” comics.
“I started reading comics and that really inspired my love of comic books, storytelling, panel-to-panel storytelling,” he said.
Decades later, after working alongside industry legends like Robert Kirkman, and writing his own DC comic series, “Red Hood: The Hill,” Martinbrough brought his same passion for storytelling to a new kind of protagonist: a young Black girl aspiring to be a judge.
Martinbrough’s latest project, “Judge Kim and the Kids’ Court: The Case of the Missing Bicycles,” is a new edition to the Judge Kim series and aims to inspire kids to think critically and learn about justice, fairness and representation.
The character Judge Kim is a Black girl whose mother is a judge. In the series, she follows in her mother’s footsteps, teaching her friends and young readers important and easy-to-understand lessons about law.
Martinbrough said he and his co-creators, Milo Stone, Joseph Illidge and Christopher Jordan, wanted to create, “a fun way to kind of pull kids and their families into how the law works and critical thinking skills,” he said. “To really assess things based on evidence, don’t jump to conclusions and to think things through—sort of instilling a sense of fairness.”
Illidge, writer and editor of comics series like “The Shadow Cabinet,” has shaped and developed diverse stories for decades with Milestone Media, a Black-owned and founded media company. As one of three creators of “Judge Kim” alongside Martinbrough, he shared a similar commitment to genuine representation through storytelling.
For Martinbrough, storytelling has always been a powerful tool. That belief was instilled in him after his parents enrolled him in their community centers’ drawing class. There, his love for the arts flourished and ultimately led him to one of the nation’s most prestigious arts high schools in New York City.
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts was a “creative cipher” for Martinbrough.
“Being around so many different creative types of kids from all the different boroughs was just amazing. And that really is what focused my goal to be a professional artist and tell stories,” he said.
After entering the comic book industry, he found that success was largely determined by skill, professionalism and ability to meet deadlines. Martinbrough said that his race wasn’t an issue because, with the use of fax machines, the editors he sent his work to often had no idea what he looked like.
“Before social media happened, you didn’t know. Unless you had a very ethnic-sounding name, you wouldn’t know who was who,” the illustrator said. “So for me, Shawn Martinbrough, that’s a very European-sounding name. So a lot of times when I would meet people, they’re like, ‘Oh! You’re Black!’”
Martinbrough expressed that his lack of experience with racism in his line of work was different from what writers went through. Illidge didn’t experience racial issues either because he worked on Black stories at a Black-owned company.
Although race never served as a drawback in Martinbrough or Illidge’s careers, it created a great framework for stories of representation that they’d publish later, just like “Judge Kim and the Kids’ Court.”
“We created Judge Kim and the Kids’ Court at least 10 years ago,” he said. “So it just literally was a great bit of timing that our book came out right around the time Ketanji Brown Jackson became a justice.”
Even so, Martinbrough recognizes the importance of representation, emphasizing that individuals who dismiss it are often already well-represented.
“Representation is always important, and anyone who tells you that it’s not is usually represented. They’re like, ‘No, no, no, why do you have to make such a big deal about it?’ Because you see yourself already,” he said.
Illidge recalled a comic book convention where he met a Black judge from the United Kingdom. She was so happy to see “Judge Kim” because of the representation it provided. He said moments like that are most rewarding because they show him that he was able to provide something that was missing.
Illidge and Martinbrough shared that their story is more than just a tool of entertainment for children. For them, it is a reminder that representation isn’t about checking boxes, it is about ensuring that a child can see themselves as a part of the future.
That belief goes beyond Judge Kim’s character and infiltrates Illidge’s philosophy that he applies to his storytelling, encouraging aspiring creators to focus on authenticity.
“Don’t try to emulate other stories,” Illidge said. “When you look at the people who have really gone on to change entertainment, whether it’s in music, whether it’s in literature, whether it’s Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Ta Nahesi Coates, Kendrick Lamar, Jay Z or Q-tip, you’re talking about people who wrote their stories and put their stories into the world. And their stories were so powerful that they turned out to be universal stories.”
Copy edited by Anijah Franklin
