In the graphic novel BTTM FDRS, Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore capture the horrors of gentrification in a Chicago neighborhood through a Technicolor lens. The book follows Darla, a young Black artist and Chicago native, as she grapples with the colonization of the Bottomyards, the fictional south side neighborhood that she was born and raised in. She comes to the frightening realization that there has been something living in the walls of her apartment building, a monster that will take her body over from the inside out.
An example of this ignorance is displayed when Darla presents some clothes she’s designed to an art director who has never been to the Bottomyards. This woman’s opinion of the community has been shaped by the demeaning views of others and hearsay from her friends. She says she knew someone who “drove through once and said it was crazy!” Obviously apprehensive of the neighborhood at first, the art director’s attitude changes when she hears of some of the artists who have moved to the area. Suddenly the Bottomyards becomes desirable and seen as a crazy yet alluring place that she must visit, no longer one that must be avoided.
The book delves into social matters that plague disadvantaged communities of color across the nation by being direct about the issues at hand. Daniels and Passmore are based in Los Angeles and New Orleans respectively, and say they, too, have had to interrogate themselves about gentrification and cultural appropriation as they’ve moved from place to place. Daniels moved to Chicago when he was 24 and lived here for a decade. For him living in cheap Chicago neighborhoods “even as a person of color, is something that I had to reconcile with.”
