James Otis Smith is a writer and cartoonist who has discovered a fascination with American history in all its terrible glory, particularly those parts of it that don't get talked about much.
While still working in film, James wrote and drew the sci-fi webcomic Gang of Fools. His first love reawakened, he went on to adapt writer Ted Fox's history of New York's Apollo Theater in the graphic novel Showtime at the Apollo.Â
James' childhood interest in westerns inspired the children's comic Black Heroes of the Wild West, and he intends to further expand on this era and expose much more of our shared history than pop entertainment seems to have time for.
James currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, where he is making plans to soon return to fiction that imagines a future informed with a deeper understanding of the past that made it possible.