Black Superheroes: Amanda Waller

She's here to manipulate meta-humans and chew gum
...and she just shot the last gum dealer

Name: Amanda Waller

First Appearance: Legends #1 (1986)

History: Amanda Waller’s life was altered when her husband, son and daughter were murdered. She left the Chicago housing projects where she lived along with her surviving children and went on to earn doctorate in psychology and political science, eventually becoming a congressional aide (she also has military training). During her time as an aide Waller came across the existence of the Suicide Squad, two separate teams of non-powered individuals taking on high risk missions. Taking elements from both teams she pitched a revival to her superiors. Her version would be made up of captured super villains who would be forced to take on missions that would be considered suicide runs for the government (super villains are extremely expendable). Her superiors agreed and placed in charge of the team. Since then Waller has become a prominent figure in the DC Universe having been associated with many government sponsored organizations dealing with super human affairs including Checkmate and most recently her own version of the Justice League of America. Uncompromising and ruthless Amanda Waller is very dedicated to serving her country…by any means she sees fit.

Beta Says: Okay, okay, I fully admit that I’m cheating with this entry. Amanda Waller is not a superhero. In fact at best she’s an antihero and at worst she’s a very deadly villain (IGN actually put her on their Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time list). However most of the time she’s portrayed as someone with the best interest of people at heart who just happens to be a real jerk about it most of the time. In a way she’s DC Comic’s equivalent of Nick Fury, though I think any sane person would find her significantly more intimidating. In all honesty I’ve been aching to write about Waller for years, especially after the Great DC Reboot of 2011 got its mitts on her. Because for all her faults she’s a damn cool character.

More on “The Wall” after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Night Thrasher

Because "Black Thrasher" sounded too 1970s-ish

Name: Dwayne Michael Taylor

First Appearance: Thor #411 (1989)

History: Son of wealthy philanthropist and former soldier Daryl Taylor, Dwayne saw his parents gunned down at an early age (although he strangely does not recall all of the details). The event traumatized the boy and he swore that he would wage a war on all criminals. Supported by his legal guardian Andrew Cord and housekeeper Tai Dwayne trains for years in the art of fighting, mastering several forms of martial arts and hardening himself as a weapon becoming one the toughest hand-to-hand combatants in the world. Deciding he needed an even bigger advantage over the criminal underground he uses his keen intellect to design and build an advanced body armor with an assortment of gadgets. Along with his trademark twin Battle Staffs and…um…his high tech skateboard Dwayne becomes the pragmatic hero known as Night Thrasher. Not content with doing it on his own however Night Thrasher forms a team of young heroes, modeled after the Fantastic Four, to help him in his vendetta against evil and the press soon dub them The New Warriors. Dwayne now divides his time between super heroics and managing the Wayne Taylor Foundation.

Beta Says: As you can probably guess from the year of his first appearance Night Thrasher is an early product of the Dark Age of Comics. That would likely be obvious just by looking at him; on paper he’s a very unsubtle Batman rip-off that uses a goddamn skateboard as a weapon. The only way he could be a bigger embodiment of the 1990s would be if his name was Nyght Thrazer or Blood Thrasher or something like that. Credit where credit is due; I often complain about some of these black heroes being very stereotypical. You know, “from the ghetto”, “criminal past”, etc. But Night Thrasher is actually a rich boy which is a completely different circumstance than the majority of black heroes before him. Of course he has a serious anger problem which has some unfortunate implications but, you know, baby steps.

More on Night Thrasher after the jump.

Black Superheroes Month IV: Even Blacker

Still the best...

It’s once again time for that annual series of blogs that both win me praise for a much needed service and gets me repeatedly asked why I hate white people so much; it’s time for Black Superhero Month!

For those of you who are recent additions to the readership every year I write a series of profiles and opinions on various black superheroes. There is a misconception out there that there aren’t a lot of black superheroes out there. This is incorrect as there are a lot of them…just not a lot of famous ones. In fact they’re a lot of shitty ones. This month is about talking about them, from the historically significant to the emotionally polarizing. Although I shouldn’t have to mention this but my ranting about this subject isn’t meant to imply that white superheroes shouldn’t exist. It’s merely me, as a black man and a comic nerd, trying to find some ground with the characters I regularly read about. Although it’s true I do hate a lot of white superheroes. Looking at you, Barry Allen…

Anywho I’m afraid to say that my profiles on women may be especially limited this year, but almost certainly it will be next year, due to me having somewhat exhausted my knowledge on the topic. This is partly because I’m not a living computer so I can’t have detailed info of every dang character in my brain. But it’s mostly because black women are a horrendously underrepresented minority in superhero comics. Hell, Storm is probably the only really famous one that even non-comic book fans know…and she was kind of ruined for pop culture because of Halle Berry.

YOU MESSED EVERYTHING UP FOREVER!!!

I feel a little bad but I have some ideas on how to make it up to the female gender in future blogs. We’ll see if it happens. Regardless as always feel free to post in the comments of these upcoming blogs to offer opinions, suggestions or middle fingers. However hate speech won’t be tolerated; remember I moderate the comment section and I won’t have racism on my blog. (Why should I even need to mention this? Damn it, internet…) 

Next time we kick things off with a superhero from the Dark Age of Comics who fights crime with a skateboard…and is definitely not Batman.

Review: I, Frankenstein (Film)

If you saw the trailers for I, Frankenstein you might have shook your head and laughed. Frankenstein’s monster fighting a bunch of gargoyles? The hell? Plus it resembles Underworld or Blade in terms of look, which is not at all a compliment. It’s that World of Darkness RPG feel that would have been very interesting in the late 90s through mid-2000s but seems somewhat out of place in 2014. Apparently this movie is based on a graphic novel. Okay, I’ll buy that though I had never heard of it prior to me seeing this first trailer of this movie.

So yeah, this flick looks like garbage from the trailers and the commercials. Can we all agree on that? So let’s review it and see if it’s as god awful as it looks.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: This review contains some spoilers]

Mini-Reviews: Upstream Color, The To Do List

When I was coming up with the list for my Top Ten Movies of 2013 blog I was a little concerned about including Upstream Color for a couple of reasons but mainly briefly I wondered if by putting it on there, on a list that also included Thor: The Dark World of all things, it might come off as a bit pretentious choice especially since I did no want to talk about the plot of the film or even what I liked about it. Plus I’m guessing the average person hadn’t really heard of it (although as of this writing it’s on Netflix so the chances of you at least seeing it around may be greater than I might assume). Perhaps if I review it here, talk about why it’s a good film and what I really didn’t like, I’d feel bit better about the whole thing. As I’ve said in the past independent movies are a double edge sword; they have creative freedom from a meddlesome studio that only think about the bottom line but also lack a filter to distill ideas for a wide audience and thus things have the capacity to get weird. Upstream Color is a great example of this concept.

But because I don’t want things to get too serious let’s go ahead and also review The To Do List, a teen sex comedy starring Aubrey Plaza.

Two new reviews after the jump.

[WARNING: This review may have some spoilers for Upstream Color, minor though they may be. The filmmakers would likely prefer you watch this film cold so please take that in mind and read the following at your own risk]

Beta's Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2013

This is obviously very late as I usually get this list out earlier in the month. There were a few outstanding issues that caused me to only do the minimal amount of writing until just this past weekend and while I clearly did do some writing during that time I prioritized things in a way that left this one lower on my To-Do List (By the way, The To Do List didn’t make the cut. Better luck next year Aubrey Plaza).

Anyway it’s finally time for my annual Top Ten Favorite Movie List. It’s true that like every year I wasn’t able to see every movie I wanted to see in the last twelve months but even so I feel like 2013 wasn’t as good a year for films as 2012 was, at least as far as my personal taste and preferences go. I mean last year my top five films basically all had perfect scores while this year I spent most of the fall with a deep worry that I wouldn’t have ten movies above 3 Pandas. If anything the delay in this blog gave me some extra time to track down some movies I didn’t get to see in theaters and that helped a lot. Same deal as every year: these are my personal choices based on my tastes as opposed to a more impersonal analysis. It’s my opinion and yours may be different. If you have any movies you think I snubbed, have your own list, or even want to agree let me know in the comments.

Beta’s Top Ten Movies after the jump.

Nerd Rage #15: Cartoon Network Really Likes Young Boys

[Don’t forget to vote for my band every day at the GTR Online Battle of the Bands!]

This is the same company that put out The Powerpuff Girls.
...the f**k happened?

 Now that we’ve reach Beta is Dead’s Fourth Anniversary I think it’s time for a rant. Now normally I would write a comic book rant, probably something about Stephanie Brown or something like that, but instead I think I’ll talk about cartoons. And gender. There’s been a pretty big controversy going around the internet since late November that I’ve been aching to comment on but just haven’t had the time. Well the time is now.

If you are unfamiliar with who Paul Dini is (shame on you, by the way) he is the co-creator along with Bruce Timm, of Batman: The Animated Series which is still today considered by a great many people to be the best cartoon ever made. Understand that Dini is a pretty big deal when it comes to children’s television. So anyway a while ago Dini appeared on film director/giant nerd Kevin Smith’s podcast “Fatman on Batman” to talk about Batman. Somewhere during the two part interview Smith goes on a rant about how much he loves the new cartoon Beware the Batman, which Dini has nothing to do with but Smith points out that when the show gets going it’s the only Batman show to match the level of depth of BM:TAS. Then Dini destroys Smith’s life by informing him that Cartoon Network had removed it from the schedule and would probably end up canceling it if it hasn’t been canceled already. And indeed the show was put on hiatus back in October and as of this writing it has yet to have a solid return date (they said January but January is almost over) and have offered up no explanation. But Dini has an idea of what the problem is.

Now you can listen to the podcast yourself here (this stuff starts around 38 to 41 minutes in) but I will summarize: companies like Cartoon Network cancel or otherwise don’t renew deep, arc driven shows like Beware the Batman because they attract the wrong demographic; families and girls. But they only want certain shows to be watched by young boys.

Let me repeat his: Cartoon Network has possibly self-sabotaged and canceled their shows because they attracted too large of a female audience. That is one of the most f**ked up things I’ve ever heard.

More ranting, swearing, and screaming after the jump.

Four Year Anniversary is Dead

[Don’t forget to vote for my band every day at the GTR Online Battle of the Bands!]

Another year hone and Beta is Dead is now four years old! I can barely believe it myself; four years is a long time, especially for just writing about random stuff. Theoretically a kid may have started reading this blog in 2010 and now by 2014 could be a legal adult. That is how old this blog is. It’s weird to look back on the last four years and realize how different things are for me compared to back when I first started.

I wish I could say that I’m still jazzed to be doing this blog but, as regular readers might have guessed, 2013 was very difficult for me on a personal level and the blog greatly suffered as a result. This is a hobby and a very time consuming one as well. It’s a lot of work with little reward and in fact the reward seems to get smaller every year. For the first time since I started this blog I feel like I may not have it in me to keep it going for the long haul. That said in the short term there’s nothing to worry about if you’re one of the increasingly small number of regular visitors and, who knows, perhaps when I do my annual Black Superhero Month in a few weeks I’ll feel a little better about things. Should I decide to call it quits with Beta is Dead I’m fairly sure I’ll be giving advanced warning.

Enough doom and gloom. More anniversary stuff after the jump.