Hello All,
I am in no way presenting that being adapted for the screen is a measure of success. I am exploring why someone as beloved, talented, and influential as Octavia Estelle Butler hasn’t been presented on television, or projected 50 feet tall in a movie theater. Here is an excerpt of my explorations:
Continue reading “Why No Octavia E. Butler on the Screen?”
Today CBS/Paramount delivered the most passive aggressive set of guidelines for Star Trek fan films. The first page was this boilerplate thank you to the fans for ticking by the franchise for so many years. They even acknowledged the hard work and creativity of fan filmmakers. Then when you clicked the link to what was and wasn’t allowable for fan films, it was like, “Here are your creative shackles.”
Continue reading “Star Trek: The Shackling of Creative Fandom”
I watched Kevin Wilmott’s (co-writer of Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq) Destination: Planet Negro (D:PN) twice. The first time I viewed it, I sat for fifteen or twenty minutes after it was over. I had no idea WTF I saw. Was it 21st century minstrelsy? Was it heavy-handed social commentary? Could it have possibly been that ever elusive (and also commonly misidentified) true satire? If it was satire, what was it satirizing? Was it riffing on 1950s science fiction and paranoia film tropes? Inter and intra-racial animus? The Black church and back to Africa movements? I needed to watch it again.
Continue reading “It is Complicated Being a Negro in the Digital Age, Son!”
For parents who know a little about me but don’t really know who I am, the conversation starts something like this: “My [son/daughter] tells me that your daughter is one of the best readers in class. She’s always reading… I also heard that you were really into… comic books, superheroes, and things like that. Is this true?” I proudly proclaim that comic books were instrumental in my becoming a voracious reader, and that I used comics and graphic novels to instill in my daughter and intense love of reading, creativity, and fantasy world-building. I explain that since reading comics and YA fantasy/adventure books, my daughter’s imagination is incredibly expansive and that her being able to make-believe is a value that I and her mother share.
They are usually intrigued by now.
Continue reading “My Family Loves Goldie Vance, Yours Should Too”
Truth be told, music has a much stronger hold on me than geek culture. While I love all things geek/nerdy/afrogeek/astroblack, music is how I experienced love. Growing up in an immediate household that was nothing but abuse and the absence of love, music was my portal to some place safer. My mom was a horrible mother, but she built upon a stellar record collection. A collection that she’d let me listen to without being beaten. After our year of frozen homelessness, we got an apartment where the previous tenant left a sizable record collection. Among the Chaka Khan and Rufus, Mandrill, Chuck Mangione, The Wailers, Miles Davis, and Santana albums were Prince’s For You and Dirty Mind. Despite the racy content, my mother and I listened to those albums until they were warped and scratched beyond all hopes of rescuing. We loved it because it sounded so different compared to anything else we listened to — which was mostly reggae and jazz. But it wasn’t until 1999 dropped in ’82 that I had to come to terms with the idea that Prince was going to be one of the foundation stones of my pop cultural biography. Continue reading “The Beautiful One”
2016 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most iconic characters in comics, The Black Panther.
Springing to life in the pages of Fantastic Four #52, the Panther’s comic journey has been one fraught with fits and starts. Some people look at Christopher Priest’s run as the definitive arc. Other’s look at Reginald Hudlin’s take as the best representation of the character. One guy at Dr. Comics and Mr. Games comic shop in Oakland felt Jonathan Hickman’s version in Secret Wars was, “The best look for the Panther. No one else got it right.” I’m going to have to refute that and argue that Ta-Nehisi Coates, Brian Stelfreeze, and Laura Martin’s Black Panther relaunch will be the definitive version of T’Challa, King of the Wakanda, for a long while to come. Instead of gold, the Panther received the gift of a fantastic creative team.
I received the text late. I’m normally a night out owl, but this CPAP machine is making sleep lovely and attractive. I heard my phone buzz and clumsily pawed for it. I pulled it close to my face, my sleepiness and the plastic bar of the CPAP face mask made it nearly impossible to make out — the combination of text size and screen brightness was too much for me. I concentrated and the blurry screen came into focus. My heart sank. The text was from a friend: “Yo, Phife passed, B.” Continue reading “Rest In Power to the 5 Ft Assassin”
March 18th-20th 2016 was the inaugural season of a new kind of comic convention. The Silicon Valley Comic Con (SVCC) was one of the most overwhelming (in a good way) con experiences I have ever experienced. The marketplace was typical; comics, old toys, tee shirts and stickers, the museum-esque presentation of beloved geek memorabilia was there in all of its sterile glory.
So… The trailer for the new Ghostbusters film hit today. I am a really big fan of the original first film, and I enjoyed the much misunderstood second. I was really looking forward to this reboot. The new (all woman) cast looked stellar. I love the idea of an all-woman ghostbusting squad. I think there are opportunities for a completely different type of humor that would be a welcome relief from the smarmy, white guy charm of the original two films. I damn near broke my tablet trying to watch it.
Continue reading “The New Ghostbusters: Should I be Afraid?”
Join me, if you will, in an informal survey of the Non-Disney Marvel Comic Book Movie landscape:
Before we get into the rest of my full endorsement of Midnight Taxi Tango, I feel the need to ask a question: What kind of Ouija board does author Daniel José Older have access to? Is he somehow hotline blingin’ with the underworld? The way he writes about the dead, the half-dead, the preternatural and the politics that govern them — it reads more like dictation than creation. There are some genuinely creepy scenes in MTT. Skin crawling, looking over your shoulder, peering into shadows to see who is there, creepy. Other scenes are damn frightening. Let me put it to you this way: weaponized ghosts of babies who are hungry and out to devour you. Borderline nightmare stuff. What really works about this novel, and the “Bone Street Rumba” series as a whole, is that none of the scares are cheap. Every scare is legitimate. Every scare is necessary to the tale. This is evidence of Older’s mastery of his narrative.
Here is my review of my brother, Ayize Jama-Everett’s first book, “The Liminal People.”
Here is his interview from the 2nd Annual Black Comix Arts Festival:
Continue reading “Liminality, Entropy, and the Hidden Corners of the World”
One of the best creators working in comics, John Jennings, interviews three of the leading lights of speculative fiction: Jewelle Gomez, Nalo Hopkinson, and Nnedi Okorafor.
Continue reading “The “Goddesses” of Black Speculative Fiction”
Hello Fam,
It is the morning after the 2nd Annual Black Comix Arts Festival. I’m exhausted, elated, and profoundly humbled by the outpouring of love and support we received. One of my highlights? Right here.
The other is my powerful interview with Dawud Anyabwile and Brian McGee. The artist and colorist of Brotherman: Revelation.
David Bowie was one of the first white musicians ever played in my home. My aunt, who was a musician and music aficionado, argued, “All those white people steal their styles from us. Why not just listen to the originators and leave the copycats alone?” One day, I’m home early from school and I heard:
Another casting announcement, another collective nerdy white boy meltdown. This time, they are directing their ire towards the rumblings that Idris Elba is “the frontrunner” for Roland Deschain in the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s brilliant (well, except for books 5 and 6) The Dark Tower series. I won’t go into why I love the series or what it is about, but for those of you who are unfamiliar or want to know more, click here. Needless to say it is Stephen King, so the series is a masterwork of imagination, storytelling, and world building. I think folks were fancasting this series in the early ’80s, with Clint Eastwood being the near unanimous choice for Deschain. Back in the day, the choice was spot on. Hell, even King alluded to it. The only clear choice for Deschain is Viggo Mortensen, not Elba.
Originally posted on Ebony.com
What was meant to be a celebratory moment for (Black) comic book fans turned out offensive. This week’s Entertainment Weekly turned the highly anticipated reveal of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s interpretation of the first Black superhero into a fiasco of epic proportions. T’Challa, king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda (also known as the hero Black Panther), got sonned by EW.
First off, so very many congratulations for your role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I doubt that any of us can be as happy as you are about your casting, but most of us are ecstatic that you are more than just a one-off or a token in the Star Wars universe. Since being cast as Finn you have been rendered, effectively, immortal and omnipresent. You will be in films, made into toys, on posters and trading cards, possibly even comic books, we will be able to play you in video games, your face will be emblazoned on novels… you will be everywhere, for a very long time. Unless something happens where all media is destroyed, you will be famous for the rest of your life. And probably for some time after. Congratulations. I cannot imagine how heady a feeling this must be for you. Continue reading “Dear John Boyega…”
Originally posted on Ebony.com
Even a galaxy far, far away can feel the effects of racism and White paranoia. Over the weekend, a group of our less enlightened brethren got the hashtag #BoycottStarWarsVII to trend. Why would anyone want to boycott one of cinema’s most venerable franchises? Well, according to some, the new Star Wars film (to be released on December 18 and helmed by geek-favorite J.J. Abrams) promotes “White genocide.”
Yes, you read that correctly.
Continue reading “Racism Tries to Come For A Galaxy Far, Far Away”
When you’re into comics, science fiction, role-playing games and the rest, people will make assumptions about you. These assumptions are that you’re a nerd (not in the liberating sense that we use here), a geek, a wimp — somehow different or less than the folks who consume and participate in mainstream popular culture. And this applies to white people. When you add race to this, you get doubly othered quite a bit of the time. You like “white shit” and you’re soft. In many cases, you become an ass-whooping magnet. We won’t get into how all of this stuff is now mainstream or how fantasy sports leagues are about as Dungeons and Dragons as you can get, just minus the swords, gold, and magic.
And it is D&D that I want to talk about here. I’ve played for over thirty years. While I am not participating in an active campaign, I would in a heartbeat if I found one that interested me.
For as long as I can remember, one description of comics has prevailed: comic books are adolescent white boy power fantasies. If you look at the majority of the offerings, it would be kind of difficult to dispute this. Go to any comic shop and you will see a crowd of covers presenting overly muscled white men and impossibly voluptuous white women competently combating some evil, some threat that is just as anatomically disproportionate as the hero/ines are.
Comics, at first glance, are filtered through a firmly and profoundly white and male point of view. But this is a cursory view. If you dig, research, or explore beyond the DC/Marvel axis, this notion begins to lose its stickiness.
Full Disclosure: I have known Jeffrey Morris for over twenty years. In that time, our friendship has gone from tight to contentious to non-existent. We diverge on many social and political issues — we’re like objects that cannot occupy the same space at the same time, without disastrous consequences. But this will not stop me from extolling his absolute genius.
Over the past several weeks, there has been quite a lot of net-chatter about Idris Elba’s suitability for stepping into the role of James Bond. Former Bond, Roger Moore — who, arguably, starred in some of the worst films in the franchise — was against against it; other folks were for it, and current keeper of the literary portion of the franchise, Anthony Horowitz, stated that he felt Elba was “too street” and that Adrian Lester would be a more appropriate Bond.
Continue reading “Too Street? No, Idris Elba is Too Big for Bond“
