Tag: Riverdale

Art, Movies

Harvard Man

As many of you may know, in addition to being a published author, an equal rights activist, and a nerd seraph, I’m also a pop culture analyst.

A regular fixture on the Nerds of Color, my work has also been featured on Salon, MTV.com, Mental Health Matters, Geeks OUT, Black Girl Magic Lit Mag, and a host of other places.

Whether it’s comic books, video games, blockbuster films, or music albums, it is absolutely paramount that we critique our media if for no other reason than to analyze its influence in molding minds and shaping society.

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Comics & Graphic Novels, Television

We Need to Talk About Chuck Clayton on Riverdale

Originally posted on Just Add Color

Chuck Clayton has gone down as the first character Riverdale’s penchant for reinvention has revamped in the worst way possible. This is not the way for the show to enter its first Black History Month.

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Comics & Graphic Novels, Television

The CW’s Riverdale Brings Some Diversity to Archie’s World

Before The CW was known as comic book superhero central, the network — when it was still The WB — had the reputation for the place to be for melodramatic teen soaps. Remember shows like One Tree Hill, Dawson’s Creek, 7th Heaven, and Gilmore Girls? In 2001, the debut of Smallville led to the network’s embrace of comic book-based properties that paved the way for more genre-focused shows like Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries, The 100, and the current slate of DC Comics heroes. Next fall, The CW is merging the best of both worlds with Riverdale. By adapting the classic comic book Archie, the network will return to its teen soapy roots, this time with a twist. Even better? They’re doing so with one of the most diverse casts on network TV.

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Origins

Why I Read Comics

Archie Betty VeronicaI despise origin stories.

The beginning is the worst best time in a comic – either the material lives up to its promise, and offers something interesting and lively, or the collaboration between words and art wastes trees with hackneyed prose and sloppy pencils, and you feel cheated out of four bucks. Here’s hoping I don’t leave you feeling played.

I read comics because I did not easily make friends in elementary school. I was not shy or awkward. I knew the answers. To everything. Every question in arithmetic or social studies posed by our teachers left my hand raised amid a sea of the darker nation’s bright shining apathy, children who despised both their ignorance and my knowledge. (Maybe they were just being young.) No matter – I wanted friends. Badly. I did not make them, so my mother introduced me to a world where friends were plentiful and perpetual. She purchased my first Archie comic.

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