Black Superheroes: Spawn

Behold! The Amazing Spider-Man Spawn!

Name: Albert “Al” Simmons

First Appearance: Spawn #1 (1992)

History: Al Simmons had a life once. He was a top notch CIA assassin, working for a top secret division. After a while however Simmons began questioning his boss Jason Wynn after series of increasingly morally depraved assignments. Unable (Or unwilling) to indulge his underlying Wynn ordered Simmons’ death, which was carried out by his own partner Bruce Stinson (AKA Chapel). But death wasn’t the end for Al; due to his many evil deeds as an assassin his soul went to hell. There he meets the demon Malebolgia who offers him a sinister deal: become a Hellspawn and in exchange he’ll be allowed to return to Earth to see his wife one last time. Simmons agrees and is subsequently sent back. However upon his resurrection he is amnesic, his body is burned and disfigured, and worse of all its five years later and his wife has already moved on…marrying his best friend! However Spawn, as he is now known, possesses the Hellspawn powers. Emotionally devastated he becomes a violent antihero and soon becomes a crucial part of a conflict between Hell and Heaven

Beta Says: I am not what you’d call a Spawn fan. I’m more of a superhero comic enthusiasts and the darker route of this comic never really got my attention. In fact he’s probably the poster child for the violent 90s hero archetype I dislike (Though at least he makes sense for his world, unlike a certain claw wielding fellow). Plus the book gets pretty goddamn hard to follow after a while. But the title was one of the highest selling books of the day, reaching rare heights of popularity and ultimately putting Image comics on the map and making its creator Todd McFarlane one of the richest men in the industry. It also led to an critically acclaimed HBO cartoon (One of the few adult cartoons that wasn’t a comedy or porn) and a less than critically acclaimed live-action film, not to mention numerous video game appearances. With the high sales and the exposure Spawn reached a level of mainstream exposure that almost no other African American hero, especially a solo hero, could lay claim to. Though his notoriety has gone down in the last ten years or so (For the most part) he may be in fact be the most successful black character in American superhero comics.

More on Spawn after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Outro

First of all I apologize that this Outro didn’t actually occur in February.  A combination of being sick and being really, really busy has severely disrupted my update schedule.  It’s time to play catch-up now that things have settled down.

Mr. Terrific: An awesome character who I'm saving for a later blog
Just look at him!  He's amazing!

Anyway as I mentioned last month there are a ton of black superheroes, but a lot of them are under the radar.  I learned a lot during the research for these articles and I hope you did as well.  There’s certainly a lot of messed up stuff associated with characters of color but there’ s a lot of potential there as well.

Before we wrap this project up I wanted to briefly talk about few characters.  I may one day revisit these guys in greater detail but for now let’s take a brief look at a few characters I wanted to profile but was unable to due to time restraints.

Click below for more.