The Black Panther and Luke Cage

[ComicConnoisseur]

Black Panther was better than Luke Cage but they were both pretty bad. Marvel's black characters were black more than they were human. Not one of them just happened to be black-- they had to be black in a way that made a social comment.

 

If I can take it another step, the appearance of black characters in comics was a little bit like the appearance of drugs in comics. They had to be there for a reason.

 

But to take it two steps back, there will always be an entry phase where we see that sort of thing. It was rare to see a movie that starred a black person except to create a social message about their interaction with white people, there were black people being used on TV to round out otherwise white casts and theatre wasn't casting black people much either. There wouldn't be a famous black artist until Basquiat in the '80s and some critics say that he was pushed into the forefront because he was viewed as a wild man (a black man living in a cardboard box in the park) but tameable (with an accountant father).

 

And now that I think of it, Bill Cosby was an exception to all this. I am sure there were others. I can't think of one in comics though.

 

About that same time Barks changed his black characters from ring-through-the-nose, bone-through-the-hair characters to white coloured characters with puffy, wiry hair and spears in their hands.

 

Personally, I hated the way Marvel wrote the black characters. I would have been about 12 when all that began. I understand black culture better than the people who were writing it, probably because I didn't have forty years of social division and prejudice to dig myself out from under like Stan the Man did.

 

While I agree on the black super hero character, I wonder about the black supporting character. I felt like some of what was done with Robbie Robertson was very even handed. He made him a well rounded and developed character. It might be different when you add in the role of his son though. He came across like a bitter black man, but his father was so much more.

 

I felt like the portrayal of black people in ASM was even stronger than the portrayal of drugs. The drug issues always get the attention, but their were some powerful moments in that run.

 

Is that not right?

 

Robbie Robertson was done pretty well. I didn't think of him. The Falcon's girlfriend might have been the worst of them.

From 1967.