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: Silhouette

Short hair, don't care

Name: Silhouette Chord

First Appearance: New Warriors (vol. 1) #2 (1990)

History: Silhouette Chord, along with her twin brother Aaron, is the result of a decades long scheme to create a new breed of enhanced humans. Their father Andrew Chord, during the Vietnam War, was part of a unit of soldiers who came across a mysterious temple while in Cambodia. Tai, the mysterious matron of the temple, offered each of the men a woman to marry with the promise that the offspring would one day rule the word. Chord married Tai’s daughter Miyami, leading to the birth of the twins. Miyami, not wanting her children to be part of the scheme, faked their deaths leaving both Andrew and Tai in the dark. Years later Sihouette and Aaron have become vigilantes in New York. During this period they meet another young vigilante named Dwayne Taylor (later known as Night Thrasher) and the three became a team. Things ended poorly when Silhouette was shot and crippled by the police in a bust gone wrong. Losing the use of her legs did not stop her crime fighting career, however. Armed with the ability to melt into shadows and teleport short distances, not to mention her enhanced physical traits, Silhouette is still a force to be reckoned with. She also uses high tech crutches and leg braces, designed by Dwayne and built for combat, that carry an assortment of gadgets and weapon that aide her in battle against crime.

Beta Says: She’s basically a female Nightcrawler, as far as superpowers go. They even work basically the same way; they both teleport by briefly jumping through another dimension before landing where they intended. Nightcrawler could also sort of blend into the shadows. Is it coincidence that she was co-created by Fabian Nicieza, a writer famous for writing the X-Men quite a bit during the 90s? (Well, I don’t think he worked on Nightcrawler that much so…maybe?). On the other hand Sil gets these powers from a cult’s generations of selective breeding and manipulation of a mystical force called the “Well of All Things” which is more confusing than Kurt Wanger’s parental origin (though only just barely).

 More on this New Warrior after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Rage

I pity the fool who denies me my chocolate milk!

Name: Elvin Daryl Haliday

First Appearance: Avengers #326 (1990)

History: A small, timid kid thirteen year old Elvin Haliday was often the victim of bullying. One day while hiding from his tormentors he accidentally got covered in toxic waste. Surviving the exposure he fell ill, needing to be nursed back to health by his grandmother. Elvin recovered but was forever changed; he had aged into a body of a man in his mid-thirties and also developed superhuman strength, speed and durability. No longer timid Elvin now possessed complete confidence. At his grandmother’s urging he decides to use his new found powers to fight crime, dubbing himself “Rage”. He almost immediately confronted the Avengers and demanded to be allowed to join, which they eventually allow for a brief time. He would go one to become a member of the New Warriors and find a mentor in Night Thrasher.

Beta Says: I have an extremely strong suspicion that in the creation stage of this guy someone wanted to call him “Black Rage” but was vetoed. Because why else would you call an angry black man superhero “Rage”? Despite being 1990 Rage feels a lot more like the early attempts in the 1970s to make black superheroes. Thankfully Rage wasn’t a criminal, just a kid who suddenly got to grow up. Of course this concept is childhood wish fulfillment (what kid reading comics doesn’t dream about being an adult superhero?) and in that regard Rage is very similar to Captain Marvel. However unlike Captain Marvel, who gains wisdom when he yells “SHAZAM” and ages up, Elvin still possesses the mind of a thirteen year old. I guess that makes him more similar to the kid from the movie Big. Or the movie 13 Going on 30, but probably better acted.

More Black Rage after the jump.

Nerd Rage #16: Road to Marvel's Civil War

Ever wonder who would win in a fight?
No? Too bad

This is my 299th blog, which means two things: 1) Holy shit, I’ve written 299 blogs and 2) the next blog will be #300. That’s a pretty big milestone and one we cannot ignore. A while back, maybe a few weeks or months after uploading blog #100, which if you recall was a rant/review of Spider-Man: One More Day, I was trying to figure out comics that I’d want to review for future big milestones. I decided Spider-Man: One Moment in Time would be appropriate for the 200th blog but there was a comic that I really wanted to review but that I felt deserved an equal amount of attention as those two heinously terrible Spider-Man stories. Then I remembered Civil War, a major crossover for Marvel Comics in 2006.

What’s so important about Civil War? So important that I would sit on reviewing it for years? Well it was a major game changer for Marvel Comics that set a particularly dubious status quo for Marvel both in narrative and the way they conducted business. The effects of this book, as far as the storyline went, lasted for the rest of the decade up until 2010’s Heroic Age. In my opinion Civil War is likely the most important storyline from Marvel Comics during the 2000s (House of M would be the other logical choice).

So next time I’ll be reviewing the main Civil War book, which was seven issues. However today I’d like to talk about important points that lead up to this crossover so that we are all on the same page when I review it, much like I did with One More Day and X-Men Schism.

More useless information 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.