What if I just got straight to the article itself for once?

70) WHAT IF DEATH’S HEAD I HAD LIVED?

Issue: Volume 2, #54
Writer: Simon Furman
Artist: Geoff Senior
Spider-Man death: No
Background: Oh, boy. Where to begin?

There’s a good chance you’re scratching your head, wondering who the hell Death’s Head I is and why he would deserve his own What If issue. First off, stop scratching your head. It’s a disgusting habit. Death’s Head I was a character from the 80’s created by Simon Furman and integrated into the Marvel UK Transformer comics. Death’s Head I was a charismatic and likeable bounty hunter, striking some of the same chords that Deadpool would years later. A robot from the future, Death’s Head I spoke through a voice box on his face, usually turning his statements into questions, like a French guy trying to speak English. Like for instance, he’d likely tell you, “Refer to me a freelance peacekeeping agent, yes?” He was weird like that. It was neat.

Death’s Head I mainly hung out in the year 2020, but had a tendency to time travel, usually leading to crossovers with guys like the Fantastic Four and She-Hulk. During the 90’s, Marvel decided to reboot his image. AIM had created Minion, a powerful robot with the ability to absorb the instincts, skills and knowledge of whoever he destroyed. He’s like an evil Megaman, except he looks like a blatant Predator rip-off. Minion was mainly created to destroy a mysterious threat named Charnal. I’m not savvy on the details here, but Minion ended up going up against Death’s Head I and Mr. Fantastic in our present. He killed Death’s Head I and absorbed his mental workings. It was too much for Minion to handle and parts of Death’s Head I’s personality caused Minion to override into something new. Now calling himself Death’s Head II, he and Marvel’s heroes fought the merging of villain Baron Strucker’s soul and the remains of Death’s Head I’s body. In other words, Charnal. Death’s Head II was victorious and went on to have some extreme 90’s adventures. Yay?

Read the rest of this entry �

So, anyone who spends any amount of time speaking to me tends to find out that I am very, very pro-black. There’s a song by dead prez that goes, “Thirty-one years ago I would’ve been a [Black] Panther.” This is so true in my case that I have actually gone back in time and helped found a chapter of the Black Panther Party in Brooklyn. I did this when I was a little older. Time travel is tricky, all right?

I was sitting here thinking, as us intellectual types are wont to do, and I’m not feeling the love, comics. You aren’t treating your black characters right. You call Jason Rusch, the new Firestorm, a token, an affirmative action quota kid, and all kinds of other nasty names. Bishop? Bishop had a perm. What kind of self-respecting, non-pimp black man wears a perm? Virgil “Static” Hawkins and his imprintmates at Milestone went the way of the dodo, despite being some of the best comics to come out of the ’90s. Static was the first Ultimate Spider-Man, if you get me. Don’t even get me started on the reaction to Captain America: Truth – Red, White, and Black, or the kind of glaring lack of writers of color at the big two.

It’s cool, though. Blacks in comics have come a long way. Luke Cage used to be a patently offensive stereotype, though he’s been pretty well gentrified now. Stepin Fetchits abounded during the early years of comics. Comics great Will Eisner even had his own little stereotypical black kid running around. Did we have it as bad as Chop-chop and Egg-fu? Well, yeah. Stereotypes, unless played very carefully, tend to be ugly, ugly things.

Anyway, this is all introduction to the meat of the matter. A lot of black heroes are wack, but there are some gems, too. For every Black Goliath there’s a Black Panther, dig? So check the list and let me know what you think. Read the rest of this entry �

Public service announcements are usually pretty boring. That is, unless licensed characters are involved. That’s why when someone mentions, “Now I know,” anyone who grew up in the 80’s will likely exclaim, “And knowing is half the battle!” There were so many great PSAs that came from old childhood icons. Like that crazy mega-crossover where Alf, the Muppet Babies, Michaelangelo and the Looney Tunes told a kid to stop smoking marijuana. Or that episode of C.O.P.S. where Berserko got into drugs, leading to a cops/crooks team-up against a common foe. Best of all, the time the Ninja Turtles inspired a kid to yell, “I’m not a chicken! You’re a turkey!”

Which leads us to this comic. I remember getting this for free in health class back in middle school, but my memories were foggy. Spider-Man I obviously recognized. Storm I knew the best because of the new X-Men cartoon on Fox. At the time I didn’t know who the hell this Power Man guy was, nor did I really care. But that was then and this is now. It’s been about fifteen years since then and I believe it’s time I look back at this little piece of insanity.

“What the…? Did we just wander into a Dokken video?”