Turtel Onli

Turtel Onli (January 25, 1952 – January 15, 2025), born Alvin Phillips, was an artist, publisher, educator, and cultural organizer whose lifelong work laid the ideological and institutional foundations for the Black independent comics movement. Raised in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood by his grandfather — a reverend who used narrative painting in his sermons — Onli developed a visual philosophy he called Rhythmism, fusing Afrofuturist and primitivist influences into a style that was entirely his own. In 1970 he founded the Black Arts Guild. In 1981 he self-published NOG, Protector of the Pyramids, one of the earliest Afrocentric superhero comics. In 1992 he created Malcolm 10. In 1993 he coined the term 'Black Age of Comics' and organized the first Black Age of Comics Convention in Chicago — the direct ancestor of Philadelphia's ECBACC. He taught art in Chicago public schools for over two decades and served as an adjunct professor at Harold Washington College until his death. His artwork is held in the collections of Miles Davis, Alice Coltrane, and the Chicago Children's Museum. He died on January 15, 2025, at age 72, active at his studio until the end.