Black Thor.
I’m not sure I need to say more than that. Some people will immediately throw the race card at this post. They will be wrong. But I’m not going to trot out a list of black comic book characters that I like or a list of my black friends to defend myself. I refuse to validate the indictment by going on the defensive. Instead, I’ll ask the obvious question: why take a Nordic hero who is ethnically white and change his ethnicity? Why not create a super powered, ethnically black hero?
It’s not as though there are no mythical African heroes. A cursory search on Wikipedia resulted in hundreds of gods and heroes across multiple traditions. There is Kibuka, the war god of the Baganda people of Uganda, and his brother, Mukas, the god of prosperity and divination. There’s a lot of material to work with. There is also Kwase Benefo of the Ashanti people in Ghana, a hero who successfully journeyed to the underworld and back. What about Age, the patron god of hunters of the Fon people? That sounds like a great character for a comic-book superhero.
Is it that the writers at mainstream comic book companies lack the creativity to study these myths and develop new heroes based on them? Or are they trying to piggy-back on the built in fan base that comes with the Thor name? Or is it a cynical combination of both? “Let’s not put any real work into creating a genuine black hero. That takes too much time an effort. We need to come up with a back story, discover his or her powers, come up with villains…forget it, it’s too complicated. Let’s just take Thor and make him black! Great idea!” Dressed in basketball shoes and accompanied by the most cringe-worthy, white-bread rap lyrics ever penned, Black Thor represents a new low in comic history.
I keep thinking “Okay, we’ve finally hit bottom. It can’t possibly get any worse than this.” And then someone at Marvel or DC finds another shovel and they begin digging again. To paraphrase Peter Schickele, every new work lives up to the same low standards set by the preceding one.
Instead of complaining about a dearth of creativity when it comes to black heroes, I may take up the slack here and follow my own advice. It may not be long before you see Age as a new BAM! Comix title. Forget Black Thor; we have Age. And he’s gonna kick Black Thor’s *.
So much for the bad news. Now for some good news. We have new art for Hannah Stein that will be dropping soon. Keep your eyes peeled.