Black Superheroes

When I was coming up. Comics were the thing and still are in some ways. My father collected comics, my brother and I collected books. Yet, you know whats a shame. Neither one of us kept our books. Either we sold them, trashed them, traded them or just plain forgot about them altogether. My brother was the biggest collector among us. He was an X-Men fanatic. He was the type of dude that bought all of the X-Men titles, classic, 2099, the off-shoots. By that time, the price of books began to sky rocket. You see, I used to buy books when they cost .25 cents. Yeah Im dating my self. Man, I feel like a relic. Back then unfortunately, the Black superhero was a novelty. You had cats like Falcon (who was a token that many times was paired with Captain America. Black Lightning was a ghetto comic. Dude had a fro, and a vocabulary with words like sucker, jive turkey and what not. Talk about stereotypical. Yet, I bought those books because like the NAACP, it was an image that was lacking in the comic book world.

For whatever reason, whether it was women or my penchant for just losing interest in things. I stop buying and reading comics. Until a few years ago. I stopped at a flea market here in Houston and ran into an older sister who sold comics. Yeah I know, not something you see everyday. Yet, she introduced me to probably one of my most favorite comics of all time. It was a comic about a black man who sold his soul to a demon to see his wife. Yeah, I said the same thing. Why a brother gotta have all the bad luck. That title was Spawn. Image comics was new back then and Spawn a few years later blew up. HBO. Toys. A movie. And a bun with seseme seeds.

Well not too far after that, came Milestone. Good material. Too bad Milestone didnt have the support. Blood Syndicate, Hardware, Icon and a list of others were the new cats on the block. Unfortunately, only Static survived. I dont know why but it did. They even made it into a cartoon. It was cool but it was not in my opinion the best book in the Milestone catalog.

Today really only one Black Superhero stands out. Black Panther. Marvel has been playing footsie with this character for years. However, that has changed. Which is cool. Blade is solid but its comic book was just drowned by the movies. Which in the case of Blade was good. Otherwise, Blade would have been a casualty of a fickle comic market.

Yes, its good to see somebody look like me in comic books. I enjoy the stories still to this day. I just wish that more of our youth would look into comics. Instead when I go to the comic book store, its 30 and 40 somethings buying the books. Gone are the days when you could go to 7-11 and spin the comic magazine rack and find Hulk, Captain America, Batman, X-Men, Fantasic Four and the like. Man, times have changed.