The free Oklahoma Comic Arts Festival is a new event celebrating one of the oldest art forms

Between Superman and The Fantastic Four battling evil at the movies over the summer and the sprawling “The Walking Dead” franchise and sophomore season of “Peacemaker” continuing their sagas as television series, the impact of comics on our screens remains undefeated.

But the influence of comics on the wider culture landscape goes back much futher than that, said Jeff Provine, executive director of the Oklahoma Comic Arts Foundation.

“I’d almost say it’s one of the first-ever art styles: ‘Visual narrative’ is one of the fancy words for comics. Other people talk about ‘sequential art’ and things like that, but the idea is that you can tell a story just through the pictures. And once you have that, you start talking about cave paintings and hieroglyphs and ancient Roman graffiti, medieval tapestries,” Provine told The Oklahoman.

“The famous Bayeux Tapestry, you don’t have to know any Latin at all: You can clearly see the story of this big guy on a horse riding in and conquering the England and all that. So, I think that’s really where it’s powerful. Some people could criticize it, because it’s like, ‘Oh, they should read books,’ but we’re visual creatures.”

An arts nonprofit dedicated to growing the comic community in Oklahoma by encouraging local talent, highlighting comics made in the Sooner State and providing free educational programming, the foundation is organizing the first Oklahoma Comic Arts Festival.

The free inaugural Oklahoma Comic Arts Festival is set for 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center.

“Comics are a powerful storytelling medium that resonate across generations, and this collaboration allows us to celebrate the creativity and wide range of voices found within the comic arts,” said Oklahoma Contemporary Executive Director Trent Riley in a statement.

What can people expect from the first Oklahoma Comic Arts Festival in OKC?

The free, family-friendly celebration of comics, manga and visual storytelling will offer festivalgoers the opportunity to meet dozens of Oklahoma comic creators as well as celebrated artists from across the country, including Gavin Guidry (“Action Comics,” “Uncanny X-Men,” “Superman 77”), Steenz! (“Heart of the City,” “Archival Quality”), Andy Hirsch (“Science Comics Dogs,” “Science Comics Cats,” “History Comics: The American Bison”) and many more.

Merging the excitement generated by comic conventions, aka comic cons, with Oklahoma Contemporary’s arts education focus, the festival also will include workshops for adults and children, creator panels, T-shirt screen printing and more.

“The Contemporary has been absolutely amazing and generous with us, helping us with the space and outlook and setup. … We definitely wouldn’t be able to do it without them,” Provine said.

“If it’s nice weather, we’re even going to spill outside and have some of our comics-related cosplayers hanging around. We have are very excited to have the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coming by, which started in comic book back in the ’80s. … Then, you can go into our gallery in the education wing: We’ve set up just this past week an entire hallway of 30 different pieces of comics art, showing pages and various states of pencils and inks and even scripts posted up so you can see how the script gets translated into a comic-book page.”

On the art center’s third floor, Provine said more than 50 artists, companies and organizations will have booths set up to celebrate their ties to the world of comics.

“From Chester Gould’s creation of Dick Tracy to Archie Goodwin’s profound influence at Marvel and DC, Oklahomans have been shaping our imagination for decades,” said Jake Krumwiede, executive director of the OKPOP Museum, which is in its final phase of fundraising to complete the planned Tulsa landmark.

“At OKPOP, we celebrate Oklahoma’s creative history and, through these stories, aim to inspire the next generation of Oklahoma creators. Partnering with organizations like the Oklahoma Comic Arts Foundation allows us to showcase their work while giving the public a glimpse into our growing comic collection.”

Also an author and the founder of “Okie Comics,” Provine answered The Oklahoman’s questions about the new event ahead of the first Oklahoma Comic Arts Festival:

Q: What is the difference between a comic con and the Oklahoma Comic Arts Festival?

A comic con, it’s a convention, so comes out of collectors. Originally, you’d get a bunch of collectors together, and they’d show their comics and maybe bring in somebody who made some comics to talk about it. And now we’ve got the cons that have movies involved and cosplayers and bring in voice actors and all kinds of really cool culture stuff, which is great.

But we want to go back to really focusing on just creating comics as art. … Places like Boston have their comic arts festival. (There’s the) Toronto Comic Arts Festival, but we need one for Oklahoma. So, that’s really where this idea came from, and we’ve been running with it.

Q: When you’re talking about comic arts, are you talking about comic books, comic strips and web comics? Is it a pretty wide range of concepts that fall under that heading?

Yeah, we love cartoons, the single-panel comic strips. We love newspaper comic strips. We love comic books from like Archie Goodwin, a longtime artist and writer and editor — everything — with Marvel and DC from Tulsa …

It’s a wide-open medium famously known for superheroes, which I love superhero comics and read a bunch this (last) weekend. But then I also read a biography of British royalty in comic-book form.

So, anything you want to do, you can make a comic about it. … Anybody can make comics. Even if you can only do stick figures, you can make an awesome stick figure comic.

Q: You have a mix of Oklahoma and out-of-state creators in this event. Are you excited to let festivalgoers know about some of the Oklahomans working in comics they might not be aware of?

I’m always a huge fan of showing off our local talent. If we’re talking about Spider-Man swinging around New York City, there’s no reason he couldn’t swing down Automobile Alley or hook around the Devon Tower.

So, I like showing off those local artists … like Jeff Parker doing his work with Disney comics and Gabriel Hardman doing his DC work and things. So, we get a nice interaction of folks who are genuinely friends and then want to come out and hang out and show what they’re doing with their comics, too …

Jonathan Koelsch has done tons of work with Marvel, specifically on the Marvel trading card series. Well, he just lives on a farm west of town. So, some of these are our neighbors, and it’s always fun to see what your neighbors are doing.

Q: The festival has a trading card series, too, so can you explain how that works?

We picked this idea up from Nostalgia Con up in Tulsa. One of their vendors is also coming to ours who’s done some comic work, and they have these little trading cards showing off their artist alley over there. So, we decided … ‘Let’s do it.’ We took contributions from folks. Not every artist was able to jump in on it. But we got 29 different artists to contribute art, and then we’re making cards out of them. And we’re going to see who can collect them all. It should be a lot of fun.

INAUGURAL OKLAHOMA COMIC ARTS FESTIVAL

• When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13.

• Where: Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, 11 NW 11, downtown OKC.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Here’s what to know about the free and first Oklahoma Comic Arts Festival