As African superheroes come on screen, more kids see themselves

When Ridwan Moshood was 12, a group of bullies from his middle school in Lagos, Nigeria, chased him down and tipped a full trash can onto his head.

“Garbage boy,” they taunted, laughing.

The experience haunted Mr. Moshood, and to cope, he began to sketch a cartoon character he named Garbage Boy. Over the years, he scribbled Garbage Boy’s crime-fighting adventures into flipbooks that he used to make short animations. Later, after teaching himself to animate on YouTube, he began making flash-based cartoons about his scrappy teenage hero as well. And later still, as Mr. Moshood prepared to