Black Superheroes: Amazing-Man (I, II, & III)

1940s heroes who is drawn suspiciously like a 1980s hero

Name(s): Will Everett, Will Everett III, Markus Clay 

First Appearance(s): All-Star Squadron #23 (1983), Justice League America #86 (1994), Justice Society of America Vol. 3 #12 (2008)

History: Will Everett was a medal winning athlete who competed in the Berlin Olympics in 1936, but despite that, due to the racism of the time, he fell into obscurity shortly after and the only work he could get was as a janitor for a laboratory belonging to Doctor Terry Curtis. During an incident involving the Ultra-Huminite kidnapping Curtis, Everett as caught in a explosion that granted him super powers. He gained the ability to transform his body into a replica of matter that he touched. Initially he was forced to serve the Ultra-Huminite as the henchman “Amazing-Man”, alongside Curtis (who also developed powers and was forced to operate as “Cyclotron”), but he soon rebelled and instead joined the All-Star Squadron and became one of the most prominent heroes of the era.

Will’s career took a turn when J. Edgar Hoover (stinking sucker) revealed his identity to the public, putting him and his family in danger. Following this, Everett turned his focus to the Civil Rights movement, where he ended up becoming an important figure comparable to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X. Somehow. As the years went by, he started a family, but when his son died, he took his grandson, Will Everett III, into his care. Eventually Will Sr. would die of cancer, and it was ambiguous if it was a direct result of his powers, but Will III was traumatized by it, nonetheless.

In college, Will III developed powers similar to his grandfather but he thought of them as a curse as he desperately wanted to live a normal life. In time, however, he resigned himself to taking up the Amazing-Man mantle, despite believing it would be the eventual death of him. He would join the Justice League when asked by Wonder Woman and served in various incarnations of the team until he proved himself right and died in action, killed by a supervillain named Mist.

Sometime after this, Marcus Clay, Will III’s cousin and Will Sr.’s other grandson, developed similar powers as well and began operating as Amazing-Man in post-Katrina New Orleans, where he differed from his immediate predecessor by not only acting as a superhero but also a community activist, as he believed that aspect of their grandfather’s legacy was the more important one. He was recruited to join the recently revamped Justice Society of America, a team that included several of his grandfather’s contemporaries as well as legacy heroes like himself.

Pictured: The most recent Amazing-Man
Well, the most recent that doesn't completely suck

Beta Says: Geez, I feel like I’ve been sitting on this one for many years, partially because I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Do I focus on the first Amazing-Man? Do I give each one their own profile? Ultimately, because all three of them have  pretty short histories, it would be okay to do all three at once. The main thing about the first Amazing- Man though is his similarity to other modern characters, in that he, despite his bio, is NOT a creation of the Golden Age of Comics but a character created in the 80s, retroactively having been active during the 1940s. In this way he is extremely similar to Sentry, the Blue Marvel, and one of the Captains America. But Will predated all of them by several decades.

More on the amazing history of the Everett family after the jump.

Black Superheroes: The Blue Marvel

Blue is the new black!
(Also, black is still black)

Name: Adam Brashear

First Appearance: Adam – Legend of the Blue Marvel (2008)

History: Adam Brashear was a naturally gifted man. A brilliant scientist, a college football star and a decorated soldier; his accomplishments somewhat unrecognized due to the racism plaguing the United States at the time. Nevertheless, during the early 1960s, Adam was the team lead on a science experiment to try to harness antimatter. The experiment ended in disaster when the Negative Reactor that had been built exploded, bombarding Adam and his best friend, Conner Sims, with antimatter mutating them both. Conner became both physically and mentally unstable, and soon donned the villainous persona of Anti-Man, while Adam became a perfect, living antimatter reactor. Armed with superhuman strength, durability, speed and flight Brashear became the Blue Marvel and dedicated his life to fighting crime. For a about a year and a half the Blue Marvel was America’s greatest hero until his final battle with Anti-Man revealed him to the public as a black man, thus destroying the general populations trust in him. With racial tensions at an all-time high President John F. Kennedy personally, though reluctantly, requested that Blue Marvel retire. Out of patriotic duty, as well and genuine fear that his presence could start a nationwide race war, Adam agreed.

Forty-five years later Anti-Man returned to wreak destruction yet again, defeating the Avengers in the process. Iron Man came to Adam, still fit and vibrant due to his powers, asking for help. They succeeded in defeating Anti-Man once and for all and in the aftermath Brashear decided that the time was right to don his costume once more. The Blue Marvel lives again!

Beta Says: I feel I need to make sure this is clear; the Blue Marvel is NOT a character from the 1960s but a new character created in 2008 whose background was retroactively added to Marvel’s history. This isn’t out of the ordinary; both Marvel and DC have created characters that supposedly existed in decades past. Amazing-Man (a character who we’ll get to one day) is in a lot of ways DC’s equivalent to Blue Marvel as he was a character created in the 1980s who supposedly was a hero in the 1940s. However because Blue Marvel is an obvious Superman analogue the character that I assume he would draw the most comparison would be the Sentry. The Sentry is a goddamn garbage character whom I hate with the fiery passion of a million exploding suns. And yet I think Blue Marvel is pretty darn cool. Am I hypocrite? I mean, in addition to all the things I’m already hypocritical about.

More on Black Superman after the jump.