Black Panther or Blade?

Which black superhero would you prefer?

Erec Smith had some nice rapid-fire questions to respond to on the very first FBT Podcast. One of them was Black Panther or Blade. I think I need to weigh in on this one.

First, I have to say that when it comes to black superheroes, there has only been one that comes anywhere close to my heart. That was Spawn. All I can say is that he had the right attitude, which matched mine which was contempt for his inferiors. He was the kind of hero who would smack people just to see the look on their faces. But it was never about racial revenge as far as I could see - at any rate this is a very foggy memory and I’m not a superhero comic book kind of guy. My best friend was all into the X-Men back in the day. Meh.

Second, I’m almost automatically repelled by any hero who is black who needs to call himself Black whatever. What hokey cornball nonsense. What if Tupac called himself Black Tupac? Exactly. Could you imagine ‘Black Michael Jordan’? Contemptible folly. So there’s that.

Thirdly, and honestly, there is nothing to match the depth of thought and brilliant realization of the HBO miniseries Watchmen. It is intrinsically about race, not just the color of a hero’s skin, and not just pure fantasy. It is the right kind of gritty science fiction played out in America, just like Allan Moore’s comic. One of these days it’s going to be recognized for its genius. What could be more compelling than Dr. Manhattan undercover as a black man? The fact of his only true love in the form of Sister Night, the only American superhero who stands ethically toe to toe with Steve Rogers. Yeah I gave it away. It’s still absolutely worth it. I mean, if you know Watchmen, you should know that. If you don’t, then you’re in for a literary treat.

Tangentially, I just picked up the collector’s 35th anniversary edition of the Akira manga collection. If there was a greater comic novel anywhere in history, Akira is the genre defining masterpiece. Even without the stunningly wondrous film, Otomo did something magnificent. I consumed the first English comics when it was new in my late 20s. I have resisted blowing ridiculous sums on eBay for sketches and cells of the animated film that made Anime.

The answer is Blade, because he’s tortured, he kills those like him and swords, man. Swords!

Aside from reason two, I had the following to say when the Black Panther phenomenon was viral.

I recalled in the end, despite my own grumpy demeanor, that for a younger generation who never heard of a guy named Derrick Bell, that Wakanda has become something of their Afrolantica.

Derrick Bell is perhaps best known for the principled stand he took at Harvard in 1990 when he quit his tenured position on the law-school faculty to protest the school's failure to grant tenure to a black woman. Now a visiting professor at New York Law School, Bell is still deeply interested in issues of race relations and has chosen to explore the subject fictionally in Afrolantica Legacies. In a nutshell, the story goes like this: a mysterious land mass suddenly appears in the Atlantic Ocean, a fabulous island on which only black people can survive. American blacks set sail to the island to begin a new life, only to see it sink again before they can reach the shore. On the return trip to America, the passengers draw up a list of principles called the Afrolantica Legacies, defining how they want to reposition themselves in American society.  The book uses a fictional setting to outline some remedies for the problem of race relations between African Americans and white people in our society.

I enjoyed reading Derrick Bell in the early 1990s before I had children, and entertained such fantasies appropriate to such writers who dreamed of being on the forefront of black cultural production. From time to time it's useful to revisit such dreams and see how they have become manifest in contemporary arts and crafts. I have been most impressed by the fact that Black Panther bears up best being a superhero movie rather than a race movie or a political movie. And though I've dismissed a lot of commentary on it. I understand that people need to see what they need to see. Today, I see Black Panther as the best Afrolantica there will ever be, which I hope says a lot about the dream in the first place, as well as the power of Hollywood to satisfy what we ask of the Humanities. Marvel did not invent nor re-invent Kunta Kinte, but Marvel makes damned good kinte cloth.

Then there’s this. An actual black supervillain with a racial origin story.

I think a black supervillain would be more interesting these days than yet another capitalized Black hero. Quite frankly with regard to Lizzo, I don’t get it. I mean flutes are cool, but hasn’t anybody heard of Hubert Laws? His whole family is genius. But you know, youth culture and billionaires. Stochastic mix. Hmm. Maybe the postmodernists are all the supervillains we deserve.