Masala:

the building journey a black hero

Abstract

The word hero derives from the Greek hḗrōs, alluding to an ambivalent figure, which brings together characteristics and/or potentialities, such as: courage, Wisdom and physical strength. According to “[a] Hero's Journey”, by Joseph Campbell (1989), this process presents a psychological, Social and ethnic complexity, configured in a weakness, a limitation, in the story protagonist. In this context, comics books (comics) or Banda Desenhada (BD), through literary creation, express the imagination yearnings, fictional making and the myth role in building heroes in our society. According to Clyde W. Ford (2000), the black hero represents the struggle for freedom, Justice and autonomy, in a context of white supremacy, it becomes essential that heroes and heroines in diaspora can reference the myths and legends created and handed down by their ancestors. Thus, we seek to analyze hybridization in line with recycling in the hero figure based on the Angolan comic, Masala, o leopardo: um passo para a liberdade (1989), by Lito Silva. As border zones, we point out approximations in relation to the “Heroism” and “Identity” concepts according to the Adichie perspectives (2019), hooks (2019), Hall (2006), Ford (2000) and Campbell (1989), in dialogue with the reframed “Necropolitics” remediation by Mbembe (2018). In this way, we propose to consider how the BD, considering both meetings and disagreements. outlines the hero, considering his historiographic period of creation and the verbal and non-verbal elements that make up the story, repeating European hero ideals.