i stole these images from wikipedia.You can’t drive a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress.
–Malcolm X

If you’ve been reading comics blogs at all, you probably know who Spoiler is. If not, the Cliff’s Notes is that she was a supporting character in Robin, was briefly promoted to being Robin for a couple issues, was fired, started a gang war, was tortured, and eventually died from her wounds in what was basically the worst crossover to hit comics in years. She was a supporting character for Robin for quite a while, and her shtick was basically being the daughter of a villain and trying to make good. “Do the sins of the father” etc etc and all that.

Something of a web movement called Girl Wonder has sprung up using her as a symbol, which campaigns in part to get a memorial case in the Batcave for Spoiler ala Jason Todd and fairness toward women in comics.

Orpheus was another supporting Bat-character. Cliff’s: He was an entertainer turned gang leader, but one who was trying to turn the gangs toward more positive directions. With his partner Onyx, they were Bat-sanctioned and doing a pretty good job of things. Literally right before Spoiler was captured and tortured, the villain who did her in stepped out of the shadows and unceremoniously slit Orpheus’s throat. Later on, the villain wore Orpheus’s face as a mask, because I guess people are so dumb that they can’t tell when somebody’s face has been cut off.

I’m leaving something out, though, aren’t I? What’s the difference between the two? Both of them were/are niche characters, though Spoiler appeared in considerably more books than Orpheus before she died. Both of them were sanctioned, though to varying degrees, by the Batman. Both of them were killed by the same guy in the same crossover, though Orpheus missed out on all the torture.

Oh yeah– Spoiler is a young blonde girl. Orpheus is a grown black man.

Orpheus is not the symbol of a group campaigning for right-making. He is rarely mentioned and has essentially been forgotten.

Why is Orpheus forgotten and why is Spoiler an icon? Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but this sounds familiar.

I’m not trying to diss anyone here. It’s just an interesting little comparison that I thought of while I was mulling the two characters over in my head.

I think it boils down to this: Spoiler is much, much more marketable than Orpheus is. If vigilantes were real, and Spoiler went out like she did? It’d be a 24 hour news cycle with breaking updates from various talking heads, constant news tickers, and the whole shebang. She’d be Jonbenet Ramsey, Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson, and Chandra Levy all in one, with a side of Patty Hearst.

Orpheus… not so much. History bears this out. Crimes against black people just don’t get a lot of media attention, unless it’s something either a) totally outlandish or b) talked about enough that the media can’t get away with ignoring it. Darfur didn’t just start when movie stars started talking about it. The Jena Six didn’t just suddenly pop up last summer. Do y’all remember Megan Williams (link one link two)? Beaten, tortured, and raped by six people over the course of a week? No?

I just went to CNN.com to look up a link for Megan Williams. Off in the sidebar where they keep the videos? Some reporter uncovered new info about (pause) Natalee Holloway!

I can’t make this stuff up, man. This is real life. Honest to goodness. I had to take a screenshot of it just to be sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me.

Anyway, how do you combat this? You’re already starting behind the eight ball. You have to prove that you’re just as worth it, even though your starting line is a good 50 meters behind everyone else’s. Not to put too serious a point in it, this is the dilemma that many people face everyday. You’re a quota hire, a sports scholarship kid, or someone who gets bussed in to school because of tricksy zoning. People look at you like you’re not supposed to be there and treat you the same.

It’s that feeling you get when you have to work twice as hard for half the respect. You have to show and prove, not because it’s right, but because it’s the only way to get anywhere.

So, what do you do? You do for delf. You look out for yourself first and foremost. It doesn’t matter what the next man is doing. If you don’t look out for yourself, no one will. You can’t expect anyone to do anything for you.

This is how cynics are born. People who feel like the world is against them and the only thing they can do is fight back. If enough people spit on you often enough, you begin to feel like that’s the way things are and the only thing you can do is put your eyebrows down and ice grill everyone who comes along. Finding that balance between cynicism and pragmatism is tough. A lot of people fail to do it, with good reason. Sometimes you can’t tell how hard you have to push back.

If you don’t hustle and beat feet, you are going to get pushed off that Headline News 24-hour ticker. You are going to be ignored, minimized, and left out. Everything is politics and everything is popularity. You have to do it yourself.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, though, am I? I’ve heard this speech ever since I was a kid.

I didn’t learn this lesson from Orpheus. It’s something that I, and millions of other kids worldwide, learned as children. Spoiler and Orpheus just provided a neat comics parallel. Equal situations, characters of a similar stature, and so on. Spoiler wasn’t poor (she was kind of decidedly middle class). Orpheus was upper middle class, but not Bruce Wayne rich. They both had chances, they both became heroes, but Orpheus never, ever got the attention Spoiler did.

You gotta hustle in life.

Don’t forget about Megan Williams.

art from image comics’s nine rings of wu-tang, by long vo i believePlay my position in the game of life, standin firm
on foreign land, jump the gun out the fryin pan, into the fire
Transform into the Ghost Rider, a six-pack
and A Streetcar Named Desire, who got my back?
–Method Man, “Triumph”

I smoke on the mic like Smokin’ Joe Frazier
The hell raiser, raisin hell with the flavor
Terrorize the jam like troops in Pakistan
Swingin’ through your town like your neighborhood Spider-Man
–Inspectah Deck, “Protect Ya Neck”

“It’s a blessing really, to know that I could potentially be this superhero,” he enthused. “Justice League itself is an honor, and Green Lantern is an incredible character to play. It’s a blessing to be associated with it.”

In particular, Common felt it was a special privilege to be the cast’s only black super.

“Just being a black person, a black man, playing a superhero is an honor in itself,” he smiled.
–Common, MTV Movies

What if I had the, power to gather, all of my favorite emcees
With the illest comic book characters, and they became arch enemies?
Inconceivable? Unbelievable? Yet as wild as it seems
The Emperor and Stan Lee would coach the two opposing teams
Keep it clean, no bats, no gats, guns, no interference
Comic book characters would go head up with raw lyrics
Now I take, whoever might be on break from doin’ tours
And have them signed up for the Last Emperor’s Secret Wars
–Last Emperor, “Secret Wars”

I walk past with a nod and a reminisce
Swear to God, hip-hop and comic books was my genesis
Respect the life and the fashions of the children
It’s the only culture I’ve got, exactly what we’ve been buildin’
–Atmosphere, “Always Coming Back Home to You

The secret is that everyone loves comic books.

from dc comics’s JLA #14. grant morrison and howard porter on words/art.
Unseen. Unexpected. I come by many roads.
–Black RacerWe all know that DC sucked at repping black characters until the ’80s, while Marvel was all up in your face by the mid-70s. But, you want to know about “unexpected?” Let me give you a list.

Gabriel Jones, Black Panther, Flippa Dippa, Vykin the Black, Black Racer, Sam “Falcon” Wilson, Princess Zanda, and Mr. Miracle.

That’s eight black characters, right? Spread out over maybe fifteen years from the first to the last. Every single one a Jack Kirby creation.

The man may not have been the greatest with names (Black Racer, Vykin the Black, Black Panther) but he had a sick visual style and a willingness to throw black characters into his books with no problem at all. His characters have legs, too. Four of these characters are still players to this day (Falcon, Miracle, Panther, Racer), Gabriel Jones appeared in the 65th Anniversary issue of Captain America (with no lines, sadly), Vykin bit the bullet with Death of the New Gods, and Zanda had a good cameo in Black Panther where she was described as the “Paris Hilton of Africa.”

Well, I guess Flippa Dippa gets no love, but that’s just because he’s too awesome for anyone to write.

But really, eight fun black characters? Eight black characters with different origins, various abilities, all without falling into the trap of “Oh, he isn’t a stereotype!” or “He’s from the hood!” Fully realized, treated as equals, and completely interesting. It’s good stuff.

from marvel comics’s the crew, art by jh williams iiiI’ma protect my family, that’s my word
My wife, child, my dogs, cat, and my birds
I got a happy house, homes, you can’t disturb
You might clapped in the dome, clack, now you heard
–C-Rayz Walz, “Protect My Family”

Most heroes suit up because it’s the right thing to do. Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, all those guys are just trying to do the right thing. The X-Men and JLA suit up in reaction to a threat.

Kasper Cole, the White Tiger, puts on the costume so he can feed his family.

He’s one of the Crew, Christopher Priest’s late, lamented series about a group of men who, if not trying to do the right thing, end up doing the right thing while going about their business.

Kasper’s got a pregnant girlfriend and a nagging mom at home. His cop’s salary really isn’t cutting it, but he lucks out when he happens upon the Black Panther’s costume one night. Now he can engineer big busts, get promoted, and maybe stack some cash on the way. Of course, the Panther doesn’t necessarily appreciate him wearing his colors. Instead, he’s given a new costume: that of the White Tiger. He’s got most of the abilities of the Panther, he taught himself to put on a Wakandan accent to throw people off, and he hits the bricks to make sure that his family can eat.

Kasper is a great character who honestly never should have went away. Where the original Marvel characters were characters who did good, but had flaws in their personal life, Kasper is motivated by his flaws. He’s easy to relate to– who wants to be hungry? Even worse, who wants their family to be hungry? Kasper is a dope twist on the old Marvel formula, and one that kids nationwide could instantly understand. “He does this because he has to do the hard thing to make ends meet.”

He provides a nice mirror image up to The Hood, as well, from the girlfriend to the mother. Talk about perfect enemies!

All Cole needs to be a hit is for a Bendis or Brubaker to remember him and bring him back. He’s a character that has legs, an edge, and a ridiculously awesome visual hook.

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.