SB10America recently saw tragedy at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a lone gunman took the lives of 9 members of its congregation. This saddening moment at the Emanuel AME Church is believed to be fueled by racial hatred and prejudice much of the world has long since hoped was done away with and has spiraled into many Americans clamoring for a removal of the Southern Confederate Flag, often associated with racism in America’s South. Southern Bastards, a wonderfully adult comic from Image Comics, set in the South, has stepped up to help out in this case. Creators Jason Aaron and Jason Latour have come together to create a variant cover for their Southern Bastards #10 that’s profits go entirely to the charity Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, and shows a dog tearing apart the Confederate Flag whilst still supporting a strong, and unified (non-racially separated) South.

Retailers are able to order as many of these variants as they wish during the FOC date for Southern Bastards #10, on July 6th, 2015. Diamond lists their update status for the variant as “This is a charity variant, all of the profits of this variant will be donated to charity to help pay for the funerals and provide other assistance to the families of the victims of the Charleston, South Carolina shooting. This variant will be limited to one print run only, so order plenty through the FOC date of 7/6/15.”

On Tumblr Jason Latour also spoke on the subject of the Confederate flag, saying:

ON THE REBEL FLAG…

As you can imagine I’ve heard a lot of feedback about our variant cover to SOUTHERN BASTARDS #10. While a great deal of it was positive encouragement– I still feel a great need to expound upon why I’m taking such a hardline on this topic. Being a Southerner is very important to me. It is my culture, and by and large it’s been very rewarding to me over the course of my life. Though I can’t speak for him, I think it’s been equally so for Jason Aaron.

So I’m writing this in part because I do take this issue seriously, and I want it to to be clear that even though my cover might be seen as a touch sensational– it was not something that was waded into casually. We knew that a dog tearing up the Confederate flag was not the most subtle of images, but as far as the discourse on this topic goes it seemed fitting. It’s never been all that subtle of a conversation has it?

And now that I (hopefully) have your attention I want to admit something to you– I’m a white man from The South. Charlotte, North Carolina in fact. A place an hour removed from all the noise down in Columbia, SC. A couple more from those horrific murders in Charleston. I’m a white Southern man who, despite my harsh objections to what I feel it represents, is willing to admit that I have a conflicted relationship with the Confederate flag.

No big news story there. There’s definitely nothing new to being conflicted as a Southerner. As we all know that everywhere we go we’re recognized by some stereotypical aspect of our heritage. Be that our accent or our taste in music or the assumption that we might be a little backwards, a little slow. Many of us spend a lot of time challenging or fighting these assertions. Some of us run from them. It’s my feeling that the best of us own them. We admit when mistakes were made. We fight like hell when we’re right. Twice as hard when we’ve been wronged. And that’s what I see when I look at that flag, when I hear it’s supporters. I don’t hear people who think they’re right– I hear folks who think they’ve been wronged.

But why? Where does that come from? Can it be as simple as all the things done, and said those centuries ago still hanging in the air down here? I’ve asked myself that a lot. And after years of thinking long and hard about it, of punching my fists against the red clay bricks and into humid air– I really think that’s the root of it. Yes it comes from the past. But it lives in the present. It lives in the inability to reconcile what we want with what is. It’s born from human frailty, in the refusal to believe that we’re not strong enough to navigate or overcome the chaos of a world we had no choice about being brought into. It comes from believing in a myth. The myth that we’re so goddamned important.

But what does that have to do with the Rebel flag? Phew– well– everything I think. But how do we boil that down, and get to the root of where it all starts? Well, better and brighter minds that me have and will wrestle with it– but the best I can do is ask that for briefest of moments, let’s take a leap, and set aside all the things it’s mutated into and appropriated to mean over the last couple centuries or more. The symbolism we’re left with is that of a Confederate battleflag. The banner of a defeated nation.

The Civil War was about the abolition of slavery. Perhaps it wasn’t about morality, or equality, or the need to do what was right for humankind, but it was about slavery because slavery was power. In the South in the 1800’s money came from cotton and cotton came from slaves. So with the entirety of the uncharted west of America unfolding out before them, our government had a choice– Do we allow slavery to expand? Do we allow aristocrats of The South to expand their influence and power further? Questions the country ultimately went to war to answer.

In many cases poor whites in the South fought in the interests of the ruling class of Confederate aristocrats. Often their sole motivation being a certain freedom of their own, the promise that one day they too would be able to carve out their own piece of land, or navigate their lives free of another man’s will.A dream that in many ways sounds much like the one many Americans still believe in today. Many of them probably carried no hatred in their hearts for another man’s skin color, many of them likely saw themselves as trapped by circumstance. If you’re from the South, the possibility that a basically good and decent person in your family died under that flag does exist. Throughout history, countless lives have been lost under banners that don’t represent their individual beliefs. But racist or not, the men and women that fought and lived under the Confederacy are still complicit. Their own fight to determine their own course came at the expense of another human’s freedom.

Which brings me back to the great myth. Crippled, and humiliated in the wake of the war, the promise of riches and freedom and good fortune snatched from the Southern grasp. The promises of the Confederacy in a grave alongside it, all that was left was “The American dream”. A dream that the slaves once chained in the field now had within their grasp as well. All bets were off, anything was possible, and that small shred of petty dignity– that one assurance that the color of your skin allowed you a chance in the world, was now gone.It was no doubt a moment of extreme existential confusion– one that still exists today.Whites all over began to question their place. If it wasn’t next to the boss on the hill, then where was it?

You see racism, in it’s way, has always been about power more than skin color. Encouraging the people under your heel to quibble and fight amongst themselves is a good way to keep them from banding together to lift your boot off their necks. Racial divisions were encouraged for this reason, and the white need to feel superior, to feel stronger than the slaves chained in the field was encouraged to prevent them from accepting that fences were around them too.

And so that frustration was transferred. With everything about their lives and their place in the world in doubt many whites struggled to maintain any power they could muster. They used their working knowledge of the world they’d built to limit the opportunities and freedoms of the freed slaves. Despite the fact that much of The South was built by their hands and on their backs, blacks were told often as possible that they were different, lesser, that they didn’t belong. Institutional racism took hold.

But there came a time when signs over water fountains and leering glances didn’t do it. When black men and women stood up and fought back. When a stronger symbol was needed–

And that’s when the Rebel flag came back into the fold. A symbol for the belief that blacks and whites are different. That we have different places in the world. That we are divided. Even if you remove the horrific acts done in it’s name– That’s what the rebel flag has ALWAYS stood for. It’s what it will always stand for.

And that’s why it’s time for the Rebel flag to disappear.

Not from our history books, or museums or even our works of art or fiction. If you want to wear it on your clothes or hang it in your home that’s your prerogative. But as a symbol of our modern culture– it has no place.

I understand that you may have a loved one who respected that flag, or that it reminds you of. Maybe there’s some deep seated association that brings you joy. But you need to accept that it has a meaning that goes beyond how you feel. It goes beyond how much you liked Dukes of Hazzard. There are other people it’s very existence has long served to do nothing but demean and cause harm. People who’ve been wronged.

I refuse to believe that Southern pride stems from the pain we’ve inflicted on others. Southern pride comes from what we’ve built together. In our music and art and innovation. In the people who honor us by taking our culture out into the world and celebrating it. It comes from people seeking us out, and flocking here to experience all that we know and love.

We are all neighbors. We are all Southerners. This is OUR culture and it means what WE choose it to mean.

So, yes. I’ll say it again– Fuck that flag. Southern Pride is good collard greens. Death to the flag. Long live The South.

-Jason Latour

Latour also stated “The variant is available in as high a quantity as your retailer wants to order. But please keep in mind that Southern Bastards remains an unabashedly rated R plus comic book. It wasn’t the plan but this one maybe more so.” So keep this in mind while reading your purchase, though we strongly recommend making this a purchase to both support a brilliant Image comic series and a very good, charitable cause! Southern Bastards #10 will be in stores on July 29th, 2015!

 

UPDATE 7/22:

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