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.

Black Superheroes: Moon Girl

Welp...that's f**king terrifying!

Name: Lunella Lafayette 

First Appearance: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1 (2015) 

History: Lunella Lafayette is a Haitian-American 9-year old girl who also just happens to possess absurdly high intelligence. Even with her genius intellect, she is unable to get into schools more appropriate for her and languishes in her local public school, inventing things both publicly and in secret. At some point Lunella discovered that she was a latent Inhuman, superpowered individuals whose powers activate when exposed to Terrigen crystals or mist…and it just so happen that a rogue Terrigen cloud has been floating throughout the world transforming all latent Inhumans in touches. To save herself, she found a Kree Omni-Wave Projector but it somehow opened a portal that brought Devil Dinosaur into New York City. With his own partner, Moon Boy, just killed, Devil strikes an odd bond with Lunella, and, eventually, the two decided to work together as Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur.

 ….and then Lunella gets stuck by the Terrigen cloud she was trying to hard to avoid. Thankfully, her powers don’t cause a physical change, as she had been fearing, but rather it grants her the power to switch minds with Devil. With their bond, Devil’s brute strength, and Moon Girl’s super genius and array of homemade gadgets, the pair attempt to find their place in the greater superhero world. 

 Beta Says: Before Moon Girl debuted if you had asked me if I thought cult classic Devil Dinosaur could work in a modern setting I would have said “no.” The fact that his introduction also included the creation of one of the most original black superheroes of the day would have been completely beyond my comprehension. And yet, Moon Girl replacing the not quite human Moon Boy, has been one of the most successful new characters in Marvel’s attempt to add further diversity to their books. She even had her own animated series that recently premiered on Disney+. (…and it’s canceled? Maybe?!) Could Lunella, a character who is confirmed to be the smartest person in the Marvel Universe, be the mainstream black superhero we’ve been looking for? 

It's too bad that Marvel anchored her to their biggest marketing mishap in modern Marvel history. 

 More on the latest and greatest dynamic duo after the jump.

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: Sunspot

Look, when I said "black heroes" I didn't mean literally

Name: Roberto "Bobby" da Costa 

First Appearance: Marvel Graphic Novel #4 (1982) 

History: Bobby da Costa was not the typical kid. Born to Afro-Brazilian millionaire Emmanuel da Costa, he lived a life of affluence but was also a high-level athlete, particularly skilled in football (that’s “soccer” for you uneducated swine). Despite this he was haunted by racism directed him for being the biracial son of a black man. This came to a head during one of his football matches, where racists from the opposing team brutally attacked him in a racially motivated hate crime. However, it was a that moment that Bobby’s mutant abilities emerged, allowing him to absorb solar energy and transferring them into superpowers (including super strength, flight, and able to create concussive blasts of solar energy, while also taking on pitch black skin while he’s powered up). 

Shortly after this, Bobby’s girlfriend Juliana, the only person who stood by his side when his powers manifested, was kidnapped by goons working for Donald Pierce of the Hellfire Club to lure him into a trap. During the struggle, Karma and Dani Moonstar, two recent recruits of Professor Charles Xavier, arrive to help rescue the two, but ultimately Juliana took a bullet for Bobby and died in his arms. 

Fueled by a need for revenge against Pierce, Bobby returned with Karma and Dani to Xaviers’ School for Gifted Youngsters and becomes of founding member of the New Mutants, the next generation of X-Men, taking on the codename “Sunspot.” 

Beta Says: To be completely transparent here, I’m not the most familiar with Sunspot. The reason for this is because even now after well over 30 years of being a comic book fan The New Mutants has always been and remains a weird blind spot for me. Because of this, I am ashamed to admit it was many years before I was aware that Bobby was black; I thought he was just Latino. However I was not alone in this false belief, as poor Roberto has had the “afro” part of his ethnic identity changed, forgotten, or otherwise ignored possibly more than any other black superhero in history. And that’s what we’re talking about today. Buckle up; I’m pretty pissed off.

More about the black erasure of Sunspot after the jump.

Black Superheroes Month X: Black Excellence

What, no Static? No Bronze Tiger? For shame!

Forcing myself out of hibernation to do another year of talking black superheroes; it’s Black Superheroes Month yet again, probably my only proper contribution to the world….until President Farts McGoo outlaws black superheroes. “Something something DEI.”

For those who wandered here by accident (which is likely most of you at this point? I don’t think I have regular reader anymore), every year I profile several black comic book superheroes. You see, while the vast majority of superheroes have always been white, there is a misconception that there are hardly any black heroes out there. In fact, there’s a lot but most of them get lost in the shuffle, either because they didn’t remain a priority to the publisher or they weren’t made in good faith and probably shouldn’t have been conceived to begin with. (Looking at you, Triathlon!) So I like to write about these characters to educate folks and give some interesting, maybe lesser known characters a little spotlight.

This year we will be looking at three heroes, two from Marvel Comics and one from DC Comics, one of whom is a character who I have had to push back a few times but will finally get to this month. I have to say, however, that I am aware of the lack of love to DC in these blogs the last few years. I think it’s of combination of 1) me being casually aware of more Marvel heroes who are black, 2) that I think generally Marvel does a better job of highlighting their black characters than DC, and 3) I’m genuinely have been bad of keeping up with some of the newer characters DC have created in the last ten years. I don’t know, I could have written about Bloodwynd, I guess, but I decided we were better off with the Marvel character I picked over him (who will be our third character this year).

I feel like I’ve been seeing Nubia in DC promotions a lot the last year or so, or at least someone who looks like Nubia. I don’t know enough about her to write a profile this year, but maybe she’s a good featured character for 2026…

If seeing a black Amazon triggers you, kindly touch grass

Anyway, our first character is someone who has been seeing a lot of high profile attention in the last year, but who also is in the running for the biggest victim of black erasure in all of superhero comics.

Beta's Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2024

I’ve been away from the blogging space, and most of that is because, well, 2024 was a garbage year. I dealt with medical issues all year long, my wife and I bought a new house and a lot of things went wrong when we did, and worst of all my father passed away (well, worst of all is actually that American re-elected Biff Tannen despite him being a convicted felon, but I digress). But today is the 15 year anniversary of Beta is Dead so it would be good to post something. Plus next month is still Black Superheroes Month, so getting back into the grove of writing is necessary. 

 2024 wasn’t my favorite year for movies and I actually struggled to write a Favorite Movie list this year. Shoutout to The Bikeriders, which didn’t quite make the cut, and also Drive-Away Dolls which I had been looking for to for months and months but ended up being delayed into 2024…and it was just okay, sadly. Also Lisa Frankenstein, which I wanted to love,  but just didn't have what I needed in a film (even though the two leads were great)

My favorite movies of 2024 after the jump.