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Guilty Pleasures; Whatever Floats your Boats
Topic Started: Dec 21 2011, 12:03 AM (70,772 Views)
Doctor Magnus Warlock
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Finally!!!

I knew with the Black Panther making his debut in the Marvels would also see his past adventures collected in trade paperback.

The Panther stories written by Priest are some of my all-time favorite stories. I will surely order this, when available.

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The Complete Christopher Priest Black Panther, Out Next Year

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Rich Johnston

It was a question I came across a few times after the announcement of the Black Panther movie by Marvel. What Black Panther comics to read? Marvel promoted the Reginald Hudlin run the most but some found it lacking.

Well, Amazon now has the answer, with a listing for Black Panther by Christopher Priest: The Complete Collection Volume 1.

A series of trade paperbacks with around twenty issues in each, collecting Priest’s run on the book. One of the stellar casting decisions of Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada, Priest on Black Panther was wonderful. It got a little choppy towards the end, but at the beginning with Mark Texeira, it was pure damn brilliant and worked as a perfect companion to his Quantum And Woody comic with Mark Bright (also now available in Omnibus form).

Playing with the narrative form, with a writing style that emulated the hot drama of the day, The West Wing, Priest gave us a royal leader being brought down to earth by his unfortunate associated, and a variety of events beyond the ken of man, but he always seemed to be planning one step ahead.

If the eventual movie turns out half as good, we’ll have a better film than Guardians Of The Galaxy and Winter Soldier combined.

Of course, we don’t need that film. All we need are the comics…

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http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/11/11/the-complete-christopher-priest-black-panther-out-next-year/
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Doctor Magnus Warlock
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What an African American Captain America means for Marvel

Updated by Alex Abad-Santos on November 10, 2014, 1:00 p.m. ET @alex_abads alex@vox.com

Superheroes are meant to represent the best of us. And for a long period of time, "the best of us" were straight white guys. At Marvel, this norm is changing.

On Wednesday, Sam Wilson, the African-American hero known as Falcon, will officially take on the title of Captain America in his own comic book.

"You're starting to see characters who can reflect other parts of our culture," Rick Remender, the writer of the series, told me. Remender is one of the comic book industry's biggest names, and has worked on titles like X-Men, Uncanny X-Force, and Punisher."That reflection is important. It's important to feel like you live in a culture where you are a part of it, and that you can see yourself in your heroes. "

Over the past few years, more and more people have been able to see themselves in Marvel's heroes. Captain Marvel and Thor are now women. Ms. Marvel, one of the company's best selling comics, is a Muslim, Pakistani-American teenage girl. Superhero teams like The Ultimates and the Mighty Avengers are featuring more women and non-white heroes. And Marvel Studios has followed suit, with Captain Marvel and Black Panther movies coming in a few years.

Wilson becoming a character that's as iconic as Captain America is Marvel's biggest move toward inclusion. Wilson isn't perfect, and his story — a hero exposed to racism and violence — couldn't be more different than his predecessor.

I talked to Remender, and asked him about what we can expect from Wilson's Captain America, what Marvel's diversity means for readers, and how Wilson's race affects his heroism.

Alex Abad-Santos: Back in the 70s, we saw comic books try to include women and non-white characters but it sometimes felt like prescriptivism or tokenism — the result were hollow characters who felt more like a PSA than an actual hero. How important is it to you to avoid writing Sam as a "perfect" Captain America?


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All New Captain America #1 (Marvel)

Rick Remender: In terms of avoiding tokenism, and treating characters like characters, I stomp around the Marvel Universe and I kill and maim and damage and I twist the characters, and I put them through hell whether they be man, woman, black or white — they all get to experience the same cruel hand of my writer's pen.

Sam's not going on a pedestal. He's getting his ass kicked. There's a huge test coming up here. He's also not neutered. There's an instinct to be fearful as a white man writing an African American character in such a prominent position. And you could talk yourself out of making bold decisions out of that fear. I have a responsibility to present Sam and the character that he is in a way that makes him feel three dimensional — that means all of his positive attributes as well as his negative attributes, and to allow myself to tell a big, super exciting story with him in it that doesn't approach him or what happens to him in a different way I would any other character.

I treat all my characters just as God does [laughs] — they all get to suffer the same wrath.

Alex Abad-Santos: Unlike Steve Rogers, Wilson comes from a place where he witnesses an imperfect America that can be ugly and racist. How does this affect his empathy and his heroism?

Rick Remender: One of the reasons I was drawn to writing him, and one of the reasons I wanted to do this, is if you look at Marvel history where he would land right now, that would make him Generation X.

He grew up when I grew up, and he grew up at a time that was increasingly more violent from the late 80s into the mid 90s.

Sam's story reflects that era, in that he was a kid who was disenfranchised and dealing with racism. He didn't have a lot of hope. But he's got a father who's a minister, and in the Marvel Universe, one of the most prominent popular ministers in Harlem. People come from miles around to listen to his sermon. He preaches about his American dream of tolerance and standing up against oppression, and these concepts that Sam cant buy into because he's not necessarily apathetic, as much as he is a jaded teenager.

His father is killed trying to stop a fight. And Sam becomes untethered. He's spiraling. And things get worse when his mother is gunned down by a mugger not long after his father's death.

I'm using this to build the character quite a bit. It's his origin. It's what was set up way back when. But it's not something that's we've seen examined a lot of. What [these events] end up giving us is this kid who's disenfranchised, jaded, and cynical listening to his whole life and his father and mother, trying to teach him to choose his own path but also absorb the dream that they are presenting. He doesn't get it until they are both dead. And he recognizes the gap they've left — the hole they've left in the community.

He has to then rise, rise in the same way Steve Rogers had to rise after the Great Depression. And he has to make a promise that he will do everything that he can to make sure that people have a defender. He believes in solving the community's problems from the inside.

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A variant cover of All New Captain America no. 1(Marvel)

Alex Abad-Santos: Going back to characters like Wally West as the Flash, and now with characters like Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel, you see heroes who take on iconic titles like the Flash and Captain Marvel struggle with defining the character and living up to its expectations. How is Sam going to react to that?

Rick Remender: That's the fun of it — Sam's wearing the American flag. That means he represents all of America. And not just that, but the spirit of the character is that he tries to represent all of the world. (But he's walking around in an American flag, so it pretty well means you're representing America. And, well, your name's Captain America.)

He's a different person than Steve and as the Falcon, he was more free to listen to his heart without the same sort of repercussions on such a stage as Captain America.

Without giving away what we have coming up, Sam is going to learn in a number of difficult ways that he now represents all of America. And the challenge before him is to take a polarized nation of people who have drawn a line in the sand and have decided that there is no middle. They're just going to throw things at each other, they're not going to cooperate, and they're not going to find common ground.

Instead they're going to villainize one another and endlessly chase this, adversarial relationship into the country's decline. And Sam is going to try represent something that both sides and hopefully inspire people.

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A Variant cover of All New Captain America no.1 (Marvel)

Alex Abad-Santos: What does being Captain America mean to Sam? And how is that vision different from Steve's?


Rick Remender: I think what a lot of what I'm doing in this series is putting Sam and Steve at odds. I don't want to say Steve is a rigid character, but he's somebody who follows his heart; he's a patriot; he does what he knows to be right. But at the same time, he comes from a place of military experience, he's a soldier, he understands the importance of following orders.

Sam is a little more reflective of myself, and my friends growing up. And that is a little bit more wary of authority — a little more questioning of what is being handed down and the motives of the people at the very top.

Obviously, this isn't to say that Steve hasn't dealt with corruption in the government. And it isn't to say that Steve hasn't dealt with his own anti-authoritarian feelings.

Sam's not less hopeful, but he's a little more pragmatic. And he's a lot less likely to take orders from S.H.I.E.L.D. than he is to make his own mind up and do what he thinks is right.

Alex Abad-Santos: We see a little of that push-back with S.H.I.E.L.D. in the AXIS comic book event. He doesn't seem to be as trusting of the government. Do you think that speaks to something bigger, and reflects a cultural feeling right now?


Rick Remender: In AXIS, early in Sam's career as Captain America, he's drawn into this event. And his polarity is inverted. He basically is evil when you see him do that. But even a Sam Wilson who isn't inverted and evil, as we see him in AXIS, is going to be a lot less likely, a lot less prone to following the order laid out by a large institution as maybe Steve would be.

Sam's questioning of the system in place, and the motives of the people who are running it will feed into a larger story that we're telling with the rise of HYDRA. And it's a HYDRA story that will take place over the first year or two of Captain America — it's unlike anything that we've ever seen from HYDRA. And I will definitely be reflecting some of my own, and some of what I perceive to be the character's feelings about certain institutions and the way they are being run.

I think it's a much more interesting perspective especially from somebody who doesn't feel like he's a man out of time. Steve is a man out of time, he's an FDR child of the Great Depression, he fought in WWII — he's many generations behind us now. And the ideals of who he is and what he stands are wonderful, and he's still a wonderful character. But Sam is somebody who's a little more pragmatic, and a little more cooked in the same soup that the readers are.

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Avengers and X-Men Axis #4 (Marvel)

Alex Abad-Santos: Over the last couple of years, we've seen Marvel really show heroes of different genders, sexualities, and skin color. What has the change been like since you started working with the company?
Avengers and X-Men Axis #4 (Marvel)

Rick Remender: I was just talking to someone about how when I started reading comics in 1984, Iron Man was African American. James Rhodes was Iron Man for a number of years when I was growing up. In fact, when Tony Stark became Iron Man, I was flummoxed.

The first book I ever pitched — I was a skate punk in the 80s — I had an idea to take a really ridiculous character Rocket Racer and infuse him with the lead singer of Bad Brains and turn him into this incredibly cool, skate punk who was like the Silver Surfer riding up building and all these things. That was the first book I tried to get in at Marvel.

The diversity at that point in terms of the general line, it was predominantly white. One of my goals coming into the company was to do different things, and do diverse things.

We then turned Brother Voodoo into the Sorcerer Supreme. And we tried a number of things along the way. I think that the good thing that we've seen is that it's starting to happen more and more down the line now. You're starting to see characters who can reflect other parts of our culture.

And that gives every kid somebody to look up to. It's nice when there's a number of options out there that different kinds of kids can apply to themselves. It's important to be able to see yourself in your heroes.

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A variant cover to All New Captain America #1. (Marvel)



http://www.vox.com/2014/11/10/7185205/captain-america-remender
Edited by Doctor Magnus Warlock, Nov 12 2014, 11:53 AM.
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Doctor Magnus Warlock
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T'Challa & Sam Wilson are the first two black heroes, and I am quite pleased with the long-overdo spotlight both are receiving.
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Doctor Magnus Warlock
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Sam Wilson, in his original costume.

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Moon Pie
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It's the annual Holiday Season Family Photo time. My little boy, is picky about his attire, lately. He has picked out a few sets he agrees to wear for the pictures.


He likes the hat and the vest on the above example. He thinks he should wear a tie with it too. I agree, ties look sharp!


I like the above outfit, but he doesn't like red. He thinks red should be on girls. I told him that pink is for girls, red can be for boys too. He shook his head, "nah I don't like it." LOL Such an opinionated child, just like his mama!


Ahhhhhh, an outfit we can all agree on. He likes this, with a tie of course, and I need to find him a hat to match. The whole family will dress in Royal blue, this year!
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Moon Pie
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I cringe, he likes these ties. They are so "grown up" looking.



He likes this bow tie too.
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Moon Pie
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I might try to introduce him to scarfs. If he's going to be a "Dandy" then he might as well go all the way!

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Doctor Magnus Warlock
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Moon Pie
Nov 24 2014, 05:44 PM

I cringe, he likes these ties. They are so "grown up" looking.



He likes this bow tie too.
Just remember, Moon Pie.......

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Doctor Magnus Warlock
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I do wish Felicia appreciated my own clothing accessories.


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Moon Pie
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Doctor Saul Santiago
Nov 24 2014, 05:50 PM
Moon Pie
Nov 24 2014, 05:44 PM

I cringe, he likes these ties. They are so "grown up" looking.



He likes this bow tie too.
Just remember, Moon Pie.......

LOL

Ok yes, Bow Ties, are cool!
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