Astro City: Shedding Light on Race in the Dark Age
The role of race in reconstructing the Bronze Age.
Marvel Five-in-One: Prominent, Notorious and Invisible Black Lives of the Marvel Universe
Exploring the limits of diversity in a white supremacist framework through a five-in-one look at 1978’s Marvel Two-in-One.
Miles From Representation: On Needing More from Bendis’s Spider-Man
What do we need to do to get a decent Afro-Latinx superhero?
The Captain White America Needs
Because you can’t trust even the best-intentioned white Captain America to know what’s up.
Do Zombie Lives Matter? Fear the Walking Dead & Zombie Politics
Putting Fear the Walking Dead’s allusion to national zeitgeist regarding police brutality into context.
Imperfect Storm (Part Three): “Return of the Goddess”
Storm’s return to the site of her X-origin and the awkward undoing of her “goddess” identity.
“Hip Hop Started Out in the Art” – Tom Brevoort, Post-Racial Hip Hop & Comics
You can’t separate hip hop from race without looking like you’ve separated your head from sense.
Imperfect Storm (Part Two): Exploring “Lifedeath II”
Part Two of Exploring Storm as a postcolonial figure.
Imperfect Storm (Part One): Exploring “Lifedeath”
Exploring the relationship between seriality, identity and the colonial imagination through X-Men’s Storm.
Should We Marvel at a Black Captain America?
Sam Wilson’s characterization as the rugged individual and then his ascension to the role of Captain America are political messages that must be addressed beyond the tendency of media to oversimplify the political ramifications of things, or streamline complex histories
“I Know It When I See It”- Race, Relatability, and Reading Practice
The ways fans of color engage with characters and stories can re-circuit and re-interpret those stories in ways that provide the kind of productive identification that challenges that tired old repetitive and thoughtless representation.
Humanity Not Included: DC’s Cyborg and the Mechanization of the Black Body
Could Cyborg be the comic book superhero representation of white supremacy’s effect on the black body? To have a black person transformed from a metaphorical machine to an actual one?
The Man Who Lived Twice! (If You Can Call That Living): Marvel’s Brother Voodoo
The fourth in a series of posts about black superheroes. Marvel Comics’ Brother Voodoo—a character to feel really conflicted about.
Robocop: Representation By Erasure & The White-Washing of Detroit.
For a movie set in Detroit, it seems awful white.
Super Hegemonic Team-up! Spider-Man, Daredevil & “The Death of Jean DeWolfe”
In this story, Spider-Man and Daredevil demonstrate a hegemonic framework for understanding urban crime (part of SUPER BLOG TEAM-UP #4).
“The More Things Change. . .” Golden Legacy, Affirmative Action & Black Comics
This Golden Legacy comic on the life of MLK is notable for three reasons.
Days of Future Now: Reflections on X-Men Comics & “Days of Future Past” (Part Two of Two)
This is Part Two of a two-part series of posts on the classic X-Men comics arc, “Days of Future Past.”
“And Then We Take It Higher” – Interpreting Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue”
Poor black and brown people in the West joined by music and their relation to power.
Black Lightning Always Strikes Twice! – Double-Consciousness as a Super-Power.
Jefferson Pierce’s “blackness” is explored in relation to his superheroic identity, but doesn’t get anywhere.
“It’s Not About a Salary. It’s All About Reality. . .” KRS-One, ‘My Philosophy’ & Discursive Tension
By All Means Necessary a record that tries to consciously address a variety of issues in the communities of people listening to it, while not sacrificing the braggadocio and arrogant subjectivity that so often gives hip hop its energy and fun.
“Invisible (Watch)Men: The Impossibility of the Black Superhero”
Miles Morales or Trayvon Martin are more likely to be victim of a “heroic” vigilante than to be one.
