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Frederick Jones (@saturday_am) Frederick joins us on the Black Superheroes MatterPodcast. Frederick is the founding publisher of the world’s most diverse manga brand, Saturday AM. With over a decade long career in the video game industry, he decided to start his own company centered around developing up and coming creators from around the world that share his love of manga and anime. Saturday AM gives Black people, women, LGBTQ, and other marginalized groups a platform to showcase their talent and invest in their future. In this podcast episode, Frederick inspires his audience to have a greater sense of ambition that can spark creativity in others.
Notable Time Stamps:
Background:
2:26- 2:54 “I’m a founding publisher of Saturday AM, the world’s most diverse manga brand. I write some of our comics, I lead the company, I manage a couple of different departments within the company and just ultimately try to keep us moving in the right direction.
3:23-3:56 “I had a long career actually in the video game industry and so I had the privilege to actually work on a number of big properties, handling product marketing, and intellectual property management. At one point I was in charge of BlockBuster Corporate, I was in charge of the retail section of BlockBuster for certain video game products like the hardware, accessories etc.
7:18-5:54 “When I left the gaming industry I was looking for my next challenge. All of those things with being a long itme anime fan, seeing how animations starting to blow up, looking at globalization, and looking at how a lot of countries I thought would never be into anime were now into anime like African countries, European countries, I was really blown away with how big anime had exploded in that timeframe. I decided then that this is a great opportunity to create a company devoted to diverse manga content knowing that we can hit an international audience immediately”
50:00-50:23 ”We’re about to launch our second app called Pilot Manga, we just launched our first one last year. You can expect to see Clock Striker and Apple Black and those things, anime, movies and things like that in the near future.”
Creating a company devoted to diverse manga:
8:18- 8:33 “That’s how the idea came about, it was just wanting to bring some diversity to manga because I saw it was growing and then wanting to really play in this digital space because I saw that there was tremendous opportunity with that and I didn’t feel like people were really recognizing it at the time”
29:25-29:40 “We’re going to show you that the same way you’re into this kid with a Japanese name who looks as white as they can be called Naruto Uzumaki, you can be into a kid who’s Black, has a Black name, and is still being a ninja or still doing fun cool things.”
31:03-31:22 “We can have a diverse group from top to bottom still producing content that’s every bit as quality as these big companies would do which typically are all white companies that if they choose to show a Black character it’s through a white lense”
Navigating the video game industry in the 90s and early 2000s:
13:36-13:54 “When I started the company there were a lot of people who attacked me aggressively and in some cases passive aggressively over the idea of “who did I think I was, anime’s perfect as it is, it doesn’t need to have diversity, it’s already diverse the way it is” -I felt the same thing in the video game industry as well
28:59-29:22 “My thing was always, what’s more impactful is to have something that can easily plug in to the existing mainstream standard -which of course is centered around whiteness – but at the same time is unapologetically Black. In another words it should appeal to non black people but yet be clearly Black
30:40-30:48 “The idea was always to compete with those companies (Japanese & American comics) it was never to be just a Black face of things, it was to compete and say we can create a company that can go toe to toe with you guys”
43:18 – 43:31“Let’s be real, there are a lot of Black folks out there, women, and other minorities who are just as if not smarter than some of these people I just mentioned, who have more accomplishments than some of these people who started these companies who aren’t going to get that level of investment”
47:30-47:52 “It’s the question of power like what power really is and I’m not convinced that visibility by itself is power, instead it’s just really being in a position to actually affect the operations and the businesses that have the most reach and the most connections to the cultures and communities.”
Insight:
17:18-17:33 “I think we’re at a good moment for reflection, I think we’re in a continuous moment for a reckoning in terms of saying “ I want to be treated fairly, I’m not going to take no for an answer”
26:02-26:10 “We have to show it can be done for it to matter and for it to inspire other creators and who knows where it goes after that”
35:53-35:59 “We’ve always looked to try to have a greater sense of ambition because we feel a greater sense of responsibility for what comes after.”
Key Links:
Website: https://www.saturday-am.com/
App: https://www.saturday-am.com/app
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saturday_am/?hl=en
Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/Saturday_am
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saturdayam/
Hey, this is Steve. I played football at Oregon State University and University of Hawaii. Now I doodle cartoons and blow stuff up on camera. I also make web comics too. Hopefully I can make this whole thing a full time gig so I can make the big bucks to pay for Medical School! (Fingers Crossed) If you would like more thought-provoking content or a quick laugh consider supporting me on Patreon, checking out my webseries Eyelnd Feevr, or checking out links to my other projects below:
Eyelnd Feevr Webseries | PDX Black Rose Podcast | Stuck E Podcast | Black Superheroes Matter | Artist Portfolio | DIY Arts Tutorials & Blog |