Heidi MacDonald found a report in the Guardian about Tintin in the Congo. I guess there was a move to ban it due to racist content, but a judicial advisor has rejected the idea that the book is racist. Here’s a few quick thoughts/jokes on the subject.

1. I liked this reasoning on the part of the advisor because it’s full of crap:

De Theux de Meylandt said in the document seen by Reuters that Tintin author Georges Remi (better known as Hergé) did not intend to incite racial hatred when he depicted his cartoon hero on an adventure in the former Belgian colony in a 1931 work that was updated in 1946.

“The representations (of African people) by Herge are a reflection of his time,” De Theux de Meylandt wrote.

Intention is a key criteria in substantiating a charge of racism. The court is expected to deliver a judgement rejecting or accepting Mondondo’s argument that the book’s depiction of Africans is racist.

“We see in particular that Tintin in the Congo does not put Tintin in a situation where there is competition or confrontation between the young reporter and any black or group of blacks, but pits Tintin against a group of gangsters … who are white,” De Theux de Meylandt also wrote in the statement.

2. It’s kind of interesting how the law (I assume) approaches racism as a conscious act–“intend to incite racial hatred”–rather than something that just happens. Intent, near as I can tell, has basically zip to do with racism. Inciting racial hatred is a racist act, but it is not the sum total of racism. Racism can be clutching your purse when someone hops onto an elevator or looking at a certain type of woman as a sex object first. Racism can be dragging a man behind a truck until he dies in agony. Racism can be denying home loans to black families, shooting a grandmother in the face because you got the wrong house, underestimating a stranger, overpraising a child, and more. Racism is a lot of things. It’s a system. It’s an opinion. It’s an act. It’s an emotion. It’s whatever. Intent? Not really relevant. If I didn’t mean to step on your toe, you’re still sitting there with a flat toe, right?

3. I love love love “The representations (of African people) by Herge are a reflection of his time.” Man oh man do I love it. It’s the ultimate Get Out Of Jail Free card. “Oh, it was just the time! Weren’t they so quaint back then with their casual racism? Land sakes, mint juleps, landed gentry, southern belles, I do declare!” That got away from me a little. The point is, the racism in this drawings is okay because it was okay at the time. It’s quaint, like, I dunno, cocaine in Coca-cola or those enormous dresses women used to wear in the 1800s that doubled as circus tents.

I don’t believe in a sliding scale of morality and neither should you. If lynching somebody until their eyes bug out is a dick move in 2011, it was a dick move in 1911. If drawing an entire race like they were darkie nigger savages is a racist act in 2011, guess what bruh, it’s a racist act at every other point in time, as well. It’s dehumanizing. If you argue it isn’t, you’re objectively wrong. That’s the entire point of that type of art.

4. Think about the context, too. Depicting blacks as subhuman is a tried and true tactic. Churches used to teach that blacks were the descendants of Ham, son of Noah, and used the curse of Ham as a justification for slavery. (You know I heard somebody tell me that in church as a kid? That really made me mad, because I was young enough to know that story was full of crap, but they were old enough to have probably heard it from actual slaves.) Black men and women were depicted as hypersexual because they were closer to savagery than whites, which had the bonus of making it a-okay to sleep with them whenever you felt like it, and then to deny it to the heavens should you get caught (shout-out to the Thomas Jefferson clan). They’re violent. They’re dangerous. They’re stupid. Take your pick.

The savages in Tintin in the Congo are particularly disgusting because of the time period the book came out in. Congo was a Belgian colony at the time, and the book portrayed the people as stupid “Me Too Stupid To Know How Talk Right” savages. It is explicit propaganda. It posits a world where the Congolese are too stupid to be civilized on their own. It’s Deepest Darkest Africa, The Dark Continent garbage all over again. And man, I wonder what the point of depicting the citizens of a colony of your country as subhuman? Could it be to shore up the idea that you’re supposed to be there? That being there is right? Golly.

So, no, “it was the times!” is a crap excuse. Will Eisner and Hergé both drew unbelievably, cartoonishly racist depictions of black people. A lot of other people did, too. Racism! It exists. Don’t pretend it didn’t because you like how somebody put lines on paper. Plenty of great (and bad and normal) people do scumbag things here and there. Just accept it!

5. Tintin in the Congo: it’s objectively racist. It’s stupid to try and ban it, though. Even racist speech is free speech.

Here’s the solicit for X-Men #20, on sale digitally and in finer comic shops nationwide:

Guest starring Iron Man 2.0! The fallout of Schism pushes the X-Men and War Machine at each other in Eastern Europe asSsentinels are being traded on the black market.

Here’s me earlier this year (it feels like forever ago) in an interview with Tom Spurgeon:

And look at Marvel’s upcoming Iron Man 2.0. The cover artist, title, and logo are all intended to make it look like it’s part of Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca’s successful run on Iron Man. The twist? It stars James Rhodes as War Machine. The same James Rhodes who was just in a series a year ago that bit the dust with issue #12. How is that anything but a vote of no-confidence for black characters in comics? Congrats, Rhodey! You’re a major co-star in a big Hollywood blockbuster and Marvel knows that the current comics audience won’t even look at you without someone else’s logo on the cover.

Related, but maybe not: Bleeding Cool is saying that Iron Man 2.0 is canceled as of #12.

I read a few issues of Iron Man 2.0. It was a Nick Spencer/Ariel Olivetti book at the beginning, but Kano and Carmine Di Giadomenico (who I like a whole lot) pinch hit a bit. I was unimpressed. I was actually sort of annoyed when Rhodey slipped further and further into the background. I hit one issue where Rhodey wasn’t in it at all, or on one page or something ridiculous like that. And then Fear Itself hit and the book turned into Cast-Off Iron Fist Characters Monthly (sometimes featuring War Machine). Chris Eckert did a pretty good job of breaking down why that sucks over here.

I’m not one of those comics hardliners, either. People who are like “It took Stan and Steve six pages to do Spider-Man’s origin and yet Miles Morales isn’t even in costume yet in issue three!” are morons. Fights don’t have to happen for an issue to be good. “Nothing happened” is a crap complaint. You take a story on its own merits, not by the standards of some time before any of us were born. You could probably build a very good story with the hero/titular character flitting around the outskirts of the book. I think Brian Azzarello and Marcelo Frusin did that pretty well on their last arc of Hellblazer. You can build dread.

The problem with Iron Man 2.0 is that there was no narrative momentum. I never bought the premise of the story. Spencer didn’t stick the landing when he was setting it up. As a result, rather than building a mystery, an entire issue about some dude I don’t care about or some rip from Chinese mythology was an intrusion, rather than an infiltration. Does that make sense?

If the story is good, you can do whatever you want. Even pirate comics and lengthy essays.

But that’s all a sidebar for what I really want to get at, which is referring to Rhodey as “Iron Man 2.0” in solicit text. Yeah, they call him War Machine later, but he’s introduced as Iron Man 2.0. He’s branded as Iron Man 2.0.

And I don’t think anything speaks to the state of colored folks and comics as well as that. Marvel has been astonishingly good at keeping their black characters around. They’re miles ahead of their nearest competition. Barring a couple breaks of maybe 18-24 months combined, we’ve had an ongoing Black Panther comic since like 1998 or whenever Priest started. Bendis turned Luke Cage into a superstar (but still no solo series). Misty Knight has starred in three separate Heroes for Hire/Daughters of the Dragon series in the past what, six years? And she’s getting relaunched again this week? Marvel clearly wants this to work. They’ve thrown everything at the wall and nothing appears to be sticking.

Their new tactic is stripping a character of his own identity and hitching his cart to another character. Iron Man 2.0‘s entire outward appearance is meant to emulate Iron Man and confuse consumers into thinking it stars a white dude or something, I dunno. Rhodey has been around for decades. He has a fanbase. But it isn’t enough. So Marvel is pretending like Rhodey is a subset of Iron Man rather than letting him stand on his own two.

And that sucks. Readers (hopefully) aren’t that stupid, and it’s so limiting in scope. Rhodey spent the ’90s (and several other brief periods of time) attempting to escape Tony Stark’s shadow. I’m far from a superfan, or even an average fan, and I know that. To pull him back under that shadow in the name of goosing sales and then to make him a sideliner in his own comic… I dunno. Maybe there just shouldn’t be War Machine comics. Or maybe I misread and Iron Man 2.0 is about Tony Stark’s world and not War Machine at all.

I’ve been trying to think my way through how you could spin turning Rhodey subordinate as a positive. I don’t think you can. There will always be a connection between him and Stark. That’s unavoidable and totally an avenue worth exploring. But at one point, in the text and without, he was his own distinct person. Sacrificing that, in any way, on the altar of hoping to goose sales… I dunno. It seems like such a waste.

Black Panther has a touch of this, having stepped into Daredevil’s shoes in terms of title and gimmick. I dislike it for different reasons, though. Black Panther has always been at the forefront of that comic. I think the book is dreadfully average right now, with the occasional dip into stupid (but the art tends toward fire), but that’s beside the point. Becoming the Man Without Fear and running a Denny’s feels like a step all the way out of the Black Panther’s gimmick (king of a technologically advanced isolationist nation who is also smart enough to supply Reed Richards with gadgets), but at the same time, Francesco Francavilla was born to draw him. I mean, can you imagine a hard espionage tale featuring the Panther with art like this?

“The Most Dangerous Man Alive.”

It’s so strange to think of two decades-old characters who have to step into a white man’s shoes in order to boost sales. I called Iron Man 2.0 a vote of no-confidence for black characters, and I think that holds true. If they were genuinely viable in and of themselves, they’d star in series of their own, not ones that are strapped to someone else’s back. Neither story feels like a particularly organic transition (though Rhodey’s status quo over the past however many years has been wildly uneven to begin with). Honestly, I don’t buy that either of them are good fits, either. But I can see what Marvel’s attempting to do, and in a way, I get it. In another way, it grosses me out.

It seems like you can pull off great portrayals of black characters in team books. Thunderbolts is a treat, and New Mutants, last I checked, was majority non-white. But once you get down into Soloville, you start hitting road bumps. Depressing.

Let them dudes have their own names and identities. Or let them die.

…that it is essentially covert, or maybe just casual, white supremacy.

How great does this kid look, by the way? Sharp haircut. Sara Pichelli is great.

Here’s the short version:

The long version keeps drifting on me and not coming out correctly, so let me try and boil it down:

The words you choose to use simultaneously reflect and create the world around you. If you make an effort to be effusively positive about things, you’re going to attract people who either share in or enjoy your positivity. The odds are good that they will be positive, too, setting up a situation where you both feed off each other. If you want to keep up a too cool for school distant air, and so your version of effusive praise is “Oh, yeah, that was cool,” then you’re going to attract like-minded people who understand you. Make sense? Everything feeds on everything else.

“Black Spider-Man” otherizes Miles Morales. (It also ignores that he’s half-Puerto Rican, but that’s another conversation entirely.) He’s not Spider-Man. He’s black Spider-Man. He isn’t the new Spider-Man first, or Ultimate Spider-Man first. He’s black Spider-Man. Which is funny, because Barry Allen and Wally West were just the new Flashes. Hal Jordan is a Green Lantern, but John Stewart is the black Green Lantern.

It foregrounds Miles’s race in a conversation where his race should be irrelevant. His race is probably going to end up being just as big a part of his character as it was for Peter Parker–which I do think was a fairly significant part of that character–but in terms of who the character is and how we refer to him, “black Spider-Man” is garbage.

It sets up the adjective-less Spider-Man as the default, and therefore superior, version. Black Spider-Man will always be second-best because he wasn’t first. Comics fans in particular like to prize the original flavor, or whichever flavor was dominant whenever they began reading, so you can’t tell me that isn’t true. Every time I read “black Spider-Man” I taste battery acid. It feels mean, like the most important part of Miles’s character is that he’s (whisper this with me) not white!

Every single person who has dropped the “Batman of Africa” phrase into their news report, writing, solicits, interviews, commentary, criticism, or emails is lazy. Plain and simple. Every single one. If they aren’t mocking the phrase, they are lazy. Whenever I see it, I want to (and usually do) stop reading whatever page I’m on. There is no Batman of Africa, just like there’s no Batman of South America or Batman of Europe. There are Batmen of France, Argentina, and cities, but there are no Batmen of continents. David Zavimbi, Batwing, is the Batman of the Democratic Republic of Congo, or maybe the Batman of Fake-Kinshasha.

“Batman of Africa,” like “black Spider-Man,” plays into these subtle, but still awful, racial and national stereotypes. Africa is “AFRICA” in people’s minds because lazy, racist fiction and news painted it as a monolithic dark continent full of black people. Lies cloud the mind. Africa, like any other continent, features an astonishing amount of ethnic diversity, whether native or immigrant. You don’t even have to open a book to know this. Charlize Theron is African, man. More specifically, and more respectfully, she’s South African. She’s from Johannesburg. She’s famous.

But the mental image that leaps to mind when people say “Africa” is bone nose savages, savage warlords, savage child soldiers, and AIDS savaging the countryside. Not Egypt, or the Ivory Coast, or a continent of one billion people, most of whom are just like us and go through many of the same trials and travails that we do. There’s no diversity in “AFRICA!” That fact is ugly and stupid. It’s 2011. What’s wrong with you?

David Zavimbi, presumably, is Congolese. “Batman of the Congo” has less of a ring to it, but it doesn’t make you look as unforgivably ignorant as “Batman of Africa” does.

Being black is no more remarkable than being white. Miles Morales is notable for being the first black Spider-Man, particularly in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, but it isn’t his blackness that makes him special. It’s the fact that he’s not Peter Parker. The fact that he’s half-black, half-Puerto Rican, (and how cool would it be if his dad was a dark skinned Puerto Rican and his mom was light skinned black?!), that it looks like he’s taking part in a lottery to get into a good school in the preview images, and that he’s thirteen years old is just sauce. It’s not the meal. It’s part of the meal, sure, but you do yourself and the character (or rather, the concept, what the character represents, or something, because we do not respect characters ’round these parts) a disservice by boiling him down to “black Spider-Man.” He’s so much more than that, judging by the press run Marvel just went on, that breaking him down to being the black Spider-Man is… it’s garbage, it’s lazy, it’s stupid.

It makes you look like Stormy.

This is drifting.

Black Debbie doesn’t exist. I probably could’ve left this at the Sealab video and been good.

Please think before you speak.

Bullet points, this time.

–Read this essay by Chris Sims about the content of Superman 712.

-Long story short, Chris Roberson’s story about an Arab Muslim was turfed in favor of a Krypto story by Kurt Busiek that was shelved years ago due to lawsuit problems. Read the post.

-Essentially, DC joined Marvel in telling the world, “Yes, we are sorry for our stories, we will not stand behind our stories or their creators, and yes, you can tell us what to put in our comics. We just want to make you happy.”

-The most DC deserves here, the absolute most, is what Jay-Z said at the end of “Takeover.” I don’t normally curse on here, ’cause my grandmom reads this sometimes, but this is warranted, and a sentiment from the bottom of my heart:

-“You only get half a bar – fuck y’all niggas.”

-If I were a better man, that would be it. No explanation, no further dissing, no nothing. Just a cold, “Fuck y’all niggas.”

-But, I want to talk this out in public so that someone hopefully gets why this is a stupid decision and so unbelievably heinous.

-My littlest brother just turned three. I got to spend a week with him when I went back home earlier this year. He’s a bright, stubborn, playful, energetic, smart little kid who looks just like I did when I was his age.

-He’s my twin. He’s also half-Arab, on his father’s side. (Our mom is regular American black.)

-I try to police myself pretty hard, in terms of thoughts. What do I believe, why do I believe it, is it the right thing to believe? How did I come to that conclusion?

-Having a little brother who is Arab, whose father is Muslim, forces whatever theoretical ideas or feelings I have or had about how I feel about Arabs or Muslims into the light of cold, hard reality. “How would I feel if?” becomes “I feel like this.”

-And basically, point blank, end of story, Yousef, and his father, are blood. Every inch of them. That’s concrete facts, more serious than cancer.

-And blood is the most important thing in the world. It’s love. Blood should dissolve all imaginary ideological barriers.

-So whatever prejudices I had before he was born? I didn’t have many, but sure, I had some? They’re dead. Forever. Because he’s here, and he is me. We’re the same blood.

-I’m taking this personally for that exact reason. What’s good for me is good for him, and what’s bad for him is bad for me. Especially when it concerns an industry I love and support with my dollars. I have a responsibility to him to make this world a better.

-DC made this decision after being spooked by catching the ire of the Fox News crowd twice in one year. They don’t want their flagship character, who has already been associated with anti-American activities a couple times over the past few years (after that last dumb movie, earlier this year), to be seen hanging out with terrorists.

-Except, Sharif isn’t a terrorist. He’s a hero. Who is Arab. And was inspired by Superman to do good in his community.

-I don’t think DC is a racist company. I think they’re a bit clueless, but they have made great strides in terms of being better about race, for whatever “better about race” may mean to you personally. They’re trying.

-I do think that this decision is racist, or, at best, sympathetic to racists. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this story as described, and no reason to be suspicious of a fictional character.

-This is cowardice, pure and simple. DC doesn’t want a bunch of fat, bigoted, big-mouthed cornballs saying mean things about them.

-Instead, they’d rather bow down and go, “Oh, well, we don’t want to poke that hornet’s nest. Maybe we should back down and not bother to represent people of Arab descent in our flagship comics.”

-They aren’t saying, “Oh, maybe he is a terrorist!”, but they sure are sending the message that, when forced to choose between pissing off a blowhard know-nothing who doesn’t even read their books, and supporting a culture of Americans that has been unjustly and unfairly maligned for years now, including in comic books, they will pick the angry old white dude who’s looking to line his pockets off the back of nothing more than racism and fear.

-“Our comics aren’t here to challenge you or uplift you. They are here to sustain the status quo and deliver bland platitudes about power and responsibility masquerading as knowledge. Be easy, dear reader, the world is fine.”

-If your comics are supposed to be this utopian garbage about the power of a single man fighting against evil, what type of message do you think this sends?

-You don’t bow down to scum, and you don’t bow down to tyrants. You shouldn’t be bowing at all.

-The world’s a big place, and at this point, I’d be fine with DC Comics being left in the dirt.

-Grow a spine, you unbelievable fucking cowards.

Flashpoint: Grodd of War is about a telepathic gorilla killing half of Africa while taking over the continent as a sort of Planet of the Apes/superiority thing, maybe you saw this dumb comments thread about it.

You know you’ve got a weak bench as far as characters go when the most prominent black characters in a story set in Africa are five unnamed and generic child soldiers, four of which die on the spot. Isn’t that weird? Sure, everyone’s been murdered or whatever, but are child soldiers a better shorthand for “This is Africa” than grown men with machetes or AK-47s? Like, are child soldiers the new spear-chuckin’ African pygmy cannibals? Is this a thing I need to mark down in my hand-written appendix to the Big Book of Racism!?

It’s so hard to keep up these days. And I have dreams, too. I was hoping that either those dudes who walk hyenas or have that ill fashion sense would be the next signifier for “This is not Monaco, this is Baghdad Mogadishu,” you know? Have you seen these guys? They’re all the way swagged out, like Dipset at their prime crossed with those cats who were cool in the ’70s and rock bright orange double breasted suits these days like they’re all that. Imagine if that was the face of Africa.

But yeah, child soldiers, cool, got it. There’s what, 200,000 kids serving in rebel armies, many of them against their will? No, wait. 200,000 boys, I mean. The girls get raped and murdered. (They call them wives.) But yeah, yo–that’s an intensely powerful idea, right? A swarm of children, a couple million dead, a million-some orphans, millions more who’ve had their lives ruined. That’s a powerful idea right there, the sort of meme that burrows deep down into your brain and rattles your fillings. I think it’s that combination of lost innocence and malice, “kids are patriotic robotic, operate catapults and goose-step over innocence/innocents,” it’s positively sexy. Some good drama in there, some really easy emotional hooks.

It’s a comfortably brown concept, too, isn’t it? We don’t really have that over here. Asia, some of the wilder parts of Europe, Mexico, a bunch of Africa, sure, but ’round here? Nah. Closest we get is gang violence, I figure. Child soldiers. Ill-fitting clothes, big guns… It’s a little edgy, but it’s just distant enough to play in Peoria. And it’s so Africa. A few panels of these little kidlets will give us some verisimilitude.

And man, how about the best guy in Grodd’s army being a white Scotsman who is cursed to become a gorilla? I mean, that’s pretty cool. Golden gorilla–that idea has legs. More like that.

Oh! I just remembered something. I read an interview with the writer of this thing, Sean Ryan, a while back. I made a joke about it on Twitter, I think. I don’t remember right now. Quoth the weblog:

SR: He really doesn’t. They ignore him. A thing I wanted to touch on in the story is how Africa is often ignored. There’s awful things happening in Africa all the time in our own world and we don’t really know about it. It usually takes some kind of celebrity to point it out to us. So that’s sort of what’s going on in Africa in Flashpoint. Grodd has taken over Africa and turned it into a mass grave, but the world could care less. They’re more focused on Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

Sure enough, on the first page, Grodd is all “I slaughter half of Africa… and most people don’t even know my name. Location, location, location.” while chilling on a throne made out of human skulls. Real world reference: complete! CHEA!

Most of all, though. Most of all. I liked that the most significant human character–the only human character left to protect Africa, the only one with a name–is that piece of crap Batman knock-off Catman. He goes down fighting, too, before Grodd pulls his head off. I wish he got some lines. He’d probably say something pretty cool. “You’ve murdered Africa, you maniac! You blew it all up!” Should maybe workshop that line. Seems a little familiar.

Catman: his return to fame was in a Kevin Smith comic (strike 1) as a fat pathetic loser (strike 2) and then he become a SUPER COOL TRAPPER HUNTER WOLVERINE GUY! in another comic (that’s three, clear out, B). He’s a regular old American fella, ain’t doing no harm. He lives with lions, and he just really gets them, you know? Like really, really really. Overhigh girl at a party talking about how beautiful the universe is, man, it makes me wanna cry it’s so unbelievably beautiful gets them.

Count it: five unnamed brown child soldiers (four dead [killed by a child], one living), one Scotsman turned golden ape (he dies), the hero of Africa (a white dude who’s probably from Nowhere, Connecticut in Mowgli drag [ooh, can we tie in the white man’s burden somehow?]), and a continent that’s implied to be a giant open grave, conquered by monkeys who are, at best, smart enough to get a high school diploma.

That smells like Africa to me, bwana.

(This was going to be maybe 150 words long, but took a weird turn around “Isn’t that weird?” and I couldn’t stop for some reason. This is a comic that makes you want to be mean to someone. Turns out somebody likes this piece of crap, though.)

People were linking “Fanboys” by Alexander Chee around earlier this morning and praising it for putting superheroes on blast for being so shortsighted. Since I’m a killjoy who hates to see wack things get shine, here’s a rebuttal.

-His basic point, the one that people have latched onto because it confirms whatever biases they have about cape comics, is that superhero comics have gotten whiter since Giant-Size X-Men 1. He hitches this point to the idea that this is cultural backlash because we got a black president. So:

1. Chee simply doesn’t know enough to talk authoritatively on this issue. The story about the white mutant messiah was announced as early as June 2007. Sorta hard to look at it as a reaction to a black president when you know that. It’s a coincidence, and nothing more.

2. Weasel words are great when your point is this thin, so when he says, “Most of [the X-Men] are entirely white,” he’s not incorrect. Uncanny X-Men is pretty white (though Kitty Pryde is Jewish), but Astonishing X-Men has both Storm and Armor. X-Men Legacy has had a rotating cast with a latino dude, Japanese-American girl, Indian girl, and several other races.

He mentions, but then ignores, the New Mutants. New Mutants stars Cannonball, Danielle Moonstar, Sunspot, Karma, Magik, Magma, Warlock, and Cypher. That’s Kentucky hick, Native American, Brazilian, Vietnamese, Russian, fake South American Roman from Brazil, robot, and Generic White. That’s three, maybe four (Magma is questionable), white characters on a team of eight.

Are most of the books entirely white? No. The only one that genuinely is is probably Uncanny X-Men. Precision is key here, because you aren’t just trying to describe a movie you saw yesterweek while falling asleep at 2am. You’re trying to make a point about an intensely personal subject and do so by using facts. If your facts are suspect, your point is suspect, so please stop screwing it up for the rest of us.

3. White isn’t a single monolithic group. There are different types of white, which absolutely counts as diversity. Russian White, Jewish White, Fake South American Brazilian White, Welsh White, and Generic White (Cyclops, Captain America, Batman, blah blah blah). Treating them as a single group makes the argument into “white vs other,” which treats white as both the default and superior to every single other race. That’s stupid. But, this piece does it, and does it repeatedly.

4. If you’re going to make grand, sweeping statements, you don’t get to pick and choose. Comics haven’t gotten “more white.” That’s absurd. The books he picked up are fairly white, yes, but in using those to make his point, he ignores the books that are diverse.

If you want other books that feature a diverse cast, look at Heroes for Hire, Power Man & Iron Fist, Black Panther: Man Without Fear (as wack as that book is), and a fistful of others. Spider-Girl stars a Latina. Thunderbolts has a majority white cast, but never felt “white.” Dark Wolverine stars a Japanese-Canadian. Amadeus Cho is Korean and a major player. Jubilee just came off headlining a miniseries with Wolverine. How is that “more white?”

Look: cape comics are always going to be for white dudes. People who are not white dudes will read and enjoy them, but at this point? Comics can’t even afford to launch new series. They had their chance to branch out in the ’90s and early ’00s and dropped the ball. Certain specific writers and artists will do a good job with what they have, presenting diverse casts and telling good stories, but as a whole? Marvel has one audience, and whoever else they get is just a bonus. It is what it is. It sucks, but to suggest that things have regressed from 1975… that’s laughable.

words by zeb wells, art by leonard kirk

5. One more excerpt:

You could ask of the Captain America comic, “Did we go to war as a result of the comic?” or “Did the comic depict our unconscious desire to go to war?” This is a difficult question. Most of the people who could answer it are dead. Many of them died fighting that war.

“Difficult question.”

Whatever dude.

–The Comic Book Guide to the Mission is an anthology of stories edited and curated by my friend Lauren Davis. She enlisted some great writers and artists to tell stories about San Francisco’s the Mission. There’s a wide spectrum of experiences in the book, and it’s a neat trip through an area that I rarely visit for some reason.

-Jay Potts, creator of World of Hurt, has started a Kickstarter campaign to get his webcomic printed in a nice HC. A quote from the page:

The first storyline, entitled “The Thrill-Seekers” finds Pastor in the middle of a search for a missing college student named Alicia Patterson. When Pastor’s missing person case turns into a murder investigation, his relentless quest for justice takes him from the city’s ghetto to a secret club of powerful, high society hedonists.

This Kickstarter project was started out of my desire to raise the funds to self-publish a graphic novel which collects the The Thrill-Seekers storyline. The graphic novel will also feature bonus material, such as production sketches, layouts and an introduction by author and filmmaker, David Walker of BadAzzMofo.com. The graphic novel will be an 88-page hardcover book with a landscape format of 13″ X 6.5″ to match the original dimensions of the comic strip. Although the interiors will be black & white, the cover will be in full color. Part of the Kickstarter funds will also be used to pay for an artist to paint over my cover pencils to recreate the classic, pulp feel of a Blaxploitation movie poster.

You might remember Jay from this monster interview from last year’s Black History Month series. I’m a pretty smart guy, and I’m smart enough to know that Jay is somebody worth paying attention to. I’m planning to donate to the campaign because, my fetish for digital books aside, this is a book I wouldn’t mind owning in print. World of Hurt is good, man.

-I bought Joell Ortiz’s Free Agent the other day. It leaked late last year on Amazon and was quickly pulled. I forgot about it until recently, and found that it actually came out in February. It’s not bad, maybe a solid B. He uses a little too much hashtag rap (That’s where you kick a punchline and then explain it… Drake.) for my tastes, but Ortiz is an extremely lyrical dude. For every hashtag rap he kicks, he busts out several tongue twisting skyscrapers, so I guess I can’t complain too much. It sticks out like a sore thumb, though. The title is apt–it feels like an album where he’s trying to prove his worth. He raps about himself, rapping, murder, drugs, and women (hip-hop’s favorite subject matter, in order of popularity) and does it well.

The guest features are surprising solid. Joe Crack goes in on his, but the highlight is probably “Put Some Money On It,” where the Lox, especially Styles P, come off real hungry. Jada’s got that old Raekwon slow-flow menace going on, too. “Killing niggas with the flow, H1N1.” “Call Me” makes me hope that Novel and Joell put together a full-length that I can buy some day. They work well together.

brothers and sisters
created: Couple gooduns this past week. Did some more writing about art, something I don’t do often enough.

–Cameron Stewart and Karl Kerschl formed like Voltron (they were both the head)

–Dwayne McDuffie memorial

–Kaare Andrews flips the script on Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis

–Part two of my Marvel Black History joints. These were fun.

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rebuild your lives
consumed: I’m growing increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of stuff I read online. I need to read less, and in doing so, read better works. Gotta stop clicking every link where somebody’s hopping mad or talking about some comic I never read.

-Right now, as far as I’m concerned, Black History Month is done. Four years and out, wham, bam, and Billie Jean is not my lover, no matter what she says. Thanks for reading, but I quit.

–Tim O’Neil wrote a stellar McDuffie tribute, and his piece on the time Punisher went black is pretty good.

-Sean Witzke goes in on Seth Fisher with Jared and takes George Lucas apart in one neat post. I don’t mean that in a stupid “Oh I hate those prequels so much!” crybaby way, either.

-Sean linked this a long while back, and I finally finished reading it. The forgotten story of Marcia Lucas, George’s ex-wife and collaborator. Great read.

-Courtesy of Ron Wimberly comes these:

Audience Calibration Procedure from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery on Vimeo.

-Michelle & Melinda talk about the visuals of One Piece and NANA.

–Frank Miller interviews Goseki Kojima and Kazuo Koike, of Lone Wolf & Cub fame.

–Lupe Fiasco is an idiot, and you shouldn’t buy his album.

–Four free issues of David Lapham’s Stray Bullets. You should definitely read these.

–Jack Kirby does Frank Miller

–Stop talking to me about Charlie Sheen

–Sloane drew a comic. I liked it–there’s a bit with a tongue and a pill that’s super Akira.

-Vote in the Gylphs Fan Award for Best Comic. The correct choice is Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of our Fathers.

-I tired to work my way through Radiohead’s discography… it didn’t take.

-Amazon has some pretty ill five dollar albums up: Brown Sugar, Baduizm, Vol.2 … Hard Knock Life, Things Fall Apart, What’s Going On, Licensed To Ill, The Score, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star

-I always want to change after I wrap up February. BHM is always stressful–both the schedule (I think only three posts didn’t publish at a minute past midnight) and the subject matter. Working through my own issues via comics is stressful enough, but having to pay attention to what other (frankly lesser) writers are saying is a pain in my neck. I just want a break, really, a chance to re-center.

-Usually that means deciding to take a week off from posting and then failing utterly, but this year… I think it means writing about music more. I just don’t have patience for a lot of the stuff that comes with talking or reading about comics online. Sometimes I read stuff and I just want to raze my RSS feeds to the ground. But music: music is new and interesting and I’m feeling my way around it. It’s like looking at someone with new eyes.

-C’est la guerre, right? Things change, people change, I change.

-Working with Graeme McMillan on that co-review of Blur’s 13 was a trip. I think it’s the first time we’ve collaborated on something. It’s crazy–six (or however many) years ago, I was just a fan who checked Fanboy Rampage regularly. Life is pretty okay sometimes. There’s more coming, too, with Graeme and others. I feel good about this.

-Video game update: The only thing I’m playing lately are the Netflix and Hulu apps on my PS3 and Killzone 3, whose online multiplayer is great fun. Me and a friend (Larry) get on just to fool around. We spent most of a game talking to each other about nothing while shooting dudes. At one point we were remarking how cool it is that when you’re squadded up, your teammates can’t hear you, when another player joined our server. This guy joined our conversation and we realized that, nope, turns out they can hear us fine, we were the only ones with mics, and that we’d subjected our team to about 15 minutes of chit-chat about kung fu movies and everything/nothing.

-Larry mutes people with a quickness. They get one chance and bam, gone. I’m lazier, and also, I didn’t bother to learn how to mute people in-game until recently, so I’d just talk through them. One guy kept complaining about how his missiles weren’t working, his gun was weaker than the enemy’s guns, blah blah blah my controller sucks, not me, I’m fine, they’re cheating. So I sorta started coaching him. “Shoot better.” “No, you can’t–that’s the wrong way, turn around.” “Shoot now! No, wait—awww, why’d you shoot?” “Wait, this isn’t Call of Duty? Are you SERIOUS? I thought I was playing on Shipment.” “Do you like turtles? Or pudding?” Eventually, the rest of the team joined in on heckling this chump.

-Larry got half the conversation and was therefore entertained. The chump… not so much. Can’t imagine why.

-Great game, though.

-I’ll be back to review the comics I bought in the morning. Feel free to review your books, too, or talk about them, whatever whatever.

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we’re all drug takers
David: Heroes For Hire 4, Joe the Barbarian #8, Thunderbolts 154
Esther: Superboy 4, Secret Six 30 Possibly: Batman Confidential 53, Weird Worlds 2
Gavin: Axe Cop Bad Guy Earth 1, Azrael 18, Green Lantern 63, Joe The Barbarian 8, Secret Six 31, Darkwing Duck Annual, Irredeemable 23, Avengers Academy 10, Daken Dark Wolverine 6, Deadpool 32.1, Heroes For Hire 4, Secret Warriors 25, Thunderbolts 154, Ultimate Comics Captain America 3

(from icon: a hero’s welcome. words by dwayne mcduffie, pencils by doc bright, inks by mike gustovich, colors by rachelle menashe, james sherman, and noelle giddings, letters by steve dutro. i love how the big splash page that would’ve been a “to be continued” page happens two pages before the actual “to be continued” page.)

I’ve got no revelations, no grand statements, no explorations of personal racial trauma, no words to be wasted on pointless plot twists, and no praise for meeting a low bar. Not even any rap references. Just this:

Black creators have been in comics forever, involved in successes and failures, the heights of unfettered creativity and the lows of mercenary corporate comics, racist issues and uplifting issues, and everything else in between. People like to say that “black history is American history.” Turns out that’s true of comics, too.

Thanks for reading.

(colors by patrick morgan)
Jeremy Love
Selected Works: Bayou, Bayou Vol. 2

To hear my education growing up tell it, “black history” means a few tools in Africa, slaves, Martin Luther the King, and the LA Riots. And those are about uncultured savages, severe emotional trauma that you must never mention, the right way to be black (peaceful, of course), and uncultured savages, respectively.

I had to do the rest of the legwork on my own, and I didn’t find many stories about slavery times, or that period after where American terrorism ran wild. I don’t know why–maybe the time period is sacred? “This is our suffering, don’t trivialize it?” Everything was very somber and serious and offputting, Beloved included.

Jeremy Love’s Bayou is something I’d wanted to see for a while. It’s a straight up fantasy tale set during (an alternate version of) one of the most hateful periods in American history. It deals with that aspect of the history, it takes it head-on in fact, but it doesn’t wallow in misery or black pathology. Love just takes a setting that’s rife with potential and creates a good story out of it.

No stories or periods of history or whatever whatever are sacred. Everything has the potential to be a good story, no matter how traumatic or damaging. It’s just a matter of being willing to look at an old wound in a new way, and finding a different way to exorcise, or examine, that pain. I don’t believe in sacred cows. I’d much rather read stories where black people of any time period have fantasies and adventures like everyone else over stories about how awful it was to be black back then (or now, word to Precious). I’ve got history books for that.