EXWON COMIC

Exwon Comics is a Nigerian American comic studio. We use comic books to cast a spotlight on African culture, tradition and mythology. Exwon comic is basically a universe of characters, places and events. Since launching Exwon comic, one of the studio priorities is to provide supplementary entertainment products, in line with dreams of the studio members. This notion brought about the creation of Exwon comics, a platform for storytelling and creative entertainment.

Hello! My name is Gbenga Ayeni and I am the author of Ọ̀RÀNMÍYÀN : Vexation Land. Thank you for stopping by our kickstarter page. I wrote this comic book to try to cast a spotlight on African legends and mythology. 

I am sure you have read several books and watched movie shows about Mythical figures (Thor, Zeus, Genghis Khan, Ninjas etc.) from Norse, Greek and Asian mythology.

Ọ̀rànmíyàn, also known as Ọranyan, was a legendary Yoruba king from the kingdom of Ile-Ife, and the founder of the Oba Dynasty in igodomigodo, modern day Benin Kingdom and the Oyo Empire. Although he was the youngest of the descendants of Oduduwa, he became the prime heir of Oduduwa upon his return to claim his grandfather's throne. To cast a spotlight on him and other characters I thought it would be neat to make a comic book.  

The story in this comic book is inspired by true events, creatively crafted for edutainment purpose. It narrates how the great Yoruba prince from Ile-Ife establish the Oba dynasty in Igodomigodo, modern day Benin Empire in Nigeria.

Plot: A crisis among the administrators of Igodomigodo forced them to convene for a new ruler. Oranmiyan, sent by the Ooni of Ife, camped at a place called Use, meaning "making of a city" or "politicking". After making inroads, he began to rule Igodomigodo from there. His rulership as an Oba was foreign in style of management and didn't go down well with some chiefs, so they sent agents to spy on him. All this made Oranmiyan declare that only a son of the soil could cope with the attitude of the Igodomigodo people. He called the land Ile - Ibinu, meaning "Land of Vexation".

On leaving Ile-Ibinu (later Ibini, and corrupted to "Benin" by the Portuguese), he stopped briefly at Egor where he took Erinmwide, the daughter of the Enogie (or Duke) of Egor, as a wife. As a result of their union, Oranmiyan crystallised his new dynasty, and his son Eweka I, would come to be known as the first Oba of Benin. This dynasty is still ruling today.

This book is the first of the series titled "Great Yoruba Legends and Myths". We currently have a dozen stories ready to work on for this series. All we we need is your support and donations.

The purpose of this kickstarter is to raise funds to bring this story to print and translate issue #1 to Portuguese, French and Spanish because of the following we have in countries like Brazil, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago and more. 

We have some juicy rewards for our backers and they include a thank you our social media networks and blog, the comic book, and related merchandise.

I hope you like what I am trying to do with this comic book and future books so go on pledge anything you can so that we can be off to the races and start working on printing and translating book #1, commissioning book #2 and fulfilling the rewards pledged to all our backers.  Thank you!!