I’m stopping saying we still have them now…

Damager

When John Leong first woke up in smooth silver armor that he couldn’t account for, he was confused. It vanished into the thin air as soon as he removed it, but returned when he awoke the next day. This became a daily routine for Leong. A teenager at that time, Leong kept this secret and tried to continue his life as normal. But Leong had problems other than this. He had anger issues. He was greedy. Together, these made him a violent man, the type who would mug someone on the street or hold up a liquor store. It didn’t take long for him to realize that with every selfish crime he committed, the mysterious armor grew more villainous looking, getting larger and growing spikes.

That was when it occurred to Leong to try keeping the armor on. He wore it to a bank and demanded money, in the process learned that it tripled his strength and was utterly bulletproof. And by removing it, he could blend into a crowd and make his escape. And, of course, it kept growing more powerful with each crime.

I drew Damager and I was like “Well that’s pretty generic. My options are: bury him in a team of supervillains, or make his story unusually unique.” I aimed for the latter and hopefully I did a sufficient job.

Swarm Master

Doctor Emily Clayworth was always good at multitasking. Attaining degrees in several scientific fields by her early twenties, Clayworth had a promising career ahead. That is, until she discovered her great invention: tiny robots that she could control with her mind. A discovery like that would have plenty of legitimate uses, but Clayworth decided to go another way. The crime way. None of her associates are sure why she chose a life of crime, but some suspect that the fact that she places one of her own brain cells into every one of the robots she creates could be a contributing factor.

With drones that fly and drones that slither and even drones that are equipped with weaponry, Clayworth is, at all times, receiving sensory information from hundreds or even thousands of different sources, but she somehow manages to keep it all straight and organize intricate, if questionably motivated, crimes.

The Swarm Master is a character I actually sketched when I was planning to do a post of lady mad scientists, but I misplaced it and sketched the other ones instead. But now that I’ve found this one again, there’s no point in letting her go to waste. The thing about the robots having Clayworth’s brain cells in them is, I’m sure, totally unscientific, but I think its madness makes up for that.

So anyway, a buncha years ago I created a blog on which I wanted to post stories while hiding my identity. A secret pseudonym identity where I could just write more things and nobody would know. Why? Why do I do any of this? For my own amusement.

But, as should be evident by this site alone, I haven’t had the time to write as many prose things as I’d like. For a while I was getting stories done both here and there, but I let it slide. And then I started a webcomic and then I went back to school and then I started my Super Sunday things. Before long I was getting things done here with some consistency, but I pretty much forgot about that site (but never the story I was telling). I recently realized I haven’t updated that blog since 2012. So, I quit. I’m going to fold AbatwaX’s stories into this site over the next week or two and hopefully get back to them here someday. I admit, it was somewhat foolhardy for me to try working under a pseudonym before I even had a regular writing thing going on here.

Also, I did some short stories for my Creative Writing mid-term. I’m going to transcribe those and have them up over the next week or two as well. This will bulk up my prose section a bit. Obviously, nobody cares about prose stories, but hey, they’ll be there for me and that’s what I want.

Hey, I should try a post where I actually bother to talk about something again. That always used to be fun.

Let’s see… what’s in the news today? Oh. Here’s something. I guess that Hollywood is trying to make another movie based off the Fantastic Four comics. It is rumored that Johnny Storm, the hero known as the Human Torch, is likely to be played by a black man, even though he is a white man in the comics. Some people on the Internet are apparently pretty upset about this.

A caveat: I don’t actually care much about the Fantastic Four. As much as I love the Marvel Universe, that is one corner that has never held my attention. There’s likely plenty there worth reading, but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything enough that I’ve bothered to make an expert. Luckily, for the sake of me having this discussion, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. I could link to all sorts of articles about other examples, but I think this Cracked article covers all the bases pretty well.

So, step one, here’s the part where I admit that I’m one of those people who doesn’t like changes being made to adaptations of books and comics. Not just as far as race goes, but I don’t like when anything is changed. I don’t like when characters or scenes are cut for brevity, or when the setting is changed for the sake of filming. I don’t like when dialogue is changed, or when endings are changes. To be honest, I kinda just don’t like adaptations of books into movies in general. Where I apparently differ from a lot of apparently vocal people on the Internet, I realize this makes me a crazy person. I know I have an unrealistic standard, so I don’t expect anyone to live up to that. Having grown to accept that about myself, I don’t actually care about any changes made to the material. It’s inevitable, I think, so why should I worry? (For the record, my concern also applies in reverse, to movies being adapted as books or comics.)

And in step two I try to offer a solution that goes beyond simply accepting it: as the Cracked article points out, there are simply not enough roles for black people in movies based on superhero comics. That is definitely true. But what actually does bother me is the few roles that do exist are not yet being used. Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury is probably the most significant of these white-to-black “racelifts” in the Marvel movies so I’ll use him for the discussion here.

In the comics, Nick Fury first appeared in “Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1” in May of 1963. Here’s the thing: one of those Howling Commandos was Gabe Jones, a black man. Obviously he’s not the title character, but he is an important black character who has exactly as long a history in the medium as Fury, who went along with Fury to also become a top ranking SHIELD agent, and who I personally have always liked more than Fury. Still, the character never got the use that he deserved. A part of me can’t help but think that maybe, if someone as cool as Sam Jackson had played Gabe Jones instead of Fury, maybe people would have actually bothered to care about him for a change. A movie version of Gabe did make it into a minor role in Captain America: The First Avenger, but only in the World War Two section, so he’s unlikely to return in the movies set in the modern era. And since then, the comic version of Gabe Jones was unceremoniously killed off in some crappy 2010 comic. An actual black character with decades of history used as cannon fodder because nobody bothered to care. I suppose it is because Gabe doesn’t have an eyepatch, so obviously we need to use Nick Stupid Fury in the movies instead (pardon my harsh language).

So my complaint is this: If Hollywood wants roles for black characters in their superhero movies (which they damn well should), just casting black people in roles that had been white is an easy way to do it. But taking actual black characters who have existed but have been ignored and giving them the time in the limelight that they so rarely get in comics would, I think, be a more worthy method. It would benefit the oft-underappreciated characters in return.

Hopefully this sort of thing will change. Captain America’s best friend, the Falcon, a black superhero dating back to 1969, is going to be in new Cap movie in a month or so. Falcon has had a better run than a lot of black heroes, but even he has never had the success of even third-tier white heroes. Maybe the movie will change that. And a movie starring the Black Panther, a black superhero dating to 1966 (and one of my top five superheroes period) is constantly being rumored. Even with my irrational distaste for any and all adaptations, I am looking forward to that. And it would be nice if these movies finally give some black characters their due.

Oh and hey, while we’re at it, maybe we should start using some of the women superheroes too. Just a thought.

(For the record, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White in Man of Steel did not bother me in the slightest. But was it my imagination or did Perry White have an earring in that movie? Perry White with an earring? That I find more disconcerting than any possible race change ever could.)

Still got Phone Guys, though: