Black Superheroes: Debrii

Debrii is best known for how cool she looks in this image

Name: Deborah Fields 

First Appearance: New Warriors #4 (2005) 

History: Nothing is known about the background of Debrii or how she acquired her powers. What we do know is that she was hired to join a recently rebooted version of the New Warriors who were being filmed for a reality television show. Her inclusion was meant to create drama, as she was the only member of the team who was not hand selected by leader Night Thrasher but instead the producers who wanted to create conflict. Debrorah is often referred to be a “low-level telekinetic magnet”, which means that while she has telekinetic abilities she is limited to only being able to lift small things. However, she is not limited by the number of small things she can lift and is able to use her ability to affect various debris in many different offensive and defensive ways. She served on the team until the show’s cancelation, choosing not to rejoin the team when they reformed for a new TV series, the exact version that lead directly to Civil War.

Beta Says: I’ve thought about writing about Debrii every year for the last ten, and what kept me from doing so tended to be ether a) I thought of a more interesting character to write about, or b) I just didn’t feel there was enough about her to warrant the effort. Her lack of origin isn’t simply a writing choice on my part; as far as I’ aware, Marvel has never gone into detail about her background or how she got her powers. She’s a decent example of a black character who falls off the radar once their original book ends, though she shows up a bit over the next six years of her existent.  Ultimately she ended up being one of many pre-Miss Marvel young characters that were introduce in the 2000s only to have fallen by the wayside in the subsequent decades. The difference with Debrii is that she almost found herself as a main character in a adaptation that likely would have completely changed her level of notoriety. Almost.

More padding of the word count after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Nubia

Ororo who?

Name: Nubia 

First Appearance: Wonder Woman #204 (1973) 

History: Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons and ruler of Themyscira, famously made a child out of clay that was brought to life by the gods whom would grow up to be known as Diana and throughout the world as Wonder Woman. However, that is only half the story. In reality, Hippolyta sculpted two baby girls, one made from lighter clay and one from darker clay (…excuse me?). Both girls were brought to life and blessed, but the older baby girl was immediately kidnapped by Ares, the Greek god of War. Ultimately, Hippolyta kept all of this a secret from her younger daughter Diana. Ares would name his captive Amazon “Nubia” (…EXCUSE ME?!?) and trained her in every art of combat from infancy, with the intent of her eventually leading his armies. She fights his influence, her spirit still be loyal to the Amazons, but the god of war used mind control to force compliance. Armed with a sword powerful enough to counter the Lasso of Truth, and possessing the same powers as Diana, Nubia is placed as the ruler of an all-male floating island and is dubbed “The Wonder Woman of Slaughter Island.” Her forces invaded Themyscira and she faced off against her younger twin sister. Thankfully Diana was able to break Nubia free of Ares’ mind control and two worked together to defeat the evil god. 

The truth of her existence now revealed, Nubia left her birthplace and vowed to use her position as a ruler of Slaughter Island to spread the Amazon message of love and peace. The question of who was the one and true Wonder Woman was left unanswered…for now.

Beta Says: I was heavily influenced to do a profile on Nubia in the past few years because there was a recurring theme of pictures of the character circulating social media and racist shitbags getting all upset about “DC turning Wonder Woman black”, having no idea she was separate character. Actually, she’s three separate characters (we’ll get into that ). But if there’s one thing I’d like you to take away from this essay it’s that Nubia was actually DC Comics’ first female black superhero, even predating Marvel Comic’s Storm by two years. 

 Well, actually the main takeaway I want you to have is that Slaughter Island is an amazing name for a base of operation. 

 More on Nubia, but less about Slaughter Island, after thee jump.

Black Superheroes Month XI: Black Girl Magic

There is a lack of black heroine team-up covers

Another trip around the sun, another attempt to do Black Superheroes Month. 

There is an incorrect belief that there are not very many black heroes in comic books, but the actual truth is that there are a ton, but they are so underused and underutilized that it only seems like they are few and far between. Most of the time a black hero is created, used for a few months, maybe years, then is quickly forgotten about. This series is an attempt to profile a few of these characters every year. 

This year I have decided to try something different; we’ll be looking at three new heroes BUT all of them will be BLACK WOMEN, which despite what I just said there is in fact a severely limited pool of female black heroes. In fact, there were so few that I typically try to limit to one per year, so I didn’t run out of topics. Thankfully I think the number has grown enough in the past ten years that I can finally do an All-Woman addition of this blog. So, we will be looking at three female heroes this month, one major character, one minor character, and one who is (supposed to be) historically relevant. 

Next time we begin Black Superhero Month in earnest with a character who is the twin sister of a major DC hero and, predictably, it’s kind of racist.

Beta's Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2025

I really wanted to post more in 2025, but I just didn’t have time. I started at a new job that absolutely DESTROYED my free time. I essentially had time to work on my podcast (Adult Siblings Versus …which you can listen to HERE) and that’s it. But I am still managing to get this Top Ten list on the anniversary of this blog, and I still plan on putting out my annual Black Superhero Month posts next month. 

For today we’ll focus on my top ten favorite movies of 2025. As always, these are my FAVORITE films, not necessarily the objectively best films. Also, as always, there were plenty of films I was unable to get around to watching things like Marty Supreme or One Battle After Another. While I tried to watch Frankenstein, I have never seen a movie that needed to be viewed on a big screen rather a TV more and I couldn’t maintain interested solely based on that. 

 I did watch Elio with my son last year, however, which is the most recent Pixar film. I want to take a moment to mention how much I liked it (he liked it too) and how wrong the modern idea that Pixar movies just not being good anymore is. It JUST barely didn’t make the list. Blame Benoit Blanc for that one.

My favorite movies of 2025 after the jump.