Black Superheroes: Black Panther (Shuri)

MCU Shuri could never!

Name: Shuri

First Appearance: Black Panther #2 (2005)

History: Shuri is the younger sister of T’Challa, only daughter of King T’Chaka, and thus a princess of the nation of Wakanda. Because she is the younger child of the king there was no expectation of her taking the throne or the mantle of Black Panther but the young girl desperately desired the title. She trained for years to achieve this goal, particularly after her father’s murder and her uncle being chosen to succeed him. Unfortunately, her overprotective mother interfered with her attempt to challenge for the mantle and by the time she arrived she discovered that T’Challa had returned from his studies aboard and won the title, and the kingdom, himself

Undeterred, she continued training and hoping for the opportunity to present itself again (aside from a stint being a party girl due to experiencing a traumatic event, but there’s word limit here). The day came when T’Challa was mortally wounded at the hands of Doctor Doom and Shuri was unexpectedly chosen to undergo the trial to succeed her brother. She completed the trials, but she was denied the powers of the Black Panther by Bast the Panther God who declared her motives to be about pride and not about a selfless desire to protect her people. However, she proved herself worth by risking her life to battle Morlun in order to protect her wounded bother and the people of Wakanda, earning Bast’s blessing at last.

Shuri rose to become the new Black Panther and the Queen of Wakanda, ruling in her brother’s place when the need arises.

Beta Says: I know that the MCU is a little notorious for making change to characters they adapt into movies, but I’m not sure if we’ve seen many who have deviated from the source material as much as Shuri. In the comics she was a serious warrior who coveted the Black Panther mantle and went on a years’ long journey before she eventual earned it, while MCU-Shuri is jokey genius scientist who couldn’t be less interested in replacing her bother. This is all fine and good except that I fear we could be seeing another example of the original character being replaced with the movie version, with all the interesting aspects of Shuri pre-MCU fading away.

More about the deadlier of the species after the jump.

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: 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.

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.

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 91: Spider-Man (2002 Film)

Working our way through the back archive of the Adult Siblings Versus...continues. This episode, we looked at the  the 2002 Spider-Man film and discuss the singe greatest portrayal of a superhero character in film:

J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson.

"Get me pictures...PICTURES OF SUPERMAN!"
".....I mean 'Spider-Man'. Sorry everyone."

More details after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Nick Fury, Jr.

Step 1: Make him black. Step 2: ???
Step 3: New readers, somehow!

Name: Marcus Johnson

First Appearance: Battle Scars #1 (2012)

History: Marcus Johnson lived a relatively normal life. He was raised by a single mother and entered the army out of high school, where he eventually became an Army Ranger. While serving overseas in Afghanistan, he was informed that his mother had been murdered. Returning the Untied States for the funeral, Marcus was ambushed by assassins and the super criminal mercenary known as the Taskmaster, the same people who killed his mom. While he was rescued by SHIELD and Captain America, he was deliberately not told why he and his mother had been targeted. Soon Johnson was attacked again only to be saved by the man revealed to be his long-lost father, none other than former Director of SHIELD Nick Fury. In the ensuing adventure, the two teamed up, got captured, Johnson lost his eye during torture (and it just happened to be the exact same eye his father famously is missing), and the two managed to defeat the man behind the whole plot; Orion. Afterwards Johnson agrees to join SHIELD as its newest agent, taking the name that is revealed to have been his birth name: “Nick Fury, Jr.”

History: Overly contrived plotline that suggests the publisher has no respect for its readers, thy name is Marcus Johnson. I don’t often write these Black Superhero profiles about characters I despise and, indeed, I don’t hate Baby Fury as a character in the same way I hate the Sentry (may his MCU appearance Rest is Piss).  However, his creation is the most extreme version of a concept I hate in comic books. I generally don’t mind changes of characters’ traits in adaptations so long as the spirit of the character remains intact, but every so often Marvel or DC will take that change and implement it back into the current comic and that’s the thing I loathe; it becomes a snake eating its own tail. In this case, having a white, cigar chomping ,World War II vet named “Nick Fury” was apparently bad for business when Samuel L. Jackson was playing the character in the biggest movies of the 21st Century. You know what that means; MINORITY REPLACEMENT, BABY!

Haven't seen the marketing team this power mad since the Clone Saga 

It's more complicated than simply replacing, say, Ray Palmer with Ryan Choi. In fact, to tell the full story of how Fury Lad came to be we must start eleven years before his first appearance. In fact, this is actually the story of four separate characters over two separate mediums.

More on Kid Fury after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Lightning

I don't know why she's naked in her powered form
Seems kind of weird for a teen hero

Name: Jennifer Pierce

First Appearance: Kingdom Come #1 (1996); Justice Society of America (vol. 3) #12 (2008)

History: Jennifer Piece is the youngest daughter of the legendary protector of the Suicide Slum, Black Lightning. As with her older sister Anissa, she was born with a dormant metagene that emerged in her adolescence. Despite this, Black Lightning made it clear that he would not allow either of his children to follow in his footsteps as a hero. Where Anissa gained to ability to control her density, Jennifer instead gained powers similar to their father; the ability to generate and control electricity. In addition she gained the power to fly and to generate an electric aura that came in the form of a golden and spiky appearance. The day she graduated college Anissa, defied their father and became the hero known as Thunder. Over the next few years Black Lightning watched his oldest daughter struggle to find her footing without his help and it made him second guess his decision. With Jennifer, who was having a hard time controlling her abilities, he decided to take the opposite route and make sure she was trained properly in the use of her powers and in fighting crime. To that end he had Jennifer join the Justice Society of America so that they they could give her the mentorship she needed. Soon after she became known as “Lightning.”

Beta Says: If she, along with her sister, hadn’t appeared in the CW Black Lightning show a few years back I’d be certain that Jennifer would be forgotten. In the comics it has been quite a long while since we’ve seen the second daughter of Jefferson Pierce. Hell, the last time we saw was I think at least two reboots ago, so I’m not even sure if she still exists in the current DC continuity. I would say that she is a whole category below Thunder in relevance in the DC Comics, which is a bit annoying considering she debuted with a bit of hype. It’s interesting that she fell in the background, as Jennifer is actually a much older character than you’d think, because the character actually debuted twelve years earlier in the fantastic and historically relevant miniseries Kingdom Come. Sort of.   I shall explain.

 More on the golden child of the Black Lightning clan after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Blade

"Some motherf@#$ers are always trying to ice skate uphill!"

Name: Eric Cross Brooks

First Appearance: The Tomb of Dracula #10 (1973)

History: Tara Vanessa Cross-Brooks, who was in labor, sought shelter at a brothel in London, England. A doctor was called in after she started experiencing complications, but it turned out that it was a vampire in disguise: Deacon Frost. Frost drained Tara of her blood before being chased away. Sadly, Tara did not survive the incident. Her son, Eric Brooks, who was still in the womb when she was bitten, lived despite odds. Because of the circumstances of his birth, Eric was born with a natural immunity to vampire bites and an innate and deep hatred of all vampires. He was raised in the brothel for a few years before he came under the tutelage of veteran vampire hunter Jamal Afari, who trained him in his profession. Over the years Eric became an Olympic-level athlete, a top notch fighter, and a master of weapon combat, though he was especially skilled with knives and daggers which earned him the nickname “Blade.”

Blade would become one of the most prominent vampire hunters in the world, with clashes with the legendary vampire Dracula to his name and teaming up with other famous hunters. However, his life took an unexpected turn years later when he encountered Morbius, the Living Vampire. Morbius bit him and, likely due to his significantly different nature compared to other vampires and possibly because of Blade’s unique physiology, the British hunter had a sort of mutation that granted him super strength and more obvious vampiric traits (including fangs and a bloodlust) but an immunity of sunlight and other weaknesses. With his training, years of experience, and his newfound powers, the “Daywalker” is the most famous, skilled, and feared vampire slayer in the world.

Blade is the only one capable of stopping Morbin Time
Well, Blade and Box Office returns...

Beta Says: Wow, I cannot believe that I’ve been doing Black Superheroes Month since 2011 and it took me all this time to remember to write about Blade, who was the goddamn most famous comic book character in America for a bit. I think it’s two reasons: 1) I feel like I kept pushing Blade back saying “I’ll do him next year” in favor of a character I found more interesting and 2) I sometimes forget Blade exists, as he’s actually not all that popular in the comics. He’s a C-tier character at best and yeah, every few years Marvel will try to give him an ongoing, but they always end up canceled. It’s crazy to think that Blade is kind of ho-hum in terms of comics prevalence, considering he single handedly saved the concept of superhero movies.

More on the weird dichotomy of Blade after the jump.

Black Superheroes Month IX: Black Power

I uh...I'm not sure who everyone in this picture is
Well, this is embarrassing

Another year, another chance to write about Black Superheroes.

For the uninitiated, there is a common misconception that there are not very many black heroes in superhero comics, so every year (…mostly) I write a series of blogs about various characters to showcase that there are actually a lot of black heroes around, but most of them are horribly underutilized. This year, unless something goes wrong, I will be writing three profiles throughout the month of February. All my previous articles can be found here.

This year I struggled to pick who to talk about, partially because I have way too many male heroes to choose and way too few female heroes to pick from (there is actually a deeply concerning lack of black superheroines out there, sadly). Originally, I was going to make Sunspot of the New Mutants my featured character this year, as the last few years (and the last forty years actually) there has been controversy over whether or not a character who was depicted as Afro-Brazilian in his early appearances should be drawn with dark skin or be played by a black actor, and I’ve gotten f**king sick of it. However, a different character I should have thought of earlier came to mind whom I realized I had to do ASAP and since the third character this year is non-negotiable as well it was either Sunspot or a profile on a female hero, and since I don’t like the idea of this being an all-dude month I’ll talk about all my very angry thoughts regarding poor Roberto next year.

Later we learn his secondary mutation is "White Washing"

Next time instead will look at a character that is overdue being looked at on this blog, as for a brief time they were the most famous and popular comic book hero in all of pop culture.

Gwen Stacy, Alive and Well

I'm not sure Stan Lee had this in mind...

About ten years ago I wrote an article on this blog where I discussed the Spider-Man supporting character Gwen Stacy. I had recently seen The Amazing Spider-Man and, after being enamored with Emma Stone’s performance and her great chemistry with Andrew Garfield, I wanted to write about how Gwen’s character had been completely compromised due to decades of being martyred as “Spider-Man’s Dead Girlfriend.” So ingrained was this one aspect in the hearts and minds of fans and creators alike, that every new adaptation of the character either always inevitably dies or the creators planned for her to die if they were allow to continue the story the way they wanted (the creators of Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon have said their ideal scenario for the show would have included a TV/Home Video movie where Gwen was killed). No real reason for this is ever given beyond “that’s just what Gwen does; she dies.”

My original article (which you may want to read) very briefly ran through Gwen’s tragically short history and also touched don some reasonings and suggestions on how they could bring her back and give her the opportunity to be an actual character again, something she hadn’t been since the 1960s. But more than that, I challenged the creators of The Amazing Spider-Man to not kill Gwen off in a sequel, and seeing as they had a super talented rising star of an actress in the role I was convinced that they would not.

 Then Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out and completely proved my point by unnecessarily killing Gwen off. Awesome.

Pictured: The preferred version of Gwen, according to the writers

I was pretty convinced at the time that Gwen would remain this nebulous area that were seemed terrified of altering the status quo, regardless of how inherently sexist this concept of turning her into a Spider-Martyr had really become. I resigned myself to it always being the way because too many editors and producers think of Gwen’s death as being too sacred to ever even entertain the idea of bringing the character back.

I was wrong. Marvel Comics did bring Gwen back and they did it in a way I would have never expected: as a superhero in her own right. From the pages of the original Spider-Verse comic, a story where Spider-Man had to team up with variants of himself from across the multiverse, one of the encountered characters was a version of Gwen Stacy who developed spider powers instead of Peter Parker. Almost immediately upon her debut did the character become a breakout hit for most fans both old and new, especially in the cosplay scene. Since then the character lovingly referred to as “Spider-Gwen” has become a major recurring character in the comics, regularly appearing in cartoon shows, and has starred in one of the most celebrated animated films in history and set to return in its sequel later this year.

Today I’m like to talk about Spider-Gwen in detail, partially out of a longing to do a follow-up on my original article, and discuss who and why she is, why she is popular, and why she is extremely important to both the Spider-Man mythos and to the salvation of the decades long wronged character.

 Learn about Spider-Gwen after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Patriot II

A black sheriff Bucky?!?

Name: Elijah "Eli" Bradley

First Appearance: Young Avengers #1 (2005)

History: Eli Bradley is the grandson of Isaiah Bradley, an ex-soldier who was part of a government sponsored program during World War II to recreate the super soldier serum that created Captain America. The program opted to test the unstable formula on unwitting black soldiers and Isiah was the lone survivor, giving him peak physical abilities amongst other attributes (Note: we will probably need to talk about Isiah in more detail another time). Years later, following the events of Avengers: Disassembled where the Avengers were disbanded, a mysterious time traveling youth known as Iron Lad trigged the Avengers Failsafe Program (set to activate in the event of the Avengers ending) that led him to various superpowered individuals with connections to the team in order to revive it. Eli was one for those selected. He explained that, even though his mother was born before Isaiah received his powers, after being wounded he received a blood transfusion form his grandfather which gave the boy similar physical attributes. Taking the name “Patriot”, Eli joined Iron Lad’s new team, the Young Avengers.

Over time the Young Avengers became a successful crime fighting team but eventually the truth came out; Eli had lied about the source of his powers, and he had actually been using Mutant Growth Hormone (basically super powered steroids) to gain his abilities. After quitting the team in shame but later rejoining, Eli was seriously injured while aiding Captain America and was only saved by a lifesaving blood transfusion…. from his grandfather, just like the story he had earlier made up. The process embowed him with enhance physical abilities similar to that of his grandfather and Captain America and he continued to fight alongside his friends in the Young Avengers, this time with actual powers to back it up.

Beta Says: Eli Bradley was a major character in the mid-2000s for Marvel as part of their big Young Avengers push, a team of characters inspired by or part of the legacy of established Avengers characters. Eli has an extra nod as he is tied to the then recent groundbreaking comic Truth: Red, White & Black. That comic is very historically relevant and deserves its own article, but the short version is that it retcons both the nature of the experiment that created Captain America and its purpose wherein it explains that, with the comic creator’s taking inspiration from the real-life tragedy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the United States government experimented on black soldiers. Eli’s grandfather was the star of that book, but it ends in a way where it wouldn’t be appropriate for Isaiah to enter the fold as a hero in the “modern” Marvel universe. But Eli, trying to live up to his grandfather’s legacy, could be and it opened a lot of opportunity to tell mature stories about the complexities of race and patriotism.

But then eventually Marvel got tired of him and replaced him with a new young black kid to be the Bucky to Sam Wilson’s Captain America. Cool. Cool cool cool.

More about the rise of the Patriot after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Natasha Irons

John Henry took sick and went to his bed
Polly Ann drove steel like a man, Lord, Lord

Name: Natasha Irons

First Appearance: Steel #1 (1994)

History: Natasha Irons is the niece of superhero and scientist John Henry Irons, better known as Steel. From early on into his hero career Natasha had been his steadfast supporter and ally, to the point where she was the only member of the Irons family to accompany him when John relocated back to Metropolis. One day, John was trapped under the influence of the Entropy Aegis, a powerful armor created by Darkseid. Designing her own armor using Aegis tech, Natasha teamed up with Superman and others to rescue her uncle from the clutches of Apokolips. While they were successful, John was too injured to continue on as Steel. Therefore, he passed the mantle to Natasha, something he had always planned on doing, and with his blessing and support she began her own heroic career as the new Steel.

Sometime later Natasha ad John had a falling out and he stripped her of the armor. Unable to recreate her own, she signed up for the Everyman Project, a superhuman creation program sponsored by Lex Luthor. The program gave her superhuman strength, the ability to fly, and the power to emit light blasts from her hands and she soon took up the name Starlight. However, after realizing that Luthor had criminal ulterior motives with the project she betrayed him to her uncle but was stripped of the powers for her efforts. Later still it turned out that the experiments had lingering effects and she developed new powers, the ability to phase into a gaseous form, and she took up the name Vapor.

Beta Says: Natasha is a bit of a difficult character to write about as she is a spin-off character of a spin-off character; a derivative of a derivative, if you will. Steel has never been all that successful as a character beyond being loosely associated with Superman and a lot the time that Natasha ends up donning the power suit herself it usually feels like current DC Comics’ current writers aren’t interested in John Henry Irons at the moment for whatever reason, and tag her in instead like she’s a back-up character when they need to add a woman or a black person or both to story. Considering she spent so many years as a supporting character to John in his solo series, I to this day wonder why exactly DC felt the need to replace him with her, and then keep replacing her back with her uncle anytime someone decided they had a use for him again. It makes me tired.

More on Natasha Irons after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Ironheart

And lo, did the tears of a thousand fanboys flood the streets

Name: Riri Williams 

First Appearance:  Invincible Iron Man Vol. 3 #7 (2016) 

History: Riri Williams, a genius teenage MIT student, built a working suit of power armor based on Iron Man from stolen spare parts around her school just to see if she could. Upon completion she took it out into the world and ended up stopping two escaped convicts, but the still-not-quite right suit was destroyed in the process. The event caught the eye of Tony Stark himself, who personally came to Riri to offer guidance and support on her path to becoming a superhero. Some time later Stark is rendered comatose after the events of Civil War II, but apparently he saved his personality into an Artificial Intelligence housed in a holographic construct with the purpose of being shipped to Riri in the event of his death. Now directly working with an A.I. with the personality with intellect of the world famous Iron Man, Riri is able to fully complete her armor. On the A.I.’s suggestion she adopts the name “Ironheart” and sets forth to try to fill the gap that Iron Man left in his wake.

Beta Says: Riri Williams is something of a pariah amongst a certain percentage of the superhero comic fandom. As I understand it, some of it is backlash from her early stories not actually being very good considering how hard Marvel Comics was pushing her as this cool new superhero. However I’d argue a huge portion of it comes form a dark corner of modern comic fandom who rejected Ironheart not simply because of quality of stories but because she became their poster child for a then big mandate from Marvel to push diversity amongst their characters. In her case, Marvel probably unwisely had her temporary take over Invincible Iron Man. Replacing a high profile character with a very new character and telling everyone how cool they are is never the safest bet in the best of times but it becomes worse when that character is black and a portion of your fanbase have decided to be “Anti-Woke.” Oh yes, it’s one of these things. 

More on the “Ironheart Controversy” after the jump.

Black Superheroes Month VIII: Black is Beautiful

Bow down before the Queen of superhero comics!

Now that I’m back writing blog content, it was really no question that I would bring back my annual celebration of Black History Month with my Black Superheroes Month series, a tradition so prestigious that even Rob Bricken of io9.com has used it as research material for an article at least once (…..well, I think it’s cool).

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve done this, so for those who have forgotten or newcomers who have wandered in by mistake, here is the gist: there is a very common misconception that there are hardly any black superheroes in comic books, but the truth is that there are actually tons. It’s just that they often are created then forgotten about, both by readers and by creators. So every year (…except for the last few; whoops) I spotlight both the popular and the not-so-popular black heroes, explaining who they are, any interesting information I think is relevant, and my own thoughts about what could or should be done with them.

Click this link to see a list of characters covered so far, but keep in mind I’ve been doing this since 2011 and at this point it’s fair to say many of the profiles are wildly out of date by 2023. This year, assuming nothing goes wrong, the plan is to spotlight three characters starting with the next post. However, before we get into it I have two points I’d like to make:

1) The original theme this year was going to be Black Women, but the lynchpin of this year’s crop was supposed to be a character by the name of Monet St. Croix aka M. However, after much checking and double checking in preparation for this year’s blog I have come to the conclusion that M is simply not black. From what I can tell she was originally meant to be considered black by her creators, but apparently they didn’t realize the area where she is from didn’t lend itself to that ethnic background. Monet’s ethnicity has since been retconned to better reflect her background. Of course, seeing as she is a mx of several different races it is likely that she is at least a little black, but frankly she’s such a complicated character (her origin is nuts) that it might be easier on me to not worry about it. If someone wants to show some specific and recent evidence that proves I’m wrong I’ll be happy to write on her in the future, but for now I frankly don’t need the headache of a bunch of folks leaving comments here FOR YEARS about how stupid I am for including her in this project. Speaking of which...

Sorry Beta from 6 years ago, but it ain't happening...

2) Fun fact: due to the sheer amount of spam and bots I get in the comments, I set it up so that I have to approve anything before it actually posts. Now, knowing that I stepped away from the blog for several years, imagine my surprise when I finally started preparing to come back late in 2022 and discovered a comment box filled with anger (and some defenders, to be fair) regarding my post about Exiles leader Blink being black. Look guys, writer Saladin Ahmed made this pretty clear during his run on Exiles from 2018. Was this a retcon? Yeah, I don’t think they were planning on that when she was originally created. Does it match-up with her many years established background as being from the Caribbean region? Yeah, it does. Sure, she has been (incorrectly) played by East Asian actresses in live action and yeah, she could be retconned again tomorrow, but I still stand by the post. If it bothers you, please complain to Marvel for giving it a thumbs up; I didn't make it up, I promise.

Okay, that’s enough pent-up frustration. Next time we’re start off Black Superhero Month with a new character who, while sparking controversy in the comic community, is being primed to be a major player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward.

Review: Black Adam

My therapist has been telling me that I should go back to writing my blog. So, let’s talk about Black Adam.

Back Adam is a comic book supervillain and sometimes antihero created in 1945 by Otto Binder and C. C. Beck for Fawcett Comics as an antagonist for Captain Marvel. When DC Comics acquired Captain Marvel in 1972 Black Adam came along as well, but it wasn’t until the early 21^st Century that the character become a prominent player in the DC continuity, becoming both a reluctant hero associated with the Justice Society of America or a world spanning threat, depending on what the story needed. These days he is considered one of DC’s big villains on a similar level to the likes of Lex Luthor and the Joker.

Meanwhile in the real world, legend has it that Warner Bros. were able to get increasingly popular Dwayne Johnson to agree to star in a DC superhero movie. Apparently, they pitched Captain Marvel to him but Johnson instead requested Black Adam. It took many years before things came together for a movie to begin production properly and even then it ended up being heavily tied to the DC Expanded Universe line of movies, specifically to the 2019 film Shazam! Then it got delayed some more due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But finally, after years of it lingering in the depth of Warner Bros.’ backlots, Black Adam starring Dwayne Johnson has finally hit theaters. But after such a long gestation period, not to mention the enormous baggage from the so-called DC Expanded Universe, did this flick turn out to be any good?

Full review after the jump.

Captain Marvel Loses His Name

Same guy

I recently wrote up a big post about Carol Danvers in anticipation of her then-upcoming film. Now, in the interest of fairness, I want to do something similar for the other Captain Marvel; everyone’s favorite homeless orphan boy turned superhero, Billy Batson! Or, “Shazam”, if you’re nasty.

The original Captain Marvel predates both Carol Danvers and her predecessor Mar-Vell by about thirty years, debuting back in the Golden Age of Comics. Published by Fawcett Comics at the bottom of 1939, Captain Marvel’s title was considered to be the most popular of the era, outselling Superman. When taking that in mind it might seem a bit curious as to why Billy isn’t more of a widely known character in modern pop culture. Indeed, he can’t legally be called “Captain Marvel” and instead has taken the name “Shazam.” The sad fact is the Billy was the victim of circumstances, both legal and internal design, and where he was once the most popular superhero in America he has since fallen to the level of second-tier, maybe even third-tier, character who struggles to have new ongoing series greenlit. With his new movie about to hit theaters his fortunes are swinging back in his favor, but the fact is that Captain Marvel should be a face on the Mount Rushmore of superheroes alongside the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man. But he’s not even close.

Today we’re going to talk about the rise and fall of the Big Red Cheese!

More on the power of Shazam after the jump.

Captain Marvel Stakes Her Claim

You try to invade Earth, you gotta deal with her

Captain Marvel hits theaters this weekend, so I thought it would be a good time to write up an article I’ve been thinking about doing for some years now. Carol Danvers, the longtime Marvel Comics character rose from the role of a supporting character and, over the course of thirty-five years, claimed prominence as one of the company’s premiers heroes. There has been some pushback from some fans against Captain Marvel as a major character but, unfortunately for them, if this upcoming film does well it will forever cement Carol’s place as one of the top comic book properties for the foreseeable future. Which is cool.

But Carol’s is a shaky history, as I can think of very few characters that Marvel has done dirty worse than her. The fact that she’s managed to still be a relevant, let alone major, character all this time is a minor miracle. For those who are looking forward to this new flick I thought today would be a good time to look back and recall, somewhat briefly, the history of the good captain. The good bad, and the ugly (i.e. Avengers #200).

Before we start, I think it’s worth noting that there exists a different character, owned by DC Comics, who is also known as Captain Marvel who is also getting a movie in 2019. I think this topic deserves its own blog, so I won’t go into too much detail (how long until SHAZAM comes out?). Short version: the original Captain Marvel was created in 1939, one of many superhero characters published in the wake of the success of Superman. Despite the character being super rad, DC successfully sued the comics’ publisher, Fawcett Comics, and thus ending the Captain’s comic despite being massively popular at the time. By the late-60s Marvel Comics stepped in a acquired the trademark to the name “Captain Marvel” but did not get the rights to the character himself. Instead they created a brand-new character with the name, whom we’ll talk about shortly, and have been publishing comics with that title ever since. Meanwhile DC did acquire the rights for the original Captain Marvel…but couldn’t get the now Marvel-owned name and thus regularly published the character under the "Shazam" name (though up until recently he was consistently called “Captain Marvel” in the comics themselves).

Confused? Just know that both Marvel and DC own a character called "Captain Marvel" who have literally nothing to do with each other.

Anyway, enough of the legal; a look at Carol Danvers after the jump.