from marvel comics’s captain america and the falcon, words by priest, art by dan jurgens We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.
—
It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.
—
There are no happy accidents. If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen. Asking and suggesting and cajoling and wheedling only goes so far. Sometimes you have to pick up that pistol and turn your idea into reality.

Sometimes you have to pick up that pencil and turn your idea into reality.
—
That isn’t what this one is about, though. It’s about protection.

The Black Power movement was, at its heart, about protection. It was the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, not the Black Panther Party For Killin’ White Folks. The BPP was formed in response to police brutality. They were a force to protect people. This is evident in their Ten Point Program:

1. We want power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities.
2. We want full employment for our people.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black Community.
4. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.
5. We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.
6. We want completely free health care for all black and oppressed people.
7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of color, all oppressed people inside the United States.
8. We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression.
9. We want freedom for all black and oppressed people now held in U. S. Federal, state, county, city and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology.

Key words: “We want.”
Key ideas: Safety, equality

How do you respond when you’re unable to gain ground against a system that has been built off your backs with the intent of keeping you down? You burn it down.

Malcolm X said that it’s “a corrupt, vicious, hypocritical system that has castrated the Black man; and the only way the Black man can get back at it is to strike it in the only way he knows how.” When you don’t have a choice and can’t find a legal way to protect yourself, you’re going to pick up a weapon, be it a gun or a stick, and take protection into your own hands.

That’s a large part of how I view the idea of Black Power. “We are not getting protection. We are being actively refused protection. How can we take it?”

There’s another Malcolm X quote. He said that he never meant Dr. King any trouble, but he had no trouble showing people what was waiting in the wings if they didn’t embrace Martin Luther King’s way of doing things.

“We’re giving peace a chance for right now… but I wish you would keep pushing us and then you’ll really get a piece of our mind,” so to speak.

Protection, change, the future: by any means.

from dc comics’s new frontier, words and art by darwyn cooke

If only there was more material available, but it is a subject that is covered somewhat poorly, considering its importance.

http://community.livejournal.com/torchbearers/
http://andweshallmarch.typepad.com/
http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/
http://popcultureshock.com/pcs/blogs/glyphs/
http://www.digitalfemme.com/journal/
http://www.funnybookbabylon.com/
http://www.thevhive.com/forum/index.php?webtag=DWAYNEMCDUFFIE

edit: Cheryl Lynn is ten steps a head of me and shooting backwards just for practice!

art from marvel comics’s essential power man and iron fist by dave cockrum and daughters of the dragon by khari evans and christina strainYou people are all trying to achieve the impossible. That’s exactly what we’ve done. But, you’ll fail and you’ll all die. If we die the next generation will fight them too and the one after them for as long as they must and eventually we shall succeed.
–Dialogue from Four Assassins, interview with RZA from Wu-Tang here regarding kung-fu samples

The two best genres to come out of the ’70s are blaxploitation and kung fu cinema. While blaxploitation was essentially invented by whites, blacks came out in droves to support it. For some reason, blacks embraced both genres. Maybe it was the dope names. Master Killer, Ghostface Killer, Golden Arms, Grandmaster, Five Deadly Venoms… It could’ve been the fighting, or the stories about the underdog fighting against a corrupt regime, or infighting… could’ve been any number of things, really.

The only thing that matters is that both are dope.

Good times.

from dc comics’s superman vs muhammad ali, art by neal adamsWhen I was a kid, black heroes sucked. Bishop was a wack jheri-curl having dude, Black Panther was an Avenger, Rhodey wasn’t really about anything, and Night Thrasher had a skateboard. Where else do you look? Real life.

Muhammad Ali is the first black superhero. He has the dope name and the physical skills to prove it. He had a punch that could sit you down, one that would lay you out, and another that would wake you up right before it sat you down again. He taught a couple generations of kids how to swagger talk.

He was, is, and forever will be the greatest that ever did it.

As long as I have Ali, I don’t need Superman.

Ali was also down with my other favorite hero, Malcolm X. More on him later, of course.

That’s right, we can all stop arguing. Comics were already ruined forty-five years ago.

from dc comics’s new frontier, art and words by darwyn cooke

John Henry told the Captain
That a man is just a man,
And I swear by all that’s right and wrong
I’ll kill you where you stand

Can I do 29 of these a month? Who knows. I bring the food for thought, you do the dishes and think it over.

John Henry meets Nat Turner.

Or do they?

How long do you give a story before you judge it? If it’s obviously one part of a series, do you wait until it’s done or are you just so turned off that you shun it forever and cast it into outer darkness?

I tend to walk the line. If it’s a writer I trust, I’ll ride it out and see where it takes me. If it’s a writer I don’t trust… well, I don’t generally read books by writers I don’t trust, so that problem basically solves itself.

I mean, I saw one of the best black characters in comics catch a bullet to the dome a while back. It was a good scene and a good story, so I stayed interested instead of turned off.

Also, can we please stop talking about how much X writer hates Y character just because bad things happen to that character? One joke in an interview two years ago does not a vendetta make, no matter how often and how loudly it’s repeated. Bendis doesn’t hate Tigra any more than he hates Dr. Strange or Mary Jane.

I should probably also talk about Young Avengers #1: Patriot sometime soon, too, huh? I’m sure you’re all dying to know my thoughts on it.

In our last installment, Hawkeye just kind of showed up like a jerk and shot at Spider-Man. Spider-Man realizes that the only way to counter an excessive amount of sound effects is his own assortment of too many sound effects. Let’s watch!

Thanks to ManiacClown for sharing my burden of being constantly confused for MightyGodKing.

Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Mark Millar is talking up his upcoming run on Wolverine over at Newsarama.

NRAMA: Okay, so sketch out Wolverine when we first see him in #66 – who is he? You say he’s broken…how? Body? Spirit? Is he still a scrapper?

MM: He’s not a scrapper anymore. He’s a guy who will see a fight, look sad and walk away. If someone spits in his face, he’ll wipe it away and walk off, even if his kids are walking. But we know what he’s capable. His teenage son thinks he’s a failure, but his wife knows what he can do when the right buttons are pushed and is proud of the fact that he’s turned his back on everything. She also knows exactly what happened to him on the night the heroes fell to the villains. So she’s entirely sympathetic.

NRAMA: Who else will we be seeing in this story?

MM: Only a few Marvel Heroes are still alive and the story mainly focuses on their descendants. There’s a new Kingpin for example and Spiderman’s granddaughter, Spider-bitch, is a favorite but the characters I’m most excited about are the radiation sick sons and grandsons of the Hulk – and inbred, ugly, incestuous team of supervillains with a nod to The Hills Have Eyes.

NRAMA: Eu. Speaking of the Hulk’s kids and descendants…what role do they serve in this new world? Besides the creepy factor…

MM: They’re the ganglords for California. Banner is a bald old man living in the remains of the Playboy mansion and he’s there with his sons and daughters and inbred gandchildren. Beau and Luke Hulk are the two terrifying enforcers giving Logan a huge amount of shit in the first issue. Steve has just knocked these villains out of the park.

Find the good or original idea in those answers.

It’s a good time to be Gavok because in just a couple days, I’ll be going to the WWE Royal Rumble in Madison Square Garden. The event has always been my own little “Wrestling Christmas” and I look forward to it every year. I felt that I needed to prepare in my own little way.

Like I recently acquired the DVD set of all 20 Royal Rumble shows in a big, white cube. Considering I also have a collection of the first 20 Wrestlemanias sitting around, gathering dust, I figured I would watch them all in chronological order. Right now I’m in the middle of Wrestlemania 9 (taking place in 1993). I figure by the time I’m completely caught up, it’ll be time for this year’s Wrestlemania.

That at least explains why I’ve been kind of lax here lately, though it’s hardly noticeable with the good job hermanos and Hoatzin have been doing. I knew I needed to do another Wrestlecomic article. I could cover the Chaos Comics WWF stuff from the late-90’s, but I think I’ll wait until I reach those years in my Royal Rumble/Wrestlemania watching to dive into that. I found a guy selling a manga from what appears to be the same people behind the Hulk Hogan manga, making a big deal about a huge battle royal featuring a bunch of big 80’s wrestlers.

I got the idea that this was some big all-star crossover fight that would last for an entire comic, so even if I couldn’t read any of it, I could at least follow what was going on. When I got my book, I discovered that this battle royal was extremely brief. I tried pretending I could follow what was going on in the manga, but it wasn’t working. I know when I’m beat. At least the Engrish cover refers to the story as “Super Real Fiction!” which, now that I think about it, is a strangely accurate description of professional wrestling.

So the manga thing was a bust. Now what? I decided that if fishing in the past wasn’t going to work, I’d see what’s going on in the present. I picked up a comic called Headlocked: Work of Art, written by Michael Kingston and drawn by Randy Valiente.

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