Hudlin’s Huddle « Hudlin Entertainment

Reggie & Ebony

I’m now writing a monthly comic strip called YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH for EBONY magazine. Denys Cowan (BATMAN, BLACK PANTHER/CAPTAIN AMERICA: FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS) is drawing the strip.

How did such a thing come about, you ask? One day I get a call from my old friend Terry Glover, who used to help me out when I was making no-budget video projects in Chicago back in the day. She’s now managing editor at Ebony, which is cool in itself. She told me they are completely revamping the magazine and that they want replace the old “Just for Laughs” page with a serialized graphic novel with a cliffhanger ending each month. I told them I’d do it.

I love that our generation is getting the chance to evolve our institutions. I answered the call once, and want to support others as they take on that daunting task. I also love exposing non-comic book readers to the full range of what the medium can do, and I love having a monthly soapbox to rail about whatever I’m thinking about.

Which leads to the inevitable question, what is YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH about?

Well, I wanted it to be funny, because people expect comics to be funny. I wanted to leads to be a classic “Ebony family” – good looking, intelligent, middle class husband, wife and two children…which also happens to mirror my own.

Then it’s gonna go to an ill place. A shocking place. It’s gonna take it’s sweet time, but keep reading.

Denys Cowan and Reggie

My first call once I agreed to do this strip was to Denys Cowan. Denys is a very versatile artist, he’s super dependable, and he draws “pretty”, which I also knew was important for the assignment. He’s got a great sense of story that makes my work better.

The first installment is in the new and revamped Ebony this month. You may not have checked Ebony in a while…or ever, but with my manz Chris Rock and Steve Harvey on the cover, I would have at least flipped through it anyway. But now you gotta buy it.

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Dwayne McDuffie, Rest In Power

Dwayne was a giant.

He was a physically big man, tall, solid, imposing.

His mind, immense. His heart, gigantic.

After my first film, HOUSE PARTY, I met him and the Milestone crew. I loved what Dwayne, Denys Cowan and Derek Dingle were doing because they were smart, socially conscious, organized and using their success to make a difference by providing building an institution to rectify a gross injustice in their industry. They were creating black heroes like Icon, Static, Xombi and Hardware…some of the coolest superheroes ever created. They also were creating jobs for talented people that were not getting opportunities.

I felt a great kinship with them. The same way Spike and my other colleagues were breaking through barriers in film, and hip hop was turning the music business upside down, they were doing it in comics. The 80s was a time where it looked like we really were about to overcome…not someday, but next month.

But the revolution never came. Black filmmakers didn’t start their own studio, hip hop got co-opted by corporations, and Milestone closed up shop. The comic book industry wasn’t embracing Dwayne’s talent and he left New York and moved to Florida.

Dwayne has done so much to mentor me in the art of writing comics, in the business of comics, but this was one time I was able to do something for him. I told him to move to Los Angeles. I knew this town needs writers as talented, professional and fast as him. He had a few freelance offers but I promised if he came out here he’d never be without work.

And he wasn’t. He found the respect for his talent in Hollywood that the book industry didn’t recognize. STATIC SHOCK, like BLADE, had a much bigger fan base with mainstream audiences than it did in the narrow comic book market. Eventually, the comic book world invited him back. I’m glad Dwayne got to write the Fantastic Four and the Justice League both in the same year.

Dwayne was a great writer and editor. He built a successful company and created characters that are popular to this very day. He successfully transitioned to film and television and the day after his birthday, on the day before the debut of what promises to be his most successful project yet, he was taken from us.

Dwayne’s fans called him the Maestro. That’s a tough moniker to pull off. But he could, because he was that good, and humble enough to wear it well.

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