“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.

Calling Out To (Anti)Liveness: Recording and the Question of Presence

Here we are, live in the studio, putting it on wax.

“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.

Fantastic: From the First, No Family is “Traditional”

The very idea of a traditional family is a delusion.

Do-Or-Die Hawkeye. . . Erm. . . Bed-Stuy

Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye takes place in Bed-Stuy, but where are the black people?

Me Up On My Pony On My Boat

Expressing a desire to retreat from complex adult desire demonstrates how painful those desires can be.

“I AM A MAN!” Machine Man, Robot Desire and Racial Assimilation

The generic “human” these robots want to be is a white human.

Black Goliath: “Some Black Super Dude”

Black Goliath is a title that never got a chance to really develop and it suffers from the problems of a lot of early attempts to bring ethnic characters into the limelight.

“Once Upon a Time Not Long Ago”

Hip Hop: Unbound from the Underground

Weepin’ and Wailin’: Prince Schools ‘Em

I get a special thrill from watching Prince show them how a guitar can weep like a mourner.

“Our baby’s gone. . .” Camp and Multivocality in The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home.”

The weird corniness of “She’s Leaving Home” comes from its perfect ability to stand for its own artifice

“This Sorrowful Life” – Making Time to Redeem Racists

The Walking dead trots out the old trope of the racist you love to hate, or maybe that’s (don’t really) hate to love.

Marvel’s Illuminati – Responsible for both Jay-Z’s Success and the Infinity Gems

When superhero contingencies are indistinguishable from supervillain schemes.

It’s a Wonder, Wonder Woman

More than 40 years later, Wonder Woman still has to deal with the same masculine hostility.

Succeeding in the Super-Biz

Imagining a different tradition for super-heroines.

Alternate Futures of Wonder

Like a great deal of science fiction Stevie Wonder’s “Saturn” presents an alternate future by imagining an alternate past

Dial H: I Would Prefer Not To. . .

This issue uses the title’s meta-position as simultaneously within and without the superhero comic genre to comment on depictions of race in comics.

Blinded By the Sound: Marvel’s Dazzler – Light & Sound in Comics

Dazzler is the perfect subject for looking at the representation of sound in comics

Snot-Nosed Hulk

If Banner’s anger is inextricable from his immediate social world, the Hulk’s anger is more basic, primal and constant. It is the anger of being.