The 80’s

I grew up in the 80’s. In a time when Saturday morning cartoons with all their marketing ploys (i.e. toys/sugary cereals/coloring books) and Halloween were kings. I wanted nothing more than to live in the world of my favorite brightly colored animated heroes. I would lie down on the living room floor in front of the television with a bowl of Mr.T-crunch cereal and prepared to watch my favorite animated series. I watched Mr. T, He-Man, GI Joe, or the Smurfs battle the forces of corruption and villainy and I found that the 22 minutes wasn’t enough. So I went over to my best friend’s house later that morning and we played out new adventures. “I’m Lion-O, you be Panthro!” He’d say. Which was cool because Panthro was not only a mechanical genius, he was a ninja…More of your friends would come outside you’d get on your bikes and ride around town pretending to be the different limbs of Voltron. Still I wanted to be a cartoon. Pretending with my buddies was fun but I wanted something more. After hours of playing outside, I continued the adventures in the bathtub with my favorite action figures. “This adventure is called SEARCH FOR THE LOST TREASURE OF IVORY SOAP!!!” I was close. I could create a world of my favorite cartoon champions with friends, toys, pencil and paper but I was still outside of it. I wasn’t a cartoon…but all was not lost.

There was 1 magical day when I could become what I’d so desperately yearned for. A day when, not only I, but all children and a few playful adults would reveal their true identities to the world. A day when you formed a band with your appropriately garbed associates and went on a quest throughout your town for real loot and treasure. Halloween. It was then and, in a funny way, still is my favorite holiday. I don’t dress up like I used to but that was the only day I could go outside as Superman and not be told to go back inside and change, that was the day I got to show my true self. Or so I thought. I’m a grown man now and I look back on my childhood fondly, especially those days. Weirdly enough, after following all the news related to Healthcare Reform, the heated debate, the Tea Party movement, the racial and homophobic epithets slung at members of Congress, the death threats and the overwhelming lack of condemnation of the violence, I’ve been reminded of Halloweens past, and my childhood fantasies of becoming the greatest American hero.

Superman was my guy growing up. He made his first big impression on me when he was atop my 3rd birthday cake with a word bubble that horribly misspelled my name. It didn’t matter. I wanted to be him in every possible way. To me, he was the coolest. And like any kid with an idol (real or imaginary) I tried to emulate him. I even wore fake glasses in hopes that they would disguise the pulsing raw power I held within (for a child, I had a lot). But like I said, it was the 80’s and there wasn’t only Superman to impersonate. Although he was my favorite we had an understanding – he was cool if I saw other people. People like He-Man, GI Joe, Centurions… I had an amazing love affair with the Thundercats, a brief fling with Transformers and then rebounded with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. By the time the Power Rangers came along I realized I was just too old for them. But I had dressed up like all these guys on one Halloween or another.

My Search for a Hero of Color (HoC)

I did not however dress up like Mr. T. In fact, none of my heroes as a kid were people of color! (Now, I didn’t just realize this, but for the dramatic effect of my article go with me on this.) I wanted so badly to be a super, kung fu, action-griped, techno-colored (no pun intended) hero as a child I remember asking my dad, “How can I get the curl in my hair?” like the one Superman had. He handed me a bottle of activator, thus ending that little episode in my life. The point is – as a child I didn’t feel I had a single HoC to emulate. The few that existed, I couldn’t identify with. I’d have rather been a turtle or a robot instead of Mr.T.

Mr.T was kind of scary to me when I watched him in Rocky IV. But when he was on the A-team however I liked him, but not enough to want to be him. I wanted to be Mad Murdoch, he could fly planes, fight and he was funny. Mr.T was just tough. He didn’t have anything else to offer me other than a Mohawk and jewelry. I did eat his cereal and watch his cartoon, and found it somewhat entertaining, but he wasn’t on a far off planet, he didn’t have a recurring evil nemesis like Skeletor/Mumm-Ra/Gargamel, and he didn’t even have a known origin story. He was just a tough guy who drove a bunch of gymnasts around in a bus and solved mysteries. Something like that will hold your attention for 22 minutes on a weekend but it didn’t provoke me, or any of my friends, to want to be him.

I’m not Lion-O

There was just something that kept me from wanting to be like Mr. T. I had no problem identifying with a bluish-gray-cat-person named Panthro from the cartoon Thundercats (Who btw was very obviously a African American even though he was a cat from another planet.) Panthro was cool, he was like 2nd or 3rd in charge, he was the smart one and he was tough (Like Mr. T). Panthro knew how to build everything and knew martial arts. If I played Thundercats with the kids at school, I knew I would be 2nd in charge – I’d definitely be Panthro. In my neighborhood with my other friends, I’d have choices. Maybe I’d be Panthro or maybe I’d be the leader Lion-O (who was obviously Caucasian American). You see, there were White kids at school but not in my neighborhood (*cough* segregation) and where there were White kids, there were no Black kids playing anything but Panthro. If I wanted to play with kids at school, it was best to not get in arguments about why I should be able to play Lion-O if I wanted.

I think about how the whole leadership thing screwed with my head then and still does to this day. After being told so many times to be 2nd in command and being expected to play Panthro, I eventually ceased wanting to be the leader. And that was never a problem my White friends at school ever had. They expected to be Lion-O in every situation, and I was cool with being in the back. This was something I had to unlearn, as Yoda would say, and is something I still struggle with (The blog is called 3RDSMARTESTMAN!!!). In the first season of Thundercats there was a 5 part special called Lion-O’s Anointment Trials in which Lion-O had to go through a rights-of-passage to assume the role of “Leader of the Thundercats”. Lion-O had to do this by besting all of his teammates in combat/competition in their particular area of specialty. I remember watching it and being frustrated even as a kid. I remember thinking, “Lion-O gets to be the leader, why does he have to also prove that he’s better than everyone else. He already got the magical sword!” After seeing that special, Panthro could no longer be my guy. They had declawed him in a way. If the tough one is beat, he’s not the tough one anymore. Why did Lion-O need a team at all? I thought he knew how to do everything. This became part of a larger problem for me. I didn’t think I was good at much as a kid, I wasn’t the strongest, fastest, smartest, in school. I was shy and quiet and bad at taking tests. I wasn’t Lion-O.

My search for a hero to identify with continued. I was still loyal to Superman but I wanted someone who looked a little more like me. In the cartoon Superfriends, there was this weird phenomenon where all the minority superheroes had stupid costumes and didn’t wear pants (?!?) I, not only wanted a cape, but pants as well…so I looked elsewhere. I liked GI Joe a lot but I didn’t groove with Roadblock and his constant rhyming (Yea he was Black so his thing was he rhymed all the time. Damn now I am. Dammit again!) He was also the tough one (I’m seeing a pattern…) There were other characters of color on the show but they rarely showed up. Roadblock was the most popular. I probably would have had a better time relating to Transformers (a show about Alien Robots that could disguise themselves to look like automobiles and other machines.) I liked robots, I did watch the show and I played with the toys but it didn’t captivate me as much as it did my friends. My hang-up was that you couldn’t bring Transformers into the bathtub. They were made of metal and would rust…so naturally I had to keep looking. I looked to primetime TV with the show Misfits Of Science – a 1985 version of Heroes – basically about a bunch of people with powers. One of them was a Black guy played by the late Kevin Peter Hall (He played the Predator) who in real life was over 7ft tall. On the show he was a scientist who hated his enormous size and had the ability to shrink to the size of a doll. The running gag was after he would shrink, his normal clothes were too big for him so they gave him the costume from a Michael Jackson doll. Yea. I’m serious.

The other members of the team were: a young Courtney Cox who had telekinesis, a guy named Johnny B who had super-speed and could shoot lightening bolts from his hands, and the leader who was just a guy without powers. I would rather be any of them (including the guy without powers) then a dude who shrinks and wears doll clothes. Terrible. Just terrible!

Then came a show called Cops. (I believe in some areas it was called Future Cops or something like that.) The premise was the most basic of children games, “Cops & Robbers,” set in the future. But this show gave me something different. It gave me a character called Bulletproof. Bulletproof was Black, he had the Superman curl (which I now know was a perm), he was bionic (part robot) and, like his name, he was bullet proof. Unfortunately he did rhyme and said things like, “It’s crime fighting time!” But he didn’t do it ad nauseum… so I could deal. But what was the most important attribute the character had? He was the leader of the team of future cops. Not the tough guy or the comic relief…the leader. I thought I was in heaven, I watched the show, had the toys and I could have underwater adventures. My best memory of Cops however, didn’t come from the show itself. It came while sitting in a barbershop.

The year was 1988. It was 4PM and my mother was dropping me off with my older brother at the barbershop after school. It wasn’t the barbershop I liked that was run by a cool old guy named Roger with a perfectly trimmed grey mustache and afro, it was the other one that was closer to our house and smelled funny. I hated going there because I knew as soon as the car drove off my brother would give me the money and ditch me because he knew a girl who lived around the corner, leaving me alone to face the darkness that was the dreaded barbershop. It was filled with what I thought was a retched hive of scum and villainy. People got in fights there and there was a drunken dude who would just come by and crash. Regardless, I had to put on a brave face and suck it up. I walked in, the only child in a room filled with grown men talking about grown things, and I sat quietly in the waiting chair looking up at the television set until I was called to take a seat in the barber’s chair. On the TV was the news or something depressing that prompted one of the barbers to change the channel. After a few furious clicks from channel to channel the barber paused. It was the cartoon, Cops. What happened next went as follows:

Barber 1: What the hell this?
Drunk man (who was just always there): It’s a damn cartoon!
Barber 2: Is that a brotha?
(Man in trench coat and bow tie selling Bean pies): Sure is!
Barber 2: Get the F#@K out of here! He got to be the bad guy or something!
(Scared little 9 year old me): No he’s the leader of the team. He’s a good guy.
DEAD SILENCE EVERYONE STARES AT ME (I pee a little.)
Barber 2: Huh. How bout that. Well kid you get this hair cut for free!
(The last part and the pee didn’t happen, but everything else did.)

I never forgot that moment. I remember rethinking the ideas I had of all the men in the shop. Prior to that moment I saw them as hard, somewhat creepy and scary men that only talked about sports and doing disgusting things to women. In that moment they all became 9 year olds like me. They were all genuinely excited…giddy even, all because of a simple cartoon. It took twenty years till I saw that look on the faces of men like the ones in that barbershop. It took our current President winning the election in November 2008. I had realized, in that moment, that I wasn’t the only one who had thought myself not qualified to take charge and be a symbol for good. All those men in the shop at some point thought they weren’t worthy to lead or be a hero. This cartoon was proving them wrong and they loved every second of it. After that day I didn’t hate that barbershop anymore. I came to see the men as MEN and not monsters that fed on the dark corners of my imaginations. Unfortunately the cartoon didn’t catch on and was canceled after a year or so. I never got a chance to go to the barbershop on Halloween dressed as Bulletproof seeking to brighten the day of my newfound friends.

Later that year came the phenomenon of TMNT which, like I said earlier, was my last phase in the whole playing/pretending/dressing up stage. 4 green-ninja-mutated-turtles that ate pizza…there was just so much going on that I liked I didn’t stop to think about whether they looked like me or were even human. They didn’t wear pants, but they were amphibians so I gave it a pass. I had a fun time but I identified more with Donatello (the turtle, not the Italian artist of the renaissance) who was the smart one – not the leader.

I went my entire childhood never dressing up as a HoC. Actually, that’s not true. I did get an imitation Walter Peyton uniform for Christmas complete with shoulder pads and a helmet. I loved it but would take it off to put my Superman pajamas on again. Why? Even though I did like sports (and Walter Peyton!) I was more enthralled by fictional exploits and heroics. They tantalized my imagination. It should come as no surprise however that sports figures filled the void that little Black kids like me needed for generations – the same with musical artists. I was one of the few kids who didn’t find as much solace in the word of athletics or music as in the world of cartoons. I liked cartoons, I wanted to be one and I needed a cartoon to reflect that.

The 90′s

As I got older, and more into the ladies, I felt I could no longer play dress up. So, around the age of 13 I hid my love of all things super. Not that it helped any. Girls could still tell I was dork. It was around this time that my dad got me into comics; I believe he did this as a last resort to have something to talk to me about. I come from a family of athletes and my father was one of them. He was amazing in his youth along with his four other brothers, one of whom played pro football. My older brother was an amazing athlete and played as an amateur in the US Open. Me? I was a fast kid with an inability to hold on to anything resembling a ball. So sports weren’t going to be a topic of conversation for my dad and me. When sports didn’t work, he tried cowboys. As a kid he wanted to be a cowboy, and as he would spin tales about the westerns he grew up with, it was clear that they were his Thundercats. I did not however grow up in a time of cowboys. I grew up in a time of time traveling-mutated-cybernetic-biker mice so any hopes he had to convert me into a little Wild Bill didn’t quite work out.

Then my dad tried some of his favorite films of the 70’s like Shaft, Three the Hard Way, and Superfly. Now which of those do you think I got really excited about and then when I saw it was instantly disappointed? Did you guess SUPERfly… then you’re absolutely right! What gave it away? In my head, I thought Superfly was going to be more like Spiderman, but that image was quickly corrected when I saw him doing cocaine off a crucifix. There were a bunch of films that pulled the ol’ switcheroo on me like Superfly. There was Abar, the First Black Superman – when I heard the title I got really excited – until I heard the story line and was somewhat excited (a scientist gains powers and fight racism). Then I saw the movie and hated it. No costume, no flying, just a weird movie. Rudy Ray Moore as Dolemite: The Human Tornado was not a dude who used his powers of the tornado to help people…oh no. He used them to beat women and rhyme. These were definitely not the obscure superhero films I was looking for. When I got older I did get some sense of pleasure and enjoyment out of them but not in innocent childhood wonder and imagination kind of way. I have to say some are even pretty good films. I always liked Shaft, because he was a genuine hero not a drug dealer or a pimp – he was a detective. Still. I wanted just one of these guys to wear a cape.

In the 90’s when I was in high school there was an effort to diversify these mediums I was in love with. There was Milestone Comics, an off-shoot of DC Comics which debuted in 1993 with a whole assortment of HoC that were divers and had varied backgrounds (as opposed to being the tough guy who rhymes.) There was a kid who was kind of dorky, but funny, not so confident with the girls but he was ultimately a good guy. And oh, he was a superhero! His name was Static and I identified with him and his struggles when I was in high school like no other character in literal fiction ever. In my mind, he was I. And I consider this to be a tell tale sign of a good writer/storyteller. Dwayne McDuffie the creator of the comic is one of the founders of Milestone Comics. Dwayne McDuffie is still a hero of mine and I will speak more about him and his creation in a bit. But for now I want to continue to paint the picture of that time…

The movie House Party had come out and Kid ‘n Play were so popular that they had a Saturday morning cartoon called, um, Kid ‘n Play.  BTW – M.C. Hammer also had a Saturday morning cartoon – it was called Hammerman. Like I said, I was a bit older now and not so much into the Halloween costume-action figure thing, but I still enjoyed cartoons and the fact that they were starting to look like me was a boon.  STILL – I wanted a black Superhero whose power wasn’t dancing! (Sorry Hammerman.) Then I got wind of a movie that was coming out, it was called Meteor Man.

Now, I didn’t enjoy this film. (OKAY, I did, but in that MST3K sort of way) but before I tell why I didn’t, let me tell you why I should have. Meteor Man came out in 1993 and was written by, directed by and stared Robert Townsend, whose earlier credits include a great comedy called Hollywood Shuffle and the HBO comedy specials Robert Townsend and his Partners in Crime that helped debut black comedic talent before Def Comedy Jam. The story was basically about a teacher (love teachers!) who gets struck by a meteor and gains supernatural powers. (Great! Love powers!) He then decides to don a superhero persona and combat crime in his neighborhood (Awesome! Finally!) If that wasn’t enough to get me on board also in film the was: Bill Cosby, Don Cheadle, Marla Gibbs, Robert Guillaume, James Earl Jones (With a high top fade) and Luther Vandross as a hit man (Luther “A house is not a home because I just blew it up” Vandross played a hitman!) There were many other awesome cameos as well but none of them could save it from being a horrible film.

Here’s a list of reasons why the film didn’t hold up for me –

1. The costume. Which his mother, played by the great Marla Gibbs, makes for him (unfortunately she wasn’t so great with making the costumes).
2. The main character was afraid of heights and flew only a few feet off the ground (Sigh. Really? Come on that sort of thing shouldn’t make it past the 2^nd edit.)
3. The villain of the movie was a guy named Simon and all of his minions The Golden Lords had dyed blonde hair. Yea, real scary stuff.
4. They did the whole superpower joke thing like he had X-ray vision but could only see people in their undies or he could touch a book and instantly absorb all of it’s information but for only 30 seconds. This leads to a model runway showdown between Meteor Man and the villain Simon at the climax of the film after they both touch a Vogue magazine. I must admit I did laugh pretty loudly at that part when I saw that in the theaters but hey I was 14 (don’t judge me.)
5. But the worst part of the film to me was at the end the main character loses his powers. Superman, Batman, Spiderman none of them stop doing their thing at the end of their films, thus giving way to sequels merchandising, you know smart marketing. Why, oh why did Robert Townsend shoot himself in the foot by ending the film like that? I’ll never know. But I do know it was a bitter pill for me to swallow. It was like Panthro getting beat all over again, like we couldn’t even give ourselves permission to be super.

My disappointment didn’t end with that film. In 1994 Blankman, starring Damon Wayans as a self-made crime fighter ala Batman, was just a poorly executed. The titular character ran around in pajamas (literally) and a bed sheet for a cape with gadgets he made out of household appliances. This, like Meteor Man, played the genre for laughs mainly, which is fine I guess but I wanted something on the level of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. Which ironically I saw the trailer of while watching Keenan Ivory Wayans film I’m Gonna Get You Sucka, a very funny homage to the heroes of the Shaft, Superfly, Dolomite variety. I was able to survive this slew of terrible superhero send-ups with the help of two things, Milestone Comics and Michael Jordan.

Milestone’s influence over me was an obvious joy, but why M.J.? Well if there ever was a real superhero, he was one of the closest things to it in the 90’s. M.J. was such a force that he even affected the economy of the United States.

He was a god to EVERYBODY and to me the most important indicator of this was that… He had a cartoon, he had movie, and White kids dressed like him on Halloween. Ninja turtle or MJ? MJ! The answer was simple, when playing basketball, kids all over the world would pretended to be the famous Chicago Bull while playing a silly game of 21. Michael Jordan was the front of cereal boxes and in a ton of commercials. “I want to be like Mike” became a jingle so immersed in the American psychic that it was sung by moms shopping at the supermarket while buying ballpark franks. We lived and breathed a real man and we were cool with it. There was no public outrage accusing him of being the Anti-Christ. He wasn’t a polarizing figure and, through his ability to play basketball, he put us all in a state of euphoria.  He was more than a man he was mythic. NBC created a cartoon called ProStars, which aired in 1991 and Michael Jordan along with Wayne Gretsky and Bo Jackson were athletes who doubled as secret agent like superheroes who used their athletic skill to defeat the forces of…well you know how it goes. Kids, all over the world, didn’t watch the cartoon for the other guys, we watched it because of MJ. And though it wasn’t ever said, it was clear who the leader of the group was. The cartoon unfortunately wasn’t that popular and was soon cancelled. But it didn’t matter. Jordan was still Jordan and he was doing his thing.

Even though Jordan owned that decade, there was a series of some unfortunate events that made it a bumpy ride at times. And at the end of the 90’s we were reminded of the thing we didn’t want to admit. Jordan was a man. A great man, but just a man and every man is fallible.  From 91 to 93 Jordan & the Chicago Bulls won the NBA championship 3 times and then in 93 he retired. Leaving basketball to play baseball and showing us that his athletic talent, which was incredible, didn’t automatically translate to the baseball diamond. 1993 was a significant year for our hero, before the Bulls won the NBA championship, when they were in the midst of the playoffs, Michael Jordan caught a lot of heat when he was caught gambling in Atlantic City. This was the night before they played the New York Knicks and people accused him of gambling on the outcomes of the games. This was the first serious wrinkle in M.J.’s clean and wholesome media image. But we’re a nation that loves winners and as soon as M.J. won the championship all was forgiven and then later that year in the summer Michael Jordan’s father James R Jordan was murdered and found in a swamp in South Carolina. America mourned with its champion over the loss of his father cause it devastated us all that the man who united the world had lost a loved one in one of the worst ways possible. It would be a year – March 18, 1995 – until our hero would resurface to his former glory and proclaim with the simple statement “I’m back.” And return to his glory he did, going on to take the Bulls into another 3-peat performance.

1995 was a significant year as well – it was the year that O.J. Simpson was tried criminally for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.  An accusation that O.J. Simpson was acquitted of thus erupting a debate and causing a schism between racial lines that has lasted to this day. Don’t believe me? Bill Maher and Jay Leno still tell O.J. jokes and the laughs are still divided. That event, no matter where you stand on it, was painful and took the fragile image of the African American athlete (hero) and ripped it to shreds. The case had all the makings of a racial cluster bomb; O.J. like Jordan was a beloved sports hero of immense talent and charisma. He was in commercials and televisions shows and movies, he was trusted, he was “The Juice”. He had a gorgeous blonde wife (his trophy) in Nicole and he lived the Hollywood life. But not all was hunky-dory in fairy tale land. His relation ship with his wife wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and she cheated on him with a handsome (white male – and yes that important to state) actor/model named Ron. The popular theory as to what happens next is retelling of the play Othello from the apparently prophetic bard, Billy Shakes.

Jordan’s return to the game and his 3-peat win, I like to believe, helped us remember that we’re a stronger nation when we celebrate our heroes who aren’t tarnished. The fact that Jordan won the first of his titles on father’s day after his father’s death made it that more touching. (Y’know its weird. I know I try to see connections in things and by doing so I may force things into my rant to help support the argument. But after looking at the sequence of events in the 90’s I just can’t help but wonder…you know what mean?) And even though seeing Jordan back on top of his game, was great it wasn’t the same. He was still a marketing machine but our collective innocence had been lost and with it went a lot of the progress African Americans made in the reconstructing their public face. The idea that we were savage, anti-intellectual, sex-crazed beasts that couldn’t be trusted alone with children had never been far under the surface. An event like O.J. was almost inevitable.

But through Jordan’s sheer personality force, kids and adults alike still wore M.J. basketball jerseys. With the release of his film Space Jam in 1996 I was able to enjoy another superhero film (of a sort) and mostly forget about the ugly episodes of the decade. Why do I consider Space Jam a superhero movie? Well 1^st of all, it’s a world finest because M.J. teams up with two of my favs, Bugs Bunny and Bill Murray (Peter Venkman.) 2^nd of all, Jordan has to defeat cartoon aliens intent on ruling the world (their plan to do this is by beating us at basketball.) And 3^rd of all (***SPOILER ALERT***) Jordan not only uses his powers of amazing basketball skill to beat the aliens, but he stretches like Plastic Man to dunk the basketball in the last second of the game thus saving the day.  (I was almost out of high school when I saw the movie with my 3-year-old nephew and I lost it way more than he did when I saw that happen.) But like I said, Jordan was just a man and when he retired again in 1999 we saw the end of an era. The man left the game like he played it, a legend. In 2001 he did come back to basketball for 1 last hurrah but this time he was a pale shadow of his former glory. And the super-heroic efforts we saw it in his prime were now just a memory.

You see, the thing that’s great about fictional [super]heroes is that they’re fictional, and by not being real they don’t have the fragile qualities of the human condition. They’re incorruptible symbols that remain consistently great. Superman may die but he always comes right back to defend to ideals of truth and justice. That’s the idea anyway. So when you try attach anything like those larger than life attributes to a real live person, well it might be great for a bit but, at some point that person you built up so much will let you down. Ultimately, that’s okay; it supposed to happen, it’s what being human is about. Messing up. Tiger Woods isn’t a god or superhero; he’s just a dude who’s good at golf and lousy and being a faithful husband. Michael Jordan was just a guy who was great at a game where you throw a ball in a hoop. We need heroes both fictional and non-fictional (both are real) and I believe we as African Americans have had some pretty great live ones. We just need some fictional ones who can’t be corrupted, assassinated, pushed out of the way and ignored. We need a competent superhero. By having a fictional array of different HoC from all different backgrounds and persuasions, kids and adults can see themselves in their best light, winning the good fight and never ever compromising the morals for gray areas or evil. This is a much harder thing to do in real life. Like I said, people mess up, it’s our thing, but the idea of someone like us who doesn’t is something very powerful and necessary.

This is important especially today as a lot of people think the POTUS is the evil dude from the movie Time Bandits. President Obama is just a man, albeit one who is really smart and great at inspiring people and getting things done that no one could do in the past 100 years of our democracy such as Health Care reform. He can enrage me with some of his other decisions/actions such as the war in Afghanistan, his continued faith in some members of his economic team who helped cause the economic crisis (Tim Geithner, Larry Summers) and now this whole issue concerning offshore drilling.  But I understand he’s just a man and no man is perfect. Though none of his shortcomings make up for the fact that he’s having a major P.R. problem as the media invokes images of racial hatred and ignorance. To me these things are a good indicator that the problem is bigger than him. I can’t believe the fact that large groups of people in this country the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA believe their president is the Anti-Christ. (I mean the guy is far from perfect but The Omen? Really?)

Back to Dwayne McDuffie and his creation of the comic book character Static and the other superheroes of the Milestone Universe. Milestone comics came to the end of its run in 1997, my senior year in high school. Static was favorite but there were other characters too –  I liked Hardware a lot (similar to Ironman but not a drunk) and The Blood Syndicate (the X-men if they were a inner-city gang) but the one that told me that Milestone was my home was Icon (the Black Superman who could fly -  unlike Abar.) I read and collected every comic Milestone produced from 93-97 (Like I said, dork.) So when it came to an end I was lost. Where was I going to find the superhero fix that blended my experience as a PoC with spandex? I spend my entire life looking for the perfect manifestation of it, and the Milestone comic books came the closest. Would movies and TV suffice when comic books didn’t? In 1994 there was a TV pilot called M.A.N.T.I.S. created by Sam Raimi and was about scientist Dr. Miles Hawkins who makes a cybernetic exoskeleton which he uses to fight bad people. The pilot eventually became a television series and aired 22 episodes from 94 to 97. I liked it a lot. I thought it had a lot going for it. Great casting in the actor Carl Lumbly, a decent looking costume, and the tone of the show didn’t play the superhero trope for laughs. He was a competent Black superhero. Sadly, it was given a horrible time slot (Friday night) and never gained an audience that could sustain a second season and it was canceled.

(Sigh) My problem was the fact that he was a person with a disability. What wrong with having a disability Sam? (Someone could make the argument that Batman is emotionally handicapped, right? Sure, but Bruce Wayne is a billionaire playboy with models hanging off each arm. Okay, what about Daredevil? Sure I get it.) There’s absolutely nothing wrong with his disability and I’m sure there were kids who felt great cause they had a hero to cheer on.  But this was, to my knowledge, TV’s first Black superhero and his alter ego was in a wheelchair. Daredevil’s alter ego Matt Murdock is blind but he’s still confident enough to go out and date. M.A.N.T.I.S., on the other hand, felt like he was half a man who never wanted to take the exoskeleton off because without it he felt powerless. That sucks! If they had made him the happiest, liveliest, wheelchair-bound secret identity ever than maybe I would feel differently but the wheelchair only reinforced to me that there seems to always be something off with a HoC.

Want more examples of depressing HoC’s? Spawn, created by Todd MacFarlane, was made into a comic and movie. He was a covert-ops specialist/super spy/military something that was double-crossed, killed and is sent to HELL. After being tricked by the devil (who I think is a clown or something), he comes back with, I don’t know, hell powers and mopes around in the shadows crying because his lady has moved on after his death. Oh. Also his entire body is burned so he fears his love will find him hideous. So he wears a mask (Batman ain’t burnt!)  And in 1997, there was the movie STEEL starring Shaquille O’Neal…you know that’s all I’m going to say about this film. I don’t need to say anything thing else other than it starred Shaq. Terrible!

The tail end of the 90’s (specifically 1998) changed the course of what comic book movies could be. Blade, starring Wesley “You can’t put a kitten in the oven and call it a biscuit” Snipes, is awesome and came before The Matrix, X-men, and the resurgence of comics books on the silver screen. It’s about a half man, half vampire who goes around killing other vampires because vampire suck (YES I DID!!!). Blade showed Hollywood executives that even an obscure character no one has heard of could be a blockbuster success. I loved, loved this movie, but…(you knew it was coming) Blade to me (and I’m sure some would argue with what I’m about to say) isn’t a superhero in the true sense of the word. He’s more of a monster fighting monsters. Now, this is also a genre I love and I know the same could be said about Batman but Batman is a symbol for justice. Superheroes are symbols and ideas, so much so, that their appearance reflects it. What does Blade symbolize? I’m sure there are points that could be made in the favor of Blade being a superhero; he does save people I guess. But my search continues and I leave the 90’s and move into…

The 2000’s

A decade where comic book based films went from being lack-lusters to blockbusters (damn, I’m rhyming again!).

As a general fan of anything that flies, shoots lasers and says things like “Hey bub, I’m not finished with you yet.” I was just happy to see all of the comics and cartoons I grew up with make the jump to film. Some of the films were good, others not so good, but as you get older other things become more important (Girls and study and girls) and the things that used to matter don’t get you as worked up. But the image of Black people in all forms of media and the lack of HoC still did got to me (which didn’t really help with those other things that I wanted to be important.) I had a niece and nephew at this point and when I had to chance to look after them I would watch the cartoons that they liked with them (seriously the ones they liked. I mean it) and, to my surprise, one of them hit me like a bolt of lightening. There was a cartoon called Static Shock, based on the Milestone comic book, and on the writing staff were creators Dwayne McDuffie and Christopher James Priest. The Emmy Award winning show went from 2000 to 2004 and it was great. Not only was it great,  it was doing well rating-wise too… but something was a miss for this Saturday morning cartoon. Where was the cereal that would get the kids hopped up on High Fructose Corn Syrup? Where were the Lunch Boxes and backpacks covered with pictures of Static Shock? Where were the Halloween costumes? Where was the most important component of Saturday morning cartoons arsenal? Where were the ACTION FIGURES? The toys were nowhere to be found which meant no underwater adventures for niece and nephew. I always thought cartoons/comics/movies make a ton of money through merchandising its part of the marketing strategy and without it I’m sure it takes a dent on the popularity of the product. Maybe I’m wrong, but kids won’t dress like Static or play with his toys if they don’t exist. Somebody, I don’t know who, but somebody dropped the ball on that. Where were the toys?

The only other new millenium Black superhero I had was Storm in the 2000 movie X-men. Now before I go into that whole thing I want to address the issue of race and gender. This is the first time I’ve brought up a Black female superhero. THAT’S WRONG!!! I started racking my brain and all I could think of was the girl from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon who wore the fur bikini. I’m sure I’m missing others and if I have and you’re still reading please let me know. (I’m looking for cartoons/TV shows and movies only, not comic book characters) Storm, played by Halle Berry, isn’t just one of the best fictional HoC, she’s one of the best superheroes period.  I originally wanted (and still do) a stronger actress like Angela Bassett to play Storm but I got Halle instead. Okay, she doesn’t scream regality to me, but okay. Oh, that and her accent is fading in and out! But okay. Oh, no, and in the movie she’s not being portrayed as the strong, confident leader like she is in the comics or cartoon. OKAY. (shaking and twitching) Well that’s how it goes you know, these movies can’t get everything perfect right?

Perfect. Funny word perfect. Say it. Perfect, perfect, Puuurrrfeeect! Yup that’s where I’m going – the Catwoman movie. In 2004 Halle Berry was, post Oscar, given the lead in one of the worst movies ever. Catwoman.  I don’t blame her as much as I blame the poor direction and production of the entire film. Horrible costume and story and (in a lot of people’s minds) a bastardized character. I don’t really care about the liberties it took, I just want a movie starring a competent HoC. Not one in a horrible and (impractically) ripped leather outfit whose crusade is against the cosmetics industry. You would think having an Oscar would mean you pulled in the best in terms of writers and directors wanting to work with you, I don’t think that was the case for Mrs. Berry. I think this was the best or only thing she had thrown at her…again, could be wrong. Then there’s Heroes in 2006. (André Meadows of Blacknerdcomedy.com already did a number on that show so there’s no need for me to go any further). They have issues they need to deal with. I mean a character named “The Haitian” whose powers are equivalent to a date rape drug? NNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!

(Sorry, about that. I have issues too apparently.)

So Spiderman swings to new heights of popularity, Superman Returns and Batman Begins anew. Loved seeing all these guys on film (Well, Superman was a bit of a let-down, 2 hours of a man in a cape lifting stuff) the 5 year old in me was delighted that I lived in a time where all the characters I had seen in different incarnations were finally becoming real. Still the 5 year old wanted one that was brown too. A brown one who’s secret underground H.Q. wasn’t a junk yard or whose gadgets didn’t include a “ghetto blaster”.

What’s this? A new superhero coming down the pipe played by Hollywood’s top grossing leading man? And he’s brown? 2008 brought in the movie Hancock with the lead played by Will Smith. It was about a superhero like Superman (Yay!) but he’s a homeless drunk who is hated by the public (Boo!) Also when he’s around this blond White woman he goes crazy and loses his powers (DAMN YOU O.J.!!!!) Why America? I’m not asking for much am I? Just a black Superhero, male and female, who are good at what they do. No jokes, gags or bad stereotypes, just simple crime fighting.

Luckily in that same year I got want I wanted with Barack & Michelle Obama. Once again saved by the exploits of a real person. I don’t really think it’s necessary to cover the year of Barack’s election. But I think it’s funny that I’d see a Black president before I saw a good Black superhero film/television show. In 2009 Dwayne McDuffie was brought back on to write his famous characters from Milestone and integrate (yes, integrate) them into the rest of DC comic’s continuity. I got really excited, my youth was returning and then DC did him and his characters dirty, he talks about his experience on his on various occasions some of which are compiled here.  I knew something would go wrong, DC is the same company that rebooted their character Firestorm who was originally white and changed him into a funny teenager of color (good right) who was being physically abused by his dad (I hate you!)

I like to read mainstream (Marvel and DC) comics from time to time but man do they get PoC in comics wrong (maybe because there aren’t many PoC’s in the room) Take Luke Cage formerly known as Power Man. Who’s that? I’ll tell you, but first let me ask you a question. How many kids did you see dressed as Spiderman, Wolverine, Captain America, Hulk or any of the Fantastic Four? Probably more than a few right? Okay how many kids did you see as wearing a torn tank top and goatee? If you did they were probably pretending to be Chris Brown and not Luke Cage. Luke Cage is a Marvel character who was wrongfully placed in prison (yup prison…not Krypton or a secret dimension…prison.) where he was experimented on and became bulletproof. He then became a Hero For Hire (Because we don’t just fight crime we need to pay bills too) named Powerman, who wore an open yellow blouse, silver tiara and a chain for a belt (Not kidding, he wore a chain for a belt! Makes you wonder what happened to him in prison.). Anyway, as of late, he doesn’t wear a costume (because his original one was ridiculous) but he still fights crime. Now he’s known as the angry black guy. I’m serious, I said earlier all superheroes represent ideas and those ideas are reflected in their attire. Okay eagle feathers, red, white and blue color scheme a big star I get it Captain America! Hammer, chainmail armor Viking like boots sure I know that guy its Thor! Angry? Black? Tank top? Yes officer that’s him. Hopefully I’ll have better luck with Iron Man 2 coming out with Don Cheadle as War Machine…Tony Starks best friend who borrows his car suit of armor and takes it for a spi… (Sigh) So close.

Listen, I know this is something most people never think about. And if they do they only think about it once and then move on to more important things. I wish my mind worked like that – I seriously think I have some kind of obsessive compulsion about it. O.C.B.S.D. (Obsessive Compulsive Black Superhero Disorder.) It’s 2010 now and I want to quit searching. I want to throw up my hands but I see my 3^rd and 4^th graders dressing up for Halloween and I see my 17 – 21 “at risk” students going after their GEDs. They don’t read nearly as much as I’d like them to but they do watch movies, TV shows, online content with little to no filter or critical acumen. The reality is, most of these kids only have so many avenues in which to develop a healthy sense of self and MEDIA plays a big hand in that self development They still need fictional heroes. They need to see them so that they can want to be them. They are still searching. And so are other kids who don’t fit the straight-white-male arch-type, they want be leaders and heroes too. I always thought America was the superhero country of the world not because of our military might but because of our diversity of land, our diversity of ideas, our diversity of people. We’re like the robot Voltron, we’re made up of different parts to make one great whole, at least that’s what I thought. Out fiction is a reflection of who we are as a society. If our art is telling me that Black superheroes are a joke, what does that really mean?

Weird I wrote this whole rant talking about Lion-O, Thundercats and Obama being compared to The Omen and then I found this.

Obama’s Lion-O…nice.