I think it's more peer pressure than anything I think people are feeling pressured to act as though this run is better than it actually is. I remember watching this video on youtube with this YouTuber review Black Panther and the crew issue 3 when T'Challa shows up. Now anyone who read it knows that the disdain Coates and his cabal have fo T'Challa could have been more obvious then in that issue. Considering every character had a issue dedicated to the them with an action set piece...
All of them except T'Challa instead for his issue, he talks about having the power in his hands to reshape reality (the IF gauntlet) but was too afraid to fix his marriage, he follows Storm around like a puppy, looking for her attention and validation, Gets talked down to and disrespected by an an old lady, and sings an rnb song...
Yet the reviewer talks the issue io like it was some great thing and great character development and how cool it was to see T'Challa singing and all this other stuff and it makes you wonder if you read the same issue.
I think we should be long past being grateful for scraps, and holding black writers to the same standard as others and demand they bring their A game just like you would expect others to do. Otherwise what is the point?
You make some good points here. We should hold black creators to standards, but I'm not going to say the same standards, because sometimes black creators won't have the same resources that white creators, or others, might get, especially if they are independent. But for a bigtime author like Coates, backed up by the Marvel Machine, then definitely he should be held to the same standards.
I have to wonder if that You Tuber and other reviewers who gush over Coates's BP run buy into the idea that black straight male characters should take a backseat. That the focus should be on others even when the book (like Black Panther) or the series (like Black Lightning) has their name on the headline. I think being disrespected, talked down to, and accepting it is what black males, particularly straight black males, are supposed to do these days, and entertainment is bolstering acceptance of that idea.
Unfortunately I don't think we are past being grateful for scraps. It's just the scraps have been seasoned better or made more appetizing in some way. As I was saying all this talk about 'representation' is really just tokenism, but perhaps the black characters are given a few more lines or get involved in the story or action a bit more, but still far too many are a long way from being fully realized three dimensional characters.
Every point above hits home, and reverberates powerfully. At this juncture, there can be absolutely no sane doubt that there's an escalating all out, full fledged attack upon we the straight, educated, unafraid, warrior skilled and trained, Afrocentric, Afrikan woman loving Afrikan males launched by The Powers That Be with ever more venom as the USA and Brazil go through "The Browning of America" and "The Blackening of Brazil". [ Brazil is a hugely important nation in The Americas, and our people there are really really really going through it. Their struggle IS OUR struggle. Recall that literally 40% of the family of ALL OF US WHO WERE BROUGHT HERE ON THAT BOAT RIDE AROUND 1617 RESIDE IN BRAZIL.
"Around 56% of Brazilians identify as Black—the largest population of African descent outside of Africa—yet Black people make up just 18% of congress, 4.7% of executives in Brazil's 500 largest companies, 75% of murder victims and 75% of those killed by police..."
https://time.com/5915902/brazil-racism-quilombos/#:~:text=Around%2056%25%20of%20Brazilians%20identify,of%20those%20killed%20by%20police.Let us not forget that we cannot take our eye from the international ball of Afrikanness wheresoever it resides, and we must seamlessly link our struggle here to all Afrikan struggles worldwide, and anchor our struggles to and spread from the following areas of supreme importance:
1. The Motherland, the continent of Afrika
2. The USA
3. Brazil, which has the largest PROPORTIONATE population of Afrikans in The Americas as for the first time Afrikans form THE MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION in Brazil [ which terrifies the elite Whites there AND in the USA ]...and Brazil is one of the world's fastest emerging economies. It is an economic superpower in its own right.
https://www.brookings.edu/book/brazil-as-an-economic-superpower/4. India, which has the largest population of Black people/Afrikans outside of Afrika [ as pretty much the entire country is Black; and that means over a billion people. India is potentially both a military and economic superpower, particularly since India responded to being largely and embarassingly outperformed by China in their various clashes by launching a government directed campaign to drastically upgrade its military in every regard...saving it from the sorry state that European colonialism cast it in.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/2/11/india-military-superpower-or-paper-tigerUnfortunately, most of India is deeply racist towards and color prejudiced against Black people, and that's an issue even THEY are engaging and seeing as wrong...which terrifies White people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOjRPs4S1o&t=16s ]
5. France, which has the largest population of sub-Saharan and Afro-Caribbean people in Europe
6. The Caribbean, the very deliberately underserved, overlooked and still colonized Black/Afrakan potential superpower if they work together and with we Afrikans in the USA
Now, I don't like or approve of the LGBTQ persecution that is the perverted result of promoting and protecting the heterosexual Afrikan male head of the household warrior and Afrocentric family ideal. That is some ole BS. It is utterly despicable and I will push back against it and fight it wheresoever it rears its head.
However.
It is NO ACCIDENT, BUT INSTEAD DELIBERATE POLICY BY RACIST FEUDALISTS that the image of the Afrocentric, hetero, truly warrior-scholar-poet-philosopher-spiritualist-athlete skilled beyond all others, combatively without peer, the very incarnation of all things cool, AND LEADER OF THE HETERO AFROCENTRIC FAMILY WITH AN EQUALLY ACCOMPLISHED AFRIKAN AFROCENTRIC WIFE AND SLEW OF CHILDREN is under utterly relentless attack in each of these areas...along with our Black minds and bodies.
We must reacquire our hardcore hetero warrior mentality, along with the unyielding demands we place upon our people to be excellent in all things. I remember growing up with that mandate, that mantra, as a given in my household. We also knew that as long as we lived in a country controlled by White people, we had to be four times better than them in order to have a real chance of excelling in their system. And then we realized that we should keep that requirement as a mandate for our people no matter what; because we must now do at least four times better than whatever our previous generation's best was in each of our successive generations. And we must never. Ever. Lose our warrior skills...as in eternally mentally AND physically whoopin all forms, hues and infinite amounts of gluteus in whatever area of performance we find ourselves in: the streets, the battlefield, the board room, the bedroom, all forms of healthcare and all forms of family and nation building.
Wakanda. And most especially T'Challa. Represents this in brazen form, and the masses of the entire world absolutely loved the vision that Coogler, Joe Robert Cole [ who gets way too overlooked when mentioning the MCU BLACK PANTHER ]
https://collider.com/black-panther-interview-joe-robert-cole/,
and Chadwick Boseman put forth. The Black Panther alone can seriously change the minds and hearts of BILLIONS around this world, and THAT is a threat that Whites cannot and will not allow.
That explains the decision not to recast T'Challa and have another of our many dazzling heterosexual Afrikan men fill the role. They see T'Challa as a threat...even as they hunger for the billions that MCU BP will add to their coffers.
That also explains TurnCoates, who is the living breathing ANTITHESIS of what we need. And if Marvel Editorial doesn't choose Redjack? That'll be the reason why. Thorne absolutely MERKED it with a MASTERFUL job scripting BP in the KiB tie-in. That is EXACTLY the BP we need to see on a monthly basis...from now on.
We all know that RH would have been THE PERFECT author to recruit during this time, because RH is a big name and RH was THE FIRST person to conceive The Black Panther as a multimedia multi-hundred million dollar franchise. Not even your Supreme Illuminati thought that The Black Panther would break the billion dollar mark, and become the most successful, the most popular solo superhero movie of all time. Not even your Supreme Illuminati...and I daresay not even our own RH...thought that The Black Panther would become a cultural movement, with tens of thousands of children in this nation alone named after the characters of the movie. And we all know that is exactly why they stayed away from RH like he was COVID-2,000,000.
If it's NOT Redjack? I literally dread who Marvel will choose to pen BP [ because we know it won't be RH or CJP, too ]. And if it's NOT Redjack? I'm done with 616 BP. I'll keep buying Shang Chi, Iron Fist, etc to get my chop-socky fix in, but I'll go strictly indie and DC if a real brutha isn't rockin the pen chores of BP.
