Black Superheroes Milestone Comics And Their Fans

Download or read book Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans written by Jeffrey A. Brown and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-11-12 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do the comic book figures Static, Hardware, and Icon all have in common? Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans gives an answer that goes far beyond “tights and capes,” an answer that lies within the mission Milestone Media, Inc., assumed in comic book culture. Milestone was the brainchild of four young black creators who wanted to part from the mainstream and do their stories their own way. This history of Milestone, a “creator-owned” publishing company, tells how success came to these mavericks in the 1990s and how comics culture was expanded and enriched as fans were captivated by this new genre. Milestone focused on the African American heroes in a town called Dakota. Quite soon these black action comics took a firm position in the controversies of race, gender, and corporate identity in contemporary America. Characters battled supervillains and sometimes even clashed with more widely known superheroes. Front covers of Milestone comics often bore confrontational slogans like “Hardware: A Cog in the Corporate Machine is About to Strip Some Gears.” Milestone's creators aimed for exceptional stories that addressed racial issues without alienating readers. Some competitors, however, accused their comics of not being black enough or of merely marketing Superman in black face. Some felt that the stories were too black, but a large cluster of readers applauded these new superheroes for fostering African American pride and identity. Milestone came to represent an alternative model of black heroism and, for a host of admirers, the ideal of masculinity. Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans gives details about the founding of Milestone and reports on the secure niche its work and its image achieved in the marketplace. Tracing the company's history and discussing its creators, their works, and the fans, this book gauges Milestone alongside other black comic book publishers, mainstream publishers, and the history of costumed characters.

Download or read book Super Black written by Adilifu Nama and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Super Black places the appearance of black superheroes alongside broad and sweeping cultural trends in American politics and pop culture, which reveals how black superheroes are not disposable pop products, but rather a fascinating racial phenomenon through which futuristic expressions and fantastic visions of black racial identity and symbolic political meaning are presented. Adilifu Nama sees the value—and finds new avenues for exploring racial identity—in black superheroes who are often dismissed as sidekicks, imitators of established white heroes, or are accused of having no role outside of blaxploitation film contexts. Nama examines seminal black comic book superheroes such as Black Panther, Black Lightning, Storm, Luke Cage, Blade, the Falcon, Nubia, and others, some of whom also appear on the small and large screens, as well as how the imaginary black superhero has come to life in the image of President Barack Obama. Super Black explores how black superheroes are a powerful source of racial meaning, narrative, and imagination in American society that express a myriad of racial assumptions, political perspectives, and fantastic (re)imaginings of black identity. The book also demonstrates how these figures overtly represent or implicitly signify social discourse and accepted wisdom concerning notions of racial reciprocity, equality, forgiveness, and ultimately, racial justice.

Download or read book Permitted and Prohibited Desires written by Anne Allison and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative study of gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan investigates elements of Japanese popular culture including erotic comic books, stories of mother-son incest, lunchboxes—or obentos—that mothers ritualistically prepare for schoolchildren, and children's cartoons. Anne Allison brings recent feminist psychoanalytic and Marxist theory to bear on representations of sexuality, motherhood, and gender in these and other aspects of Japanese culture. Based on five years of fieldwork in a middle-class Tokyo neighborhood, this theoretically informed, accessible ethnographic study provides a provocative analysis of how sexuality, dominance, and desire are reproduced and enacted in late-capitalistic Japan.

Download or read book Icon & Rocket: Season One (2021-) #1 written by Reginald Hudlin and published by DC Comics. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long ago, the stranded alien known as Arnus gave up hope of returning to his home planet. Tragically, he’d also realized that his adopted home of Earth was beyond saving. Content to waste away his long life in a human guise, Arnus was past caring…until the day a young woman named Raquel Ervin crashed into his life. Soon she’d convinced him to put his incredible power to work again as the heroic Icon…and to transform her into his sidekick, Rocket! But an innocent question on Rocket’s part-“Why can’t we do something about the drugs on my corner?”-quickly set a chain of events in motion leading to the pair becoming the most hunted beings on Earth…and they’re not just being pursued by Earthlings, either! Writer, director, and producer Reginald Hudlin (Black Panther: Who Is the Black Panther?) and superstar artist Doug Braithwaite unleash a tale of power and responsibility that will stretch from the boardrooms of corporate America to the jungles of South America and the depths of deep space! If you’ve ever thought there were certain things that a superhero story just couldn’t do, it might be time to start thinking different…Long ago, the stranded alien known as Arnus gave up hope of returning to his home planet. Tragically, he’d also realized that his adopted home of Earth was beyond saving. Content to waste away his long life in a human guise, Arnus was past caring…until the day a young woman named Raquel Ervin crashed into his life. Soon she’d convinced him to put his incredible power to work again as the heroic Icon…and to transform her into his sidekick, Rocket! But an innocent question on Rocket’s part-“Why can’t we do something about the drugs on my corner?”-quickly set a chain of events in motion leading to the pair becoming the most hunted beings on Earth…and they’re not just being pursued by Earthlings, either! Writer, director, and producer Reginald Hudlin (Black Panther: Who Is the Black Panther?) and superstar artist Doug Braithwaite unleash a tale of power and responsibility that will stretch from the boardrooms of corporate America to the jungles of South America and the depths of deep space! If you’ve ever thought there were certain things that a superhero story just couldn’t do, it might be time to start thinking different…

Download or read book Black Comics written by Sheena C. Howard and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2014 Will Eisner Award for Best Scholarly/Academic Work. Bringing together contributors from a wide-range of critical perspectives, Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation is an analytic history of the diverse contributions of Black artists to the medium of comics. Covering comic books, superhero comics, graphic novels and cartoon strips from the early 20th century to the present, the book explores the ways in which Black comic artists have grappled with such themes as the Black experience, gender identity, politics and social media. Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation introduces students to such key texts as: The work of Jackie Ormes Black women superheroes from Vixen to Black Panther Aaron McGruder's strip The Boondocks

Download or read book Milestone Returns: Infinite Edition (2021-) #0 written by Reginald Hudlin and published by DC Comics. This book was released on 2021-02-26 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At long last - the return of the legendary Milestone Comics imprint has kicked into high gear! This jumping-on point one-shot features twenty-four all-new pages chronicling the events of the Big Bang - the police-brutality protest gone wrong that changed the face of the city of Dakota forever, by unleashing a wave of superpowers across its population! As the world watches, a bullied teenager will become the hero known as STATIC… a framed scientist will go on the run as the superweapon HARDWARE… and a stranded alien will meet an ambitious young woman who will transform his life, and remake the pair as the all-powerful ICON & ROCKET! Also included is the 17-page primer story originally released during the world-famous DC FanDome event, further expanding on our heroes’ origins and where they’re going next… and setting up an entire world of allies, enemies, and surprises! The original Milestone changed the face of superhero comics forever, introducing the industry to a wave of Black talent who still shape the conversation… and the new Milestone intends to raise the bar! Get on board here!

Download or read book The Superhero Reader written by Charles Hatfield and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from Will Brooker, Jeffrey A. Brown, Scott Bukatman, John G. Cawelti, Peter Coogan, Jules Feiffer, Charles Hatfield, Henry Jenkins, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Gerard Jones, Geoff Klock, Karin Kukkonen, Andy Medhurst, Adilifu Nama, Walter Ong, Lorrie Palmer, Richard Reynolds, Trina Robbins, Lillian Robinson, Roger B. Rollin, Gloria Steinem, Jennifer Stuller, Fredric Wertham, and Philip Wylie Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century, they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.