Jordan Clark talks Black culture, great artistry, and AI madness in ‘Ancestral Recall’

As far as debut creator-owned books go, Jordan Clark has a unique perspective on Ancestral Recall.

“It’s one of those things where you can’t do the debut over,” Clark said of the historical fiction series. “But also, sometimes, you don’t want to be too precious with it. I think sometimes people are like, ‘Well, the first one has to be the best thing I’ve ever done.’ You just kind of got to get it out.”

That’s not to say the book doesn’t matter, or isn’t deeply personal to both Clark and artist/co-creator Atagun Ilhan. Heck, it was even born out of an especially seminal moment in their respective careers.

“Atagun and I were both part of the Milestone Initiative,” Clark said. “And while we were there, we did this character creation workshop where we were supposed to make a villain and a hero. I had both, but they went with the villain character that I made. And so the hero character I made was the prototype of [the lead] in this book, where I was thinking of Everything Everywhere All at Once. I was feeling inspired from seeing this big, ballsy swing of a movie where they’re throwing all of these different things into one film. I wanted to see if I could do something similar, just in comic form.”

And that’s exactly what Ancestral Recall is: a rollicking adventure through history that’s as thrilling as it is poignant. We follow painter Melvin Waring as he searches for his wife, June, in a near-ish future much like our own world. Not only is Melvin aided by his young neighbor Myran, but he discovers a novel ability: He can channel the skills, memories, and knowledge of various Black historical figures.

“These are all things that I’m very interested in,” Clark said. “Black history means a lot to me. Afrofuturism means a lot to me. Later in the series, there’s conversations about AI and conversations about the value and merit of Black art and a lot of different things mixing together.”

Up Close and Personal

But Ancestral Recall is also much closer to the grain. It’s very much interested in exploring interpersonal relationships at the very heart of these concepts and studies.

“My biggest inspiration was just trying to see if I could make something that felt really big,” Clark said. “It’s got this big sci-fi hook to it, but it also has a little bit of intimacy as well, whether it’s the relationship between Melvin and June or Melvin and Myran. I wanted to have a challenge for myself and if I would be able to pull all the loops together?”

Clark added, “A lot of my favorite books and my favorite comics have elements of that. When you think about, say, a Grant Morrison or Jonathan Hickman or even Brian K. Vaughn. Vaughn is one of the best at that, giving you just like something like Paper Girls, where it’s just this far-reaching, crazy adventure, but it’s really about these four girls and they’re coming of age. I think anything that I could do to try to dip my toe into that, specifically for a debut book, I really wanted it to be something that if I swing and I miss, at least it’s me. Instead of coming out and trying to do something safe that felt like it might fit into a pre-existing box.”

So, sure, come for Melvin channeling a figure like Sam Marlowe and then engage in a little Black noir action. But you must stay for his development as this character is truly novel and interesting amid a sea of similar heroes.

“I took a lot of inspiration from the jazz artist Thelonious Monk (and his wife Nellie), who is considered a musical genius and one of the foremost musicians of his time,” Clark said of the inspirations behind Melvin and June. “[Monk] also couldn’t get through an airport by himself. It wasn’t even that he wasn’t a social person; crowds and lots of people did nothing for him. He was able to play in front of thousands of people, but that was music and that was when he was creating and involved in this thing that was beyond himself. But just in his day-to-day, like, going to the grocery store, absolutely not.”

As such, Melvin’s arc is only part of the story, and the book is very much interested in June’s role as both caregiver and a creator in her own right.

“Nellie was almost [Monk’s] buffer to the world; this person who was able to do a lot of that front-facing stuff for him so he could create and do the things that he did,” Clark said. “But I think on the other side of that, a lot of people might look at that relationship and say, ‘Well, what does she get out of that?’ She’s busy doing everything else for him and he gets to just sit home and make his music and all that. But when you look deeper into their relationship, it was really one where these are two people who deeply love each other. And it was a feeling of, ‘I have somebody who gets me and I don’t have to pretend around and I can be myself around and really have this relationship that’s fulfilling on so many levels.’ And maybe it doesn’t look like that from the outside, for both of them, but it really was that.”

Clark added, “I wanted to do my best to recreate that with Melvin and June, where you have this person where he’s trying to paint this picture and he can’t figure it out. And, not to get super spoiler-y, but he’s trying to work out his feelings for June and he just can’t do it. ‘Cause he’s not somebody who can say it. Not even ‘I love you.’ Being able to express all of the things that he feels, it’s just not really his way.”

Love and Art

In some key was, the Melvin-June relationship is also Clark “working out” some of his own relationship history. If you’re an artist, it can be complicated to give of yourself romantically.

“In the relationships I’ve been in with other artists, there is that understanding – ‘I need space because I’m creating,’ or ‘I’m going to spend the weekend painting,'” Clark said. “Any time I’ve been in a relationship with somebody that wasn’t an artist, or they didn’t understand art, those schedules are weird, right? Because it’s like I’m doing normal things and, oops, here’s a deadline. And I have to lock in for a day-and-a-half. It’s not even a situation where you’re pushing people away or wanting to be anti-social or anything like that. I am an introvert by nature, and I typically just need that time alone anyways. I do share that with Melvin, where he has a much deeper inner world that he’s living in where he’s constantly in his head and creating and doing things. I feel that as well, just in terms of his struggle to maintain a lot of those social relationships and be somebody who is available to people because you need that. You need that energy to create.”

Ancestral Recall, however, isn’t just about the deeply personal. It’s about taking that intimacy and filtering it further upward, and to explore interpersonal connections and friction on a much grander scale. More specifically, given the book’s premise, it’s as much about the role of Black people in America, their culture’s ongoing contributions, and how that history is more vital than ever as we reach a new, dangerous precipice.

“America is a very strange place because there is the concept and the idea of the melting pot, which supposedly is supposed to make us all one people,” Clark said. “And yet at the same time, when you think about American culture and how it is really made up of so many different dynamic cultures.”

Clark brought up the example of foods like pho and tacos. While they’re not American in origin, they’re often seen as being distinctly of this country. It’s a prime instance of a kind of cultural coalescence that is an everyday occurrence in the U.S.

“And yet there’s still this idea of what it means to be an American, and what it means to be a citizen of this country,” Clark said. “Some of that means letting go of what you came here with. And some of that was forced on people. It’s interesting, too, when you think about the larger dynamics at play where, whether it was Irish people, Italian people, or Polish people, they came here with a culture, and that culture was shaved down in order to be accepted into the larger white culture.”

Clark points to a film like the recent smash hit Sinners as exemplifying the way our “melting pot” might actually work.

“There’s a lot of talk about Irish culture, and that was the main vampire in the movie,” Clark said. “Was he bringing something insidious in the sense of trying to push a dominant culture down on these people? Or was there something to it in terms of bringing in a culture to the many other cultures and creating this mix? We’re constantly fighting that battle and constantly trying to figure out what the balance is.”

Ancestral Recall, then, is very much a response to this — Black Americans finding ways to maintain a cohesion and connectiveness outside of the “churn” of American identity politics and its habit of hegemony (often masked as national pride).

“When I think about culture personally, one of the things that definitely sticks to me is there is a certain amount of pride to it as well as a certain amount of comfort in knowing that, no matter where I go, I’m going to be able to find people and connect with people in a way that is maybe not necessarily singular,” Clark said. “Even within Black culture, the way that people in Houston live is going to be different than the way people in Oakland live and people in New York live. But there’s enough similarities and things that cross-pollinate that we all can instantly recognize and feel comfortable in spaces.”

The Gravity of Culture

Our conversation inevitably reached the point where, as a white man myself, this kind of cultural familiarity isn’t often a concern. (Likely because you don’t need such a framework when stoicism and cultural authority are seen as more important personality traits for my ilk.) But for Clark, that connection is a way in which we truly embrace the act of living.

“It is probably nice to have a blissful unawareness of certain things, or to be able to move through the world in a certain way where you’re not so concerned about these particular things,” Clark said. “But there is something lost on the other side of that when you don’t have that connection. And so I do think one of the messages of the book is really embracing whatever the culture is that you come from and digging into that history and finding ways that you can use that to carry you forward into the future.”

As such, Melvin’s experiences in meeting and channeling these Black figures are massively intimate. (Again, a key thread of this book as we look back at the Melvin-June dynamic.) There’s no disconnect between Melvin and the aforementioned Marlowe; it’s about a level of understanding that speaks volumes.

“There’s definitely elements as the story goes along where you see not only Melvin’s connection deep in, but one of the things I tried to do is have the familiarity go both ways,” Clark said. “And so a lot of times when he has connections with these historical figures, they greet him; there is a familiarity there and it’s not just, ‘Oh, who is this person? I don’t really know who I’m speaking to.’ As he continues to go along, you’ll see him open up in other ways. Where he almost figures out a way to transfer the power that he feels in those moments when he’s connected to his everyday life as well.”

It helps that both Clark and Ilhan made real effort to find Black historical figures that were both interesting but also not as fully explored or understood.

“We really try to do a good job of involving a variety of historical figures,” Clark said. “Where it’s like, what does [Melvin] need in the moment? Does he need a detective? Does he need somebody who knows how to drive a car? Does he need somebody who knows martial arts? At the same time, we want to do justice to these people and not just throw them into things. In my mind, I was thinking like ‘Dial H for Historical Black Figures,’ but these people are real people who really lived and really had different experiences.”

That last bit really matters: Clark and Ilhan wanted these people to be as organic and nuanced as possible.

“Whether it’s Atagun drawing them as they were, being historically accurate in the depiction, to just their relationship with Melvin,” Clark said. “That way, there is this unique connection between them where you have living history, but it doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh, this is some strange, old timey character.’ I think that can be difficult sometimes; characters get super-modernized and you’re missing where they come from or what makes them unique. But other times, people really treat them as artifacts or they’re static. I really feel like history is not just in constant motion, but in constant conversation. The past informs the present, informs the future. And so all of these things are moving in a circular fashion.”

True Living History

In the book, there’s two great figures included that speak to this medley of ideas and issues: Ronald Duncan, the first-ever American-born ninja, and Moses Powell, who developed his own form of martial arts he taught to everyday folks. Their fighting skills aren’t just cool but carry another thematically-relevant message.

“In the ‘60s and ‘70s, self-defense was a big thing, but also that kind of disciplined ideal and the way that you move about the world,” Clark said. “I think a lot about not just specifically the Civil Rights movement, but the way that black people oftentimes have to physically police their own bodies for self preservation. Like, you can’t get too mad in public. You can’t do the kinds of things that other people might be able to get away with because you’re going to put yourself in a certain position. But, also, you have to be able to protect yourself in certain ways because who knows what might happen?”

There’s a thread of that in another interesting Black figure we discussed.

“There was a woman named Marie Van Brittan Brown, who lived in the Bronx and had to invent a security system, which became the basis for the modern security system,” Clark said. “Because she was like, ‘Nobody’s going to secure my house except for me.’ When you just think about the ingenuity of people, there’s people who aren’t famous because they didn’t do anything that is noteworthy in the sense that they weren’t prominent civil rights activists. They weren’t the first of anything in particular. They were significant and important and certainly played a pivotal role in their time or in their communities.”

Still, it’s not just about being authentic to these characters and their life lessons. The creators are hoping to spur people on to research and delve into these folks, and to explore a history possibly outside their own experiences. It’s that knowledge that helps all of us down the line.

“Pop culture has been able to expose people to things that they would have known about,” Clark said. “It’s like the Watchmen phenomenon of everybody relearning about the Tulsa Race Massacre. That wasn’t a thing on a TV show. That’s a thing a TV show used as inspiration to create all these moments for these characters. In a similar way, I really wanted to look and see if I could find a variety of people who lived very different lives, and from very different time periods.”

It’s a larger trend of life in 2025, and it’s this awareness of motifs and repeating themes that will help us flourish.

“Even today, people are reading 1984 and Fahrenheit 451,” Clark said. “Like, ‘Oh, man, that’s happening right now.’ Everything comes back around again. And that’s why it’s important to have that connection to history. Because if everything that happens to you is new and you’re just like, ‘Whoa, we’ve never encountered this before,’ then it’s easy to fall into those similar traps instead of being able to see what came before, how these people dealt with it, how they moved through it, and then how you can use that in your situation.”

That Modern, Zany Life

At the same time, Ancestral Recall hasn’t just tapped into the past. With the mystery of people disappearing (including June) plaguing Melvin’s neighborhood, the whole story has proven painfully prescient for life in Trump’s America.

“It is surreal in a number of ways,” Clark said of the prescience. “Whether it’s those disappearances, or the very intentional erasure of Black history. Later in the story, there’s a sentient AI corporation that we introduced. These are all things that are happening that I didn’t intend.”

However, Clark doesn’t want people to read Ancestral Recall and “become increasingly paranoid.” Instead, it’s once again about paying attention to news/trends and recognizing that none of this happens in a vacuum.

“The guy who drives the bus is gone,” Clark said. “The woman that works at the nursing home is gone. All these people that you take for granted because who are they? They’re part of the fabric of the neighborhood. Maybe they got another job. But maybe something else happened to them. It’s people who are lacking the protections that a lot of other people have. And so it feels like an increased level of paranoia because this is historical. This is how it starts. Like, ‘It was OK to do it to those people.’ And so we became numb to it. But then it happened to your neighbor. And, yes, that’s not really OK, but it’s obviously not going to happen to me. And then it happens to you and you’re like, ‘Oh, there were the warning signs six months ago.'”

And through that pronounced understanding, more people can abandon fear/doubt for proper action. That’s the only way we can save ourselves, it seems.

“Because sometimes things like that do feel scary and overwhelming,” Clark said. “They feel like you don’t really have any control over it, or it’s bigger than you. But there’s so many things that you can do, even if it feels small, to assist. Because that’s how these kinds of forces are hoping that you feel. They want you to feel scared. They want you to feel overwhelmed. They want you to feel small, and that you’re not able to push back. But if there’s a collective push-back, then it’s different. There’s a bit of that in the book where you’re able to make those connections, think about it, and see that hopefully there’s an inspiration to action.”

Being Better Primates

If absolutely nothing else, at least it can teach all of us to be more patient with ourselves. Even that small gesture of peace and understanding can be a way to cut through some of the larger socio-political happenings of today.

“It can be difficult and I struggle with it myself, but I also try to give people as much grace as I can,” Clark said. “Some days I might not be my best self, and if I’m interacting with somebody, I certainly would like to receive a similar level of grace. Like, ‘I wish you were not driving that way, but I get it.’ As opposed to everybody’s on guard and everybody’s got their hackles up to 100% and are just ready to fight at any given moment. If you really get down to the heart of it, we all just want to be, right? We all just want to be able to live our lives and not have to worry about not just all the external dangers.”

Clark added, “Again, after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, we’re very far removed from the very early days of humanity, but I think our brains are still wired. No one told our brains that we’re not in danger of being done in by a Sabre-toothed tiger all the time.”

And even if we can’t be kinder (to ourselves and others), Clark at least wants us as a species to be more involved in our own ongoing development. Circling back to the mysterious “AI corporation,” Clark said the whole thing has some very specific origins and inspirations.

“We did create this crazy sentient corporation that was inspired by [Blaine the Mono from The Dark Tower],” Clark said. “This living train that’s still got to do its job. It’s still got to get people from A to B.”

Clark added, “Thinking of this corporation, if there was such a horrible thing of a living corporation…people want to give corporations personhood and all the protections of a person. I got to get the product out, but does it really matter how that happens? You know, does it really matter what went into either the delivery of it, the creation of it, the testing and marketing of it, as long as you got it and you enjoyed it.”

That very attitude is indicative of an increasing “laziness” among humanity. It’s not death and doom by our own stupidity and greed, but a careless approach to who and/or what is actually making the far-flung future a painful reality.

“That’s one of those things that we really do want to get into and explore,” Clark said. “Not even just the base root of capitalism, but I think the way that we are getting a peek at this kind of future of…well, not Skynet in the way that computers are dominating us, but the way that people are more and more freely just being like, ‘Well, ChatGPT can do that for me.’ It’s interesting to think of Wall-E as, like, a predictive dystopian film, but we’re heading in that direction. But when you also see these weird Tesla robots being pitched, this isn’t even good.”

It’s an issue that, at the very bare minimum, demands some question-asking and grander conversations.

“I don’t know if that’s the best thing,” Clark said. “But I think it might do more harm than good because it’s like, ‘Well, what’s the best, most ruthlessly efficient way to do this?’ It’s not going to consider the human cost of that. It’s just going to do what’s the best for the corporation. Do you want to use this ability responsibly and ethically? Or do you just want to do something that you’re like, ‘Man, if I could just do that once?'”

The Outro

It’s a level of thinking and general engagement that Clark even applies to a silly question toward the end of our chat: If he could “pull a Melvin” and channel any historical figure, who’d he pick and why? Admittedly, he himself was tempted to take the “easy route” and pick something cool.

“Because there’s part of me that it would be really awesome to be able to do crazy martial arts,” Clark said. “Like, just to feel the freedom, right? To move your body in that way with such precision, and to feel a sense of power and ability. That would be great. I love music, and to be able to channel a John Coltrane or a Sun Ra or Jimi Hendrix – to be able to feel what it was like to not just perform music at a high level, but to feel it in such an innate way that it’s just second nature to you.”

But it’s his final answer that’s really interesting. It’s something that speaks to the heart of Ancestral Recall and the many ideas, energies, and concepts driving this novel book forward. It’s this idea that life and culture are these big, dynamic things, and if we embrace them with creativity and joy, you’d be surprised the lessons we can learn, the things we can make, and the bridges we can forge. That, and Jeet Kune Do is just cool as heck.

“I would probably go with John Coltrane and Bruce Lee,” Clark said. “Those two ends of the spectrum of physically feel that and then mentally, artistically, and spiritually feel that and put that together.”

Ancestral Recall #1 is due out August 6 via AHOY Comics (The FOC is Monday, July 7.)