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John Jennings taps into his arsenal of skills on social issues, comics and hip-hop on his quest to disseminate information to the public so they can see the true evils in society through art.

Jennings’ work will be displayed during the Boneyard Arts Festival in an exhibit called “Late Night Space” April 18 and 19 at Habitat for Humanity ReStore. The assistant professor in graphic design will submit posters he has created that he hasn’t shown anywhere else. The posters were created for social discourse on anti-war sentiments, identity and violence against women.

“A lot of the work I’ve done recently is more political as far as just dealing with social issues,” says Jennings. “There’s a huge need for deconstructing how different things are represented in media, which formed the work I do now.”

Jennings, along with Damian Duffy, graduate student at the University of Illinois, and Jennings’ “partner in crime,” have released a graphic novel this month titled The Hole: Consumer Culture. The long-form political cartoon uses science fiction and horror themes to deal with issues of identity politics, racism, sexism, gender, religion and, as the title suggests, consumer culture. In the back of the novel there are academic materials, projects used in university courses, a glossary and contextualized essays.

“We want to make the audience as uncomfortable about the subject matter as we are,” Jennings says.

Jennings and Duffy went over storylines and began creating worlds. Jennings worked on the art while Duffy worked on writing and put in the word balloons and sound effects.

“My work has gotten a lot better after collaborating with him,” says Duffy.

The team has worked together for four years. When Jennings first suggested the book to Duffy, he thought it was a horrible idea. Both had many other projects.

“The more we started talking about it, I realized it was a really good way to talk about race and gender, and he knew instinctively that there was something really potent in this idea,” Duffy says.

The Hole: Consumer Culture is part of a series. A second volume is currently in development for next year. The Mississippi native says it was comic books that lead him to become an artist. His mother was an English major in college and always had plenty of books on hand. As Jennings read the books, he became interested in mythology; he was most interested in Thor, god of thunder.

His mother one day brought him a comic book, The Mighty Thor, by Marvel comics, and he quickly tried to draw the characters. Characters like Spiderman and Superman and themes of justice and morality led him to pursue art as a career and eventually create comics of his own.

“It was because of comics that I became an artist,” Jennings says.

Jennings is creative director for Eye Trauma Comix, a collection of comic books for an older audience to educate on social issues. Comics are often depicted in the media as being for kids.

“Sometimes people think it’s low-brow art and not a valid medium of discourse,” Jennings says. “We wanted to use comics in different ways for academic discourse, education and activism, which is why we created Eye Trauma.”

Both Jennings and Duffy, who is editor-in-chief of Eye Trauma, constantly research comic form. The duo has spoken at the International Comic Arts Forum and have presented at universities across the country on comics in relation to society.

“I look at what I do as trying to become what’s known in our profession as a citizen designer: the idea of design not just being used for corporate interest but to be used to disseminate information that could help the public good,” says Jennings.

Jennings has also taught “Dezyne Klass” at the University of Illinois, a special topics class about culture and identity and the reconstruction of images with a hip-hop twist. The hip-hop fan took the culture of hip-hop and compared it to design.

“I’m not a b-boy or a DJ or anything, but I appreciate the simplicity and brilliance of the culture,” says Jennings. “I tried to integrate it into the course as much as possible. It is this international phenomenon that people don’t understand because of lack of exposure and perspective.”

In October, Jennings and Duffy will curate a show titled “Out of Sequence” at the Krannert Art Museum dealing with comics and sequential art done by underrepresented minorities and underrepresented forms.

“Hopefully people come check it out,” Jennings said, “and get inspired to create comics themselves.”