‘Abbott Elementary’ has three Emmy’s under its belt — and now, thanks to one fan, a New Yorker-style comic

With three Emmy wins, an ABC ratings record, and a second season set to premiere Sept. 21, it’s been a whirlwind year for West Philly native Quinta Brunson’s hit comedy, Abbott Elementary.

Now, thanks to one fan, it’s also got a series of New Yorker-style comics — from an actual New Yorker cartoonist.

Brooklyn-based illustrator Akeem S. Roberts has been recapping Abbott’s first season with a run of comics on his Twitter account, @Akeemteam. The comics, posted daily leading up to Abbott’s second season premiere, showcase Roberts’ favorite moments from each episode of the first season. They’re not being printed or sold to any publication, and are “purely a social media thing” he’s doing as a kind of fan art to celebrate the series.

Roberts, a professional illustrator for nearly a decade, says he fell in love with the series during its first episode when Brunson’s Janine Teagues sees a student sleeping on the ground of her classroom, and resolves to get a rug to help make her students more comfortable. That, Roberts says, was the installment’s “heart moment.”

“I loved the series as I was watching it,” he says. “The first episode, I knew I loved the heart moment. And rewatching it, every episode had a heart moment like that.”

So, he put his talents as an illustrator to work. Roberts has plenty of New Yorker-style experience. He first submitted a comic to the magazine in 2019, and got in on his first shot. He’s had more comics published since, and has gotten his foot in the door as a children’s book illustrator with his work on author J. Dillard’s J.D. the Kid Barber series.

Now, he’s also posting a regular series of autobiographical comics to his Instagram account, also @AkeemTeam, dealing with his everyday life.

But, incidentally, his ongoing Abbott series isn’t the first time he’s drawn up some of Brunson’s work. He previously did a similar comic based on Brunson’s Buzzfeed series, Quinta vs. Everything, which ran from 2017 to 2018.

“I’ve been a fan of hers since the Buzzfeed days,” Roberts says. “I’m an OG, I guess.”

Like any Brunson fan — and pretty much everyone in Philadelphia — Roberts was thrilled with the show’s Emmy wins this week, which garnered a casting award, a comedy writing award for Brunson, and a supporting actress award for costar Sheryl Lee Ralph. Those wins came the night Roberts rewatched “Gifted Program,” the first season’s sixth episode, for his comic, which deals with a new gifted program at the show’s namesake school, and how some kids may feel left out.

“The episode was talking about being yourself, and not trying to do something like what everyone else does,” Roberts says. “That is what Abbott is doing — being true to itself.”

Abbott Elementary’s second season premieres Sept. 21 on ABC, and will be available to stream on Hulu the day after it airs.