Jon Daniel: My Afro Supa-Heroes

As the British-born child of West Indian immigrants, Jon Daniel's search for an identity in the late 60s and early 70s suburbia of East Sheen, south-west London, was something of a challenge.

We were one of very few black families in the area,"

he says.

My mother had come from Grenada while my father came from Barbados, initially to work for London Transport and thereafter the civil service. My mum was a district nurse, so we knew everyone locally and I remember a happy childhood, but I felt there was very little in British culture that appealed to me or that I felt part of."

Fairly typical, he says, for kids like him. One of only four or five black children at primary school, he doesn't recall much overt racism, rather daily experiences of otherness – kids always wanting to touch his afro hair for one.

A sense of belonging and then political awakening came from the West Indian culture of his extended family and the African American experience in the US. "It was a time of black pride, with the formality of the 60s civil rights movement paving the way for the funkiness of the 70s," he recalls. "My interests were black music, black history and their heroes."

His older brother, Tony, was a huge influence and introduced him to groups such as Ohio Players, Brass Construction, Cameo and Slave – music that he and his best mate, Jim, ("white, middle class and sometimes chased by skinheads") listened to while poring over books about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

Fast forward and Daniel is now 47, married with two sons, has a career as an independent creative director and is about to have an exhibition of his collection of black action figures and comics at the V&A Museum of Childhood in London's Bethnal Green. While working in an advertising agency in the 90s, he came across a photograph of a model of Malcolm X in a copy of the Face magazine, which he then bought, mail order, from the US. So began an obsession. He has a collection of 40-odd figures now, including his personal favourite, Super Agent Slade, "the closest model you can get to Richard Roundtree's Shaft".

Along the years, he has also amassed a large collection of black comic strips. "Brother Voodoo, Lobo, Black Lightning and also a series begun in 1966 called Golden Legacy, a black historical comic featuring Martin Luther King, Pushkin and the abolitionist Harriet Tubman."

The exhibition is called Afro Supa Hero and came about after Daniel wrote about his collection in a blog for Creative Review magazine and, as he puts it, "got quite a reaction". One of his friends, Alice, suggested he approach the V&A and the rest is now – black – history.

The exhibition is not his first – Stanley Gibbons exhibited his collection of stamps featuring black cultural figures from around the world in 2011 and 2012, which went a little way to making up for the failure of his decade-long campaign to get Royal Mail to take up his designs for a set of stamps highlighting black contribution to Britain ("People like Ira Aldridge, Mary Seacole and John R Archer"). They did eventually include some of the names he suggested in other stamp sets.

His work on branding for Black History Month for Camden council won him a RIMA (Race in the Media award) in 2003 and he was also involved in Operation Black Vote, mobilising the black community to vote prior to the 1997 general election. Currently, he's working with Ms Dynamite and the Black Cultural Archives, soon to have a new home in Brixton. No slouch, he admits to guidance from his hero.

Original article was in the Observer 7th Sept.

Afro Supa Hero: Museum of Childhood, London, E2 9PA

Starts 14 September -until 9 February 2014