Africa lost a brilliant cartoonist last Saturday, April 21, 2012 when Frank Odoi died in a freak bus accident. I felt compelled to write a tribute to Frank who I didnt know well, but I admired immensely. I wrote it for Sunday Nation, Kenya to appear April 29, 2012. May he rest in peace and wherever he is, i trust he will continue creating wonderful comic books.
A
TRIBUTE TO FRANK ODOI (1948-2012)
By
Margaretta wa Gacheru
“…I want to be remembered for [my] comics.
I’d like to sit back and create comics for both children and adults…with
stories like Akokhan.” Frank Odoi.
The
acclaimed Ghana-born cartoonist, author, children’s book illustrator and master
storyteller Frank Odoi shared this hope with Kimani wa Wanjiru in an interview
he gave on April 6, 2011. He also confessed the sagacious Konadi Chronicles were his creation, a work of fiction whose wisdom
consoles his family, fans and dear friends who are still in shock over the news
that Frank passed away last Saturday night, April 21st, due to a
freak accident.
It
was around 8pm and the driver of Frank’s Double M bus swerved to avoid hitting
a drunkard on Jogoo Road, but in so doing, the bus flipped over and two people
died, Frank and a woman, both of whom were seated near the front of the bus.
Everyone else survived.
The
tributes to one of Africa’s greatest cartoonists have been pouring in from all
over the world. They have been received both by Frank’s immediate family, his
wife Carol and two daughters, Francesca and Francene, as well as by his closest
cartoonist friends, Gado, Maddo and Kham.
Also
known as Godfrey Mwampembwa, Paul Kelemba and James Khamawira respectively, the
three shared office space with Fran for the last 12 years and, on a daily
basis, witnessed the creative genius of this Ghanaian who adopted Kenya almost
40 years ago.
Coming
to Kenya in the mid-1970s, soon after he completed his course in Fine Art and
Design at the Ghanatta School of Art in Accra, Frank began his illustrious
career drawing satiric cartoons with Terry Hirst at Joe magazine.
It
wasn’t long thereafter that he began drawing cartoons for the leading East
African newspapers, including The Daily
Nation, where he took over the task of chief editorial cartoonist from
Hirst himself, East African Standard,
Kenya Times, Daily Monitor and New
Vision, both from Uganda.
He was so prolific that his cartooning career extended
across Africa, from Ghana’s Daily Graphic
to Noticias of Mozambique. His
cartoon art was especially loved in Scandanavia where his work appeared both in
Finland’s Helsingen Sanomat and
Denmark’s Dejembe Dapanda. It was
also featured in the BBC magazine Focus
on Africa, and he was also featured in various BBC radio interviews.
But as he told Kimani wa Wanjiru, he preferred comics to
cartoons. Having grown up reading super-hero comics like Superman and Batman,
he was inspired to create his own African super-hero.
Akokhan is a mythical figure who Frank hoped would one day become a
blockbuster movie just as Hollywood has made popular film versions of comic
book characters like
Spider Man and
Wolverine as well as
Superman and
Batman.
Frank called Akokhan
a “fictitious fantasy” influenced by various world-class cartoonists, by Heavy Metal magazine which featured
international cartoonists including Frank, and by the stories his mum and dad
used to tell him while he was growing up in Ghana, scribbling and incessantly
drawing “on the blackboard of Awaso Anglican Primary School.”
Born in Tarkwa, a mining town in western Ghana, Frank was
the third-born child and only son among his parents’ eight children. His
sisters clearly adored him and freed him from doing most family chores so he
could pursue his two passions, drawing and football. He told Kimani his two
favorite teams were Manchester United and Chelsea.
Frank was inspired by a number of global cartoonists, but
his number one artistic inspiration was the Renaissance artist,
Michelangelo. “He is my god,” he said in
his 2011 interview. Remarkable in so many different ways, what Frank most
quickly recalled about Michelangelo was the way he worked on the Sistine Chapel
ceiling.
“He painted heaven and hell while hanging upside down,”
Frank said, always able to see the humor in art just as he did in everyday
life.
One of Africa’s most prolific artists, Frank illustrated
everything from children’s books (for East African Educational Publishers) and
magazines like Fleur Ng’weno’s Rainbow
to comic books like Kul Bhakoo’s Pichadithi
series and his award-winning Golgoti
series. He also contributed to World Bank-funded calendars (2011, 2012) for the
World and Sanitation Program (WSP).
He also created comic books for a number of development
agencies, including Laban, the
Samburu warrior who grappled with the issue of HIV/AIDS and Faith, a young girl who comes from rural
areas to town and tackled teenage trials that most African women and girls
face.
The two comic books that earned him international acclaim
were Golgoti which was first published
in Finland and Akokhan which came out
as a book in 2007, thanks to the joint efforts of World Comics Finland, the
Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and East African Educational Publishers
Ltd., Kenya.
Locally, Frank teamed up with his fellow cartoonists to
produce several ambitious satiric magazines. They included Penknife (2002-2003) which for three years he co-authored with
Gado, Madd and Kham as well as with Victor Ndula and Steenie Njoroge. Kenyan
audiences came to know Golgoti as a
series in Penknife, and after it
folded, in the Standard as a weekly
pull-out for a year. Golgoti was also
a popular cartoon series in Ghana and Tanzania.
Other projects he co-authored with Kham, Gado and Madd
included The Heroes, Us, published by
Doctors without Borders (Medecins San
Frontieres) and the satiric magazine, The
African Illustrated, which was
launched in 1997 in time to feature the flight of Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko in
his ‘Factfile Africa’ column on ‘Democrazy’.
Frank had solo exhibitions of his cartoon art in Denmark,
Finland and Sweden as well as in Algeria, Brazil, Nigeria and Kenya. He also
participated in numerous group shows with fellow cartoon artists in Kenya.
Voted Kenyan Cartoonist of the Year in 1985, 1986 and 2004,
he earned a similar title in Ghana in 2005 and won Best Kenyan Strip Cartoonist
of the 2008.
Commenting on the meaning of one line that often appears in Akokhan, Frank said “Where grass has
grown, grass will grow” refers to the invincibility of Akokhan. Sadly, the
artist didn’t personally possess the same attribute, but his comic art surely
does. Frank Odoi will be long remembered and esteemed for his immense
contribution to contemporary African art.
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