Papa Mfumu'Eto 1er Papers

The Papa Mfumu'eto 1^er Papers are the global first, publicly accessible collection of an African comic artist's original drawings and production materials. They consist almost entirely of items associated with the artist’s work of creating and selling comic books, rather than finished, printed products. Items in pencil or ink on paper represent all stages of his creative and production processes: story ideas, early creative drawings and conceptual sketches, drafts, sketched covers and page layouts, storyboards, cut-and-paste (adhesive-taped) montages in various states, camera-ready copies and stencils, press tests or proofs for pages and covers, press damaged and misprinted pages, and twenty complete printed comic books are all present in the collection. Many items are parts or fragments of larger or more complete works, with much evidence that the creator excised drawings, cells, and other elements from one project for use in others. Twenty complete comic books of 8-16 pages (folded A3 or A4 size sheets) are included, representing self-published issues as distributed and consumed by readers (see Contents List on pages 7-9, below). Artist’s notes, doodles, business papers, advertising proposals, posters, flyers, and drawings are included. Several of the comic books and production drafts are works by others or collaborations between Mfumu’Eto and assistants or peers. Papa-leki Nzila (pseudonym) is credited as an inker on some items. The names Kabos, Jean Lepa Mabila Saye, Waderi-Banza, Kongi Kelly, and Kuntuala Mukiese appear on original or printed materials in the collection, though their specific roles are unclear. Many materials present evidence on the material print and art culture of 1990s Kinshasa. Quality artists’ supplies were not easily available at the time, while printing presses also were scarce. Original drawings, production montages, and printed pages serve as physical evidence of the materials and methods the artist employed, and by extension what was possible for a small creative publisher in this place and time.

Circulation numbers are uncertain, and questions of production and distribution are open, as no comprehensive review of the creator’s notes estimating printing supplies or print runs has firmly established his works’ circulation. Other complexities challenging scholarship on Mfumu'Eto include spelling variations for titles of the same series, inconsistent issue numbering, and many items with more than one date noted (e.g., in print versus manuscript notes, pen versus pencil, in different locations on the same page, etc.).

Despite its fragmentary, fragile, and uncertainly ordered (or known out of order) state, the collection's intellectual value lies in its vernacular, primary-source, humorous perspectives on everyday life in Kinshasa during the 1990s and early 2000s. It is a trove for the investigation of Kinshasan (Kinois or Kin) culture from many perspectives: domestic life and conflict, religious anthropology, urban slang, sorcery idioms, text/image communication modes, and the history of local caricatures of one of Africa’s most important postcolonial dictators and his political regime, before and following Mobutu’s 1997 downfall, exile, and death. Social issues such as AIDS prevention and care, gender roles, class, hunger, child abuse, sexual morality, emigration, and urban poverty in the African context are recurrent themes. Importantly, the comics’ dialogs, text, and speech bubbles are rare examples of urban Lingala (Kinshasa’s lingua franca) in print. In contrast to other African comic artists, Mfumu’Eto highlights his community's creative use of vernacular language through the dialogs in his stories. Several comic books relate to then-current international events such as the First Gulf War, in which he employs more of the DRC's official language, French. Most stories and text-images, however, are set on the streets, or more precisely in the households and domestic courtyard spaces, of his own neighborhood.

The collection includes evidence of issue sponsorships and product placements in numerous drawings, issues, flyers, and posters. Most examples are for the Maison de Haute Couture Élégance (featuring characters Clarisse and Papa Missamou), with fewer items related to advertising Serkas photo lab, Crèmerie d’Ollart, Platinum fluoride toothpaste, and Boulangerie Bana. The artist designed school notebook covers (cahiers, for sale to students by the artist or printer), drawing pads, and promotions for religious groups such as Puissance Spirituelle du Verbe/Flamme Internationale, L'Eau prophétique, and Union Chrétienne. Several stories feature individual religious leaders (Frère Patrice, Pasteur Kutino, Frère Mente, Matou Samuel). One issue highlights traditional wrestlers, possibly a paid promotion. Posters, flyers, outside back covers, and titles mentioned within the pages of other works often serve to advertise his own creative work. There is an example of a handwritten sign with a price list for back-issues on sale (see item 3-7-6a-3). Examples of reportage illustré (unposed, live sketches of workshop performers and participants) at programs at the French Embassy’s Halle de la Gombe (e.g., Sculpture Animé, Les Ruches Kinoises, Atelier Masque, and Atelier Théatre de la Rue à Mains Nus, Rater Mieux) present another aspect of the artist’s work, some of which he integrated into non-fiction comic books. A proposal for a UNICEF memorial commemorating child soldiers in Eastern Congo is also notable.

Many stories are inspired by popular music, with reproduced song lyrics. Others are inspired by successful television shows of the '90s. Several of his comics document news stories from a popular perspective, such as Pastor Kutino's trial after he was accused of burning the Qur'an, tried, jailed, and later released from prison. Stories often feature rumors circulating in Kinshasa when they were created. Mfumu'Eto caricatured Mobutu's imagined after-death exploits and documented the waves of popular polemics surrounding Congo's musical groups by featuring famous artists such as Noël Ngiama Makanda and Jean-Bedel Mpiana Tshituka. His comics introduced and popularized lesser-known artists, featured strange or supernatural stories, and employed multiple languages. There is a continuity in Mfumu'Eto's comic universe, where many stories are connected through common characters. Some represent actual people to explore current events, while others feature characters who are related in the same fictional universe, such as Ma-Mpaka, who appears in at least three Mfumu'Eto comics.³

Series are arranged to facilitate convenient (broadly chronological) access to the major characters, popular figures, full stories, developed themes, and complete comic booklets. Note that oversize materials, housed in box 4, are listed by folder, adjacent to the standard size folders with the most closely associated materials in each. This organization is approximate, as the materials were chaotically arranged on receipt and presented challenges to consistent arrangement.

"Series 1. Stories and major characters, 1982-2007" includes the only publicly available examples of Mfumu'Eto's comic characters, popular figures, and full comic books. Drafts and sketches are included together with more developed or finished material, in cases where they appear to be clearly associated by character, theme, or chronology but some items are separated from their original context. Many of the best-recognized and -represented characters are found here. An example is Mwan'a Mbanda (a Cinderella-like theme with the moral, "treat your stepchild as your own." Based on a traditional theme, this title has also been used by comic author Lepa-Mabila Saye (his Djo-Ef le parisien is represented in the Papers by several original inked pages). Other examples include Princesse d'Or (an idealized teenage girl, sharing her name with Mfumu'Eto's daughter), Bébé Oyo Abimaka ("The elderly baby" spirit who bedevils her infertile 'mother'), Bernard Tshilombe (a playboy zombie/man), and Ngadios (based on a well-known comedian and street performer). Folder 7 includes stories and images relating to many popular musicians and performances, a market Mfumu'Eto apparently targeted for sales in entrepreneurial fashion. The final folder includes most of the complete comic books available here as distributed in chronological order.

"Series 2. Fragments and drafts, 1985-2007" contains possibly the earliest drawing in the collection is a pen-and-ink depiction of the steep, stony hills of Matadi (dated both as April 13, 1980 and December 1985). "Un Helowa" is a blue, alien-like "being of light from the 5th, 6th, and 7th dimensions" (dated 1985 and 1988). Several studies of Tintin, Belgian BD cartoonist Hergé's popular character, may indicate some influence. Other production materials, sketches, and drafts represent both well- and less-known characters that could not be arranged with confidence into Series 1 or are fragments deemed best kept with otherwise related items.

"Series 3. Work for hire, 1981-2006" includes undated work, collaborations, and work by others. In some cases, we were unable to determine what role, if any, Mfumu'Eto played in creating these. A comic book not authored by Mfumu'Eto (signed Jean Lepa Mabila Saye) commemorates the 1997 death of DRC Général Mahele (Marc Mahélé Lièko Bokungu), donated by Jacob Sabakinu Kivilu (item 3-11-0-1). As one of the earliest customers among Kinshasa’s professional class, History Professor Sabakinu is well acquainted with Mfumu'Eto. A print of the cover photograph for this booklet was already included in the Mfumu'Eto papers, perhaps indicating a collaboration with JunioR (a comic book series by Lepa).

Series 4. Commission of 3 posters for a workshop, 2021-2024" includes reflections and updates on popular characters who appeared in the artist's 1990s comic books, along with new stories on two posters, reflecting current life and youth culture in Kinshasa today.

A 2024 accretion of 3 oversized (39” x 27.5”), handmade posters on paper created by Papa Mfumu’Eto 1er (Mfumu'eto, Jaspe Saphir, 1963- ), a popular street comic book artist in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from whom we collected the Papa Mfumu’Eto 1er Papers (MSS 0384) in 2017. Each poster is painted on heavy, large-format (39”x 27.5”) paper, nos. 1 & 2 in black acrylic paint with water (no. 1 includes ball point ink for the title background), while no. 3 is painted in black and color acrylic paint with water.

Created in 2022 & 2023 (one is undated), these comic posters were commissioned in 2021 for a planned academic workshop at UF (cancelled due to travel complications related to the lingering global impacts of the COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 health crisis). The artist was given several subjects or themes to consider in July 2022: 1.) What concerns you about what is happening in present-day Kinshasa? 2.) What is happening in Kinshasa today? 3.) Depict and update readers on the popular characters Blandine, Bibiche, and Princesse d’Or today, as adults and mothers, engaged with current events, some 20 years after the comics’ readers knew them as children.

In response to the themes suggested above, Papa Mfumu’Eto 1er responded with 3 posters: 1.) Incroyable Vente D’organes Humains à Kinshasa. “Psychose générale” 2023. A rumored criminal gang network is depicted stealing and selling human kidneys in Kinshasa and the DRC. 2.) Kilelo ce qui se passe présentement à Kinshasa. Undated. A gang of young men captures and kills a “pit bull” dog who they say ate a neighborhood child. Onlookers debate if this really happened: some show cell phone videos while others argue the girl was only bitten. The scenario concludes with a discussion of the slang word, Kilelo. In the final cell, a woman describes its use while a university professor exclaims that he doesn’t understand. The narrator suggests that the difference between real and unreal is razor thin. 3.) Les Personage Fictifs et Réels de la Revue Mfumu’Eto. 2022-2023. Four of the artist’s most popular comics are shown, followed by an explanation that the characters in one were based on the artist’s own daughter’s personality traits. He notes that UF Professor Nancy Rose Hunt has met his daughter, named Princesse d’Or (as is the comic book character). The final cell depicts an academic workshop at the UF George A. Smathers Libraries where his comics are being discussed by participants.

The posters are digitized at high resolution and available in the UF Digital Collections at https://ufdc.ufl.edu/title-sets/AA00106059 where transcriptions and translations of the dialog and texts are also available.

³ Aurelie Maketa documents important story themes and characters in a supplemental spreadsheet available in the UF Institutional Repository (see https://ufdc.ufl.edu/ufir).