The White Man’s Burden, Not The Black Man’s Dream

4thletter.net
It’s frivolous in the face of this, but it bears being said: everything matters when it comes to race and racism. Even these stupid old comic books that I spend my time reading. Everything is a brick in the wall or a straw sitting on the camel’s back. Race, as a concept, is ingrained in our society and way of thinking. It’s inescapable.

That understanding, that knowledge of the fact that race is way more than just the Ku Klux Klan and being scared of black people, is why I looked at Mark Millar’s assertion that he was going to create a top 10 black hero with the sidest of side-eyes. A quote, again:

cause here’s the thing. Millar sees dollar signs. He’s over here thinking “Black people are cool now, guys!” and trying to figure out how to get a black dollar. He wants to ride a wave, to capitalize (and please believe I mean “convert into capital,” meaning dollars) on a trend, and that trend? That trend is my life. It’s not even a trend at all, it’s the blood that runs through my veins and my mom’s and my grandparents’ and everyone before them. I’ve been reduced to a column on a spreadsheet.

And I’m supposed to trust a guy whose idea of Cool Black is Samuel L Jackson, who was surprised that black people suffer from the same conditions as white people, who has consistently portrayed black people as objects of scorn for his white protagonists, who made a big to-do about creating an “African-American Hulk” in his crappy comics so that he could do a joke about how it’s weird that people call black Brits African-American sometimes and have a dude living like he’s straight out of a rap video to create a top 10 black hero? A guy who sees dollar signs, rather than dreams, when he thinks of black people? “You speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.” There’s a gap in there between us, and it’s not a nice one.
Click to read article

Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

“The greatest story commandment is: Make me care.”
I am always amused by storytellers compelled to challenge the notion of the successful story model in the this TED clip

Filmmaker Andrew Stanton (“Toy Story,” “WALL-E”) shares what he knows about storytelling — starting at the end and working back to the beginning

He also shares what Disney viewed as a successful story model,for Toystory how Pixar railed secretly against it, and when Toystory was in trouble Disney’s suggestions

 

How Do Comics Represent the South?

Three years ago at the bi-annual conference for the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Brannon Costello and I began considering the possibilities of the question:how do comics represent the South? To what extent do comics creators wrestle with what Scott Romine calls the “qualitative geography” of the region, that elusive sense of place and specter of history that shadows nearly every author, poet, or artist whose creative aspirations wander below the Mason-Dixon line?

How Do Comics Represent the South?.

The First Multi-Racial Multi-Ethnic Young Adult Urban Fantasy

Happy New Years

With the release of Smoke & Demons (order it if you haven’t) I’m proud to say that my Tales of Urban Horror series is the first YA multi-ethnic urban Fantasy effort on the stands
There remains this sentiment that a good story is all that matters, I agree in part because the reader still wants to identify with the character and my series allow readers of diverse backgrounds to do that
Try the light up test

Give a copy of one of my novels to a reader of color that enjoys vampires, werewolves and other spirits that go bump in the night and watch them light up!
In that moment you will understand

 

Read the Page

So I walk into the Verizon store to get a phone, and the walls are covered with posters from their Rule the Air campaign, my friend joked, “They look a lot like your book covers.” I had to confess there were strong similarities.  But hey, I like my book covers and I like the posters from the Rule the Air campaign. I hope Verizon feels the same way about my Read the Page campaign

Theirs

Are Too Many Cat Lovers Writing Werewolf Stories?

Wolves are VERY intelligent, probably in the top 10 of the World’s most intelligent creatures. Although nowhere near the intelligence of Humans, apes or dolphins , they certainly  rank above bears and domesticated dogs and are perhaps equal with big cats and are only slightly behind pigs and carrion crows. That said, I continue to be amazed at how werewolves are treated on shows like True Blood, mutts to be kicked around) the Underworld series, (slaves) Harry Potter series (cursed,  and forced to live outside of normal society and steal food to survive) even in Stephanie Meyer series the werewolf for all of his loyalty (couldn’t get the girl.)

I’m a vampire fan, my first novel Night Biters was about vampires, Werewolves the Mix Tape is about a Werewolf.

But Mix Tape also address something that I’m not seeing  in other stories, that werewolves are intelligent, loyal, brave and extremely social. In Mix Tape, my werewolf abandons his pack to save his human friend because he was loyal to her before he was a werewolf. In my forthcoming novel, Smoke and Demons, exploits the fact  that when the chips are down, werewolves are the paranormal beast you want around

wiki answers states that Wolves are also in the top 10 most MISUNDERSTOOD animals, I guess that also apply to werewolves.

Related Articles

• True Blood’s Joe Manganiello Talks ‘Werewolf Dating’ (pbpulse.com)
• Three Favourite Werewolf Films (marklord.info)

Black Panther Redux & Reduced

Marvel has just announced that the Black Panther will be replacing Daredevil in his comic. Instead of ruling Wakanda This BP will apparently haunting the alleys of Hells Kitchen.

I applaud Marvel for continuing to use BP, but they should stop. Stan Lee had a true vision of the character something that the folks currently running things clearly don’t have. Despite that he never had any real authority over the character Christopher Priest wrote the definitive BP. Despite editorial changes his writing and treatment of the character rose above whatever the character was involved in. Interestingly Priest even wrote the first hardcore street BP, so what we see in the Daredevil will again be something that Priest did first. Its simple Marvel, bring the man back

The Dollar Bin has given  possibly the best interview of Priest ever, where he talks at length (one Hour) about his run on BP click here for interview

Related Articles

• Agent of S.T.Y.L.E.: Wakanda Wild Side with the Black Panther
• Black Panther battles ethics – Los Angeles Times (mmcelhaney-media.blogspot.com)

Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese is the author of three best-selling books, Cutting for Stone, his first novel now in paperback, and two non-fiction books, My Own Country, and The Tennis Partner, which were both critically acclaimed. He blogs regularly on The Atlantic.com, and his work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The New Yorker. He lives in Palo Alto, California, and is a tenured professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is Senior Associate Chair for the Theory & Practice of Medicine.

http://www.abrahamverghese.com/

Scream Blacula Scream

Scream Blacula Scream

Sure it was over 30 years since Blacula was made, but to me he’s just too cool

When I wrote Night Biters I had to find a way to put  Blacula in the story because how can you do a story about  Black Vampires

and leave out the baddest cat with an overbite?

Were Wolves the Mix Tape wallpaper

Click Here