from marvel comics’s cage, art by richard corben and jose villarubiaWe don’t play with the lizards, we make phrases up and say ’em exquisite
–Jadakiss, “Welcome to D-Block”

I know you like the way I’m freakin’ it
I talk with slang and I’ma never stop speakin’ it

“Speak with criminal slang”
That’s just the way that I talk, yo
“Vocabulary spills, I’m ill”
–Big L, “Ebonics” (last two lines of the first verse, three lines of chorus)

The English language is a beautiful and malleable one. Sometimes you just have to sit back and listen to people celebrate it.

He’s cool, he’s bad, that’s dope, she’s ill, she’s a dime, he’s a buster, let me borrow your jack (iPhones are Apple Jacks for that double word score), look out for lizards, he’s selling wolf tickets, stop tongue-kissing cobras, get it crunk up, get outta here with that dragon breath, what’s crackin’ youngblood, where’s your bird at, listen at this joint man…

You aren’t rich. You’re ballinnnnnnn.

It isn’t Warner Robins, Macon, the Bronx, Manhattan, or Staten Island. It’s War-town, Mack-town, the Boogie Down Bronx, Money Makin’ Manhattan, and Shaolin. You from New Jersey? Nah, you’re from Dirty Jersey. Newark? New Jerusalem. I’m from the Dirty South, about an hour south of the ATL. I’m on the west coast now, living in the Bay Area (Yay Area), but it’s still deuces up, A-towns down. Is it where you’re from or where you’re at?

Your friend is your brother, but you still call him “son” ’cause he shines like one.

Sweet Christmas.

“I don’t know how you all see it, but when it comes to the children, Wu-Tang is for the children. We teach the children.”
–Ol’ Dirty Bastard

There aren’t a lot of black youths active in comics these days. Just a cursory, generous, and off-the-top-of-my-head count comes up with Natasha Irons, Night Thrasher (II), Debrii, Patriot, Prodigy… who else? DC’s got a stockpile of fashionable pretty little indistinguishable blonde girls and dark haired male sidekicks and that’s about it. We’ve got a fistful of grown-ups, and Luke Cage is leading the Avengers and playing the Captain America role (whoa), but what about the kids?

I had some harsh words about Patriot a while back, and I stand by them. His origin makes him a sucker and a weakling on a team full of people who have overcome exterior problems without falling victim to interior ones. I recently reread Young Avengers after a friend gave away the two trades and I still can’t get into it. It rubs me raw.

Patriot is an interesting character, because a young black male wearing the flag, even (or especially) now is rife with story possibilities. In a lot of ways, it flies in the face of logic. In others, it makes perfect sense. Ed Brubaker did a good job briefly discussing those issues in his issue of Young Avengers Presents. How do you reconcile history and the ideal? Do you even bother trying? Patriot is the grandson of a man who was pretty much tortured and ruined by the government who is represented by the flag he wears. What about that?

David “Prodigy” Alleyne from New X-Men is a character that I liked a lot. He had clever powers and was kind of a modern-day non-irreparably lame Doug Ramsey type of kid. He could absorb the knowledge, but not the powers, of anyone who he was close to. Then House of M hit and Kyle and Yost took over the series and bodies started dropping and I stopped reading.

But, I mean, before all that? He seemed pretty cool, even if he was only ever on maybe ten covers out of fifty-nine of the New Mutants/New X-Men run. (Yes I counted.)

I want a spectrum of characters. I want to see that young black kid who is all about fighting the power and bringing down the man. I want to see that kid who might not have grown up as poor as his other friends and has some guilt over that. I want to see that black girl who had to fight twice as hard as everyone else she knows to get half as far. I want to see those kids who reflect the people I grew up with, who run the gamut from this, to that, and the third.

I started reading comics almost twenty years ago. (I am not that old I just started reading early, shut up.) Why is the landscape barely different at all? Milestone Comics was how many years ago now? I mean, can a Brothers get a black Teen Titan who isn’t a) Cyborg and b) a shrinky bee girl? This is the pre-eminent DC teen team, you mean to tell me that they can’t get a quota kid or two to fill out the ranks? Farm some kids out of the Boys & Girls Club? I mean, blonde girls got it made! There’s one with every power under the sun! Why can’t I have a spectrum of characters to look at and show my little cousins?

“Hey, check this guy out! He’s pretty cool, right?”
“What’s his power? He looks aight.”
“Um, he got beat up so he took drugs so he could get revenge on those guys, and then decided he wanted to be a hero.”

Yeah, that’s not the business.

We’ve got a few characters. Making more isn’t even hard.

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.

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.