DC Africana Appreciation: Vol. 2

[MoneySpider]

[Will Evans]

Good art.


What continuity is Hawkman, Hawk and Dove black?

[Hypestyle]

Who are the southern US based black heroes? Most of DC's fictional cities seem to be on the Northeast Coast or Northern California.
How about somebody in Atlanta, or New Orleans? (Or, the "DC version" of them)?

[Will Evans]

Who are the southern US based black heroes? Most of DC's fictional cities seem to be on the Northeast Coast or Northern California.
How about somebody in Atlanta, or New Orleans? (Or, the "DC version" of them)?

Carter and Kendra used to be in New Orleans/Louisiana area.

[Lonewolf36]

Who are the southern US based black heroes? Most of DC's fictional cities seem to be on the Northeast Coast or Northern California.
How about somebody in Atlanta, or New Orleans? (Or, the "DC version" of them)?

I remember Amazing-Man/Markus Clay was from New Orleans and left the JSA to start a New Orleans based team.

[Will Evans]

I remember Amazing-Man/Markus Clay was from New Orleans and left the JSA to start a New Orleans based team.

That’s right! He did.

Of course, Flashpoint happened.

[lemonpeace]

Who are the southern US based black heroes? Most of DC's fictional cities seem to be on the Northeast Coast or Northern California.
How about somebody in Atlanta, or New Orleans? (Or, the "DC version" of them)?

Freeland in Black Lightning is effectively the DC equivalent of Atlanta, which is part of the reason why I hope they roll in into the comics. Aside from being a great homebase for Black Lightning, Atlanta with Metahumans sounds like a great setting with lots of potential.

[J. D. Guy]

Good art.


What continuity is Hawkman, Hawk and Dove black?

It's from Roysovitch's Earth-27 fanproject, with art drawn by Phil Cho.

Their Duke is kinda too far removed for my tastes. Heck, some of their Earth-27 fanon made it into a supposedly official bio for Duke. In print...

I do like their Hawk and Dove take, though.

[skyvolt2000]

We've had Natasha sidekick for Steel.

Thunder and Lightning aren’t sidekicks to Black Lightning in the traditional sense. But they are “spin-offs” of him, as his daughters.

Someone mentioned Rocket to Icon.

In the old Milestone Rocket does become Icon.

Wonder Boy did sort of exist in Wonder Woman-he was Trevor Barnes's nephew but had no powers.

Exxy is Cyborg's sidekick-if he ever shows up again.

Ben Jr could be Bronze Tiger's if he shows up again.

[lemonpeace]

Remember we are coming from an era where POC were being excluded by order of editors.

Legion was suppose to have black folks but editors stood in the way until it was time for Tyroc.

John Stewart got introduced and it was 14 years before you saw him again.


John Ridley did an interview recently.

He bought up a MAJOR point about Batman and the OUtsiders. The OG version but it applies to the new one.

https://www.polygon.com/comics/2020/...dley-interview

Hill's version was all POC being bossed around by Batman - who was at first doing cameos in that book.

Hill has probably been the most disappointed writer for me and kinda goes to show that white mediocrity isn't literal to the point that it's limited to white men; it's any writer's mindset that compel's them to center "whiteness" and it's tropes to the point of producing mediocre works, particularly in relation to characters and elements of racial and ethnic diversity in said work [see:Star Wars].

Sadly that’s something which is done throughout pop culture. A current example is on a show that I love and an actress that I love, but I have to mention Jurnee Smollett‘s casting on Lovecraft Country. It’s a show with an all black cast but the main female lead is mixed race (her father is Jewish). Look at the Arrowverse casting with Vixen. A character who is literally supposed to be from Africa. Both actresses that played her and her ancestor were mixed race/light skinned.

Here’s an interesting article (it’s from a British perspective but still relevant):

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44229236

with Jurnee it makes sense because Leti's character is written to be light-skinned in the book, and her light-skindedness (proximity to eurocentric beauty/femininity standards) is relevant to her story, and both informs her character and how others relate to her in story overall. the CW/Arrowverse is the far worse offender. how is it that you can cast 2 entirely different Vixen characters and both times come up with a light-skin mixed-race actress?

Even weirder is their choice with Wally West because it kinda enters this weird feedback loop of both comic AND televisions racial blindness. Wally on the show is the child of Joe (a darker brown skin black man) and his ex-wife (the darker skin Vanessa Williams from Soul Food), full black, and yet....



they cast a light-skinned clearly mixed actor as an adaptation of this character



who meanwhile, is regularly rendered like a dark-skin fully black character even though he's half white. this just feels like a one-drop rule situation mixed with their general slap-dash approach when building this character (even though i love Wallace). they needed a black character because they wanted a splash of color so they haphardedly made him Wally West and said "meeeh black is black, we'll just say he's mixed"

[lemonpeace]

So there's this CBR article where John Ridley had this to say when asked about the Electric Negro trope:

You know, it's weird, because I'd read that somewhere previously and it was one of those things you go; "Wow, yeah, that is kind of weird." And it's not one of those things where you can, at least to me, draw a line and go "Oh, well..." - like the way Asian characters are usually going to have karate-related powers. For a long time you went "OK, sure, why not?" [but] you look at it now and go, "Well, yeah, why couldn’t an Asian individual have these kinds of powers? or those kinds of powers?" and certainly they can.

But with lightning powers, it's not — at least in any way that I could look at and go, "Oh, well, this goes back to something in the culture or something in storytelling", that became a trope for perhaps the wrong reasons or perhaps overly-identifiable reasons. It’s certainly nothing in particular that I look at as a person of color and go, "Oh man, people have been doing that and it’s wrong because it leads to this, this or this...." I don’t take it as something overly negative. It does seem to be a weird happenstance, but it may be a deeper dive for a broader thinker

what's y'all thoughts? While i think it can pretty compellingly argued you can point Black Lightning as directly being the progenitor of the "trope", I do think he makes an interesting observation about the seriousness (for lack of a better term) of it. While the trend of black characters having electricity in their powerset is a odd happenstance, it isn't nearly as deliberate, limiting, or insulting as tropes like the Kung-Fu Asian or the noble savage shaman of First Nations people.

[lemonpeace]

Justice League of Black America may be one of the worst names I'm every heard ngl, but I am always down for a black Justice League or Justice League-level team composed primarily of black characters and this is some pretty dope art; Phil Cho is a nerd GOAT. If I was doing a black justice league I think it would be dope to co-opt The Kingdom from Batwing and just stock it up with characters from all over the diaspora. That way their's a narratively consistent reason for there being an eclectic afrocentric Justice League beyond just "let's have a black team". hmmm, I need to think about who i'd have on the team.

[J. D. Guy]

Hill has probably been the most disappointed writer for me and kinda goes to show that white mediocrity isn't literal to the point that it's limited to white men; it's any writer's mindset that compel's them to center "whiteness" and it's trope to the point of producing mediocre works, particularly in relation to characters and elements of racial and ethnic diversity in said work [see:Star Wars].

This is a sobering thought, but is, alas, all too true a one. Bryan Hill did indeed fall into it, and while Black Lightning and Katana got away comparatively unscathed, Orphan and especially and specifically The Signal had to suffer the full, brunt force of the consequences when this writing mindset is applied (regardless of the person applying it).

Even weirder is their choice with Wally West because it kinda enters this weird feedback loop of both comic AND televisions racial blindness. Wally on the show is the child of Joe (a darker brown skin black man) and his ex-wife (the darker skin Vanessa Williams from Soul Food), full black, and yet....



they cast a light-skinned clearly mixed actor as an adaptation of this character



who meanwhile, is regularly rendered like a dark-skin fully black character even though he's half white. this just feels like a one-drop rule situation mixed with their general slap-dash approach when building this character (even though i love Wallace). they needed a black character because they wanted a splash of color so they haphardedly made him Wally West and said "meeeh black is black, we'll just say he's mixed"

Of note, Wallace's original conception in New 52 depicted him with Afro-centric features but also his White father Daniel West's (post-Rebirth retcon, only) blue eyes. While I know that's pretty unrealistic-to-impossible in real life mixed Black/White kids, I liked the visual touch and connection it provided to Wallace. It being in a fictional world helped handwave the improbability/unlikelihood of it. Unfortunately, later depictions, particularly starting with Rebirth, ditched this trait. This meant he had no visual connectors to Daniel, despite the retcon of being his son getting established post-Rebirth in the first place.

[J. D. Guy]

So there's this CBR article where John Ridley had this to say when asked about the Electric Negro trope:



what's y'all thoughts? While i think it can pretty compellingly argued you can point Black Lightning as directly being the progenitor of the "trope", I do think he makes an interesting observation about the seriousness (for lack of a better term) of it. While the trend of black characters having electricity in their powerset is a odd happenstance, it isn't nearly as deliberate, limiting, or insulting as tropes like the Kung-Fu Asian or the noble savage shaman of First Nations people.

For me, it's no big deal.

For one, even among the characters listed in that interview's excerpt, only Black Lightning and Storm have actual "Lightning Powers". And in Storm's case, saying she's "A Black character with Lightning Powers" is reductionist to her as a whole. Storm has Weather Control and Generation Powers, which happen to include Lightning as a subset.

For the rest of the mentions, Static has electromagnetic spectrum control powers, which he is primarily known to manifest as static electricity (so not lightning, and also reductionist, like with Storm). Black Vulcan is a deliberate Captain Ersatz for Black Lightning in the first place, so him having duplicate powers is kinda part and parcel with the concept of being a Captain Ersatz. Miles' Spider-Man also doesn't have "Lightning Powers". It's bio-electricity that he is able to manifest as stings, shocks, blasts, currents, and even webbing.

Then there were the other CBR mentions, which I ended up scratching my head at. Like Jackson Hyde? Maybe I'm misremembering something there, but that feels like a giant reach.

I know this seems pedantic, but this level of flagrant disregard to actualities in order to prop up some kind of false narrative that's supposed to be "bad" despite not being warrants the emphasis on specificity.

And on the whole, I agree that it isn't some culturally-tarnishing stereotype. In fact, I personally don't see it as an issue/stereotype in the first place, and so kinda just sigh sometimes whenever I see someone bring it up as if it were one.

(Heck, I even feel the ire against Asian and Asian-descent martial artists feels like a double-edged weapon-as-conditioner used to justify not having Asians/Asian-descent/Asian diaspora performing fighting styles from their own respective cultural heritage(s) -- or even being interested in them in general for that matter, regardless of being a practitioner -- while conveniently permitting everyone else to do so without anyone batting an eye, including all of the White masters of Asian martial arts who've historically held sway in that aspect in Western/American media.)

[Will Evans]

I’m surprised he didn’t use Val Zod.