“I also wanted the city to be more timeless than a product of my specific age. I don’t know if I’m completely successful in that regard, but it was definitely part of the motivation. I don’t want anyone looking at TAZ twenty years from now and saying, ‘Man, iPhones and internet. This is so 2000s!’”

Spike

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Read it? Good.

Blackface obviously has a long, long history in the world of entertainment, as anyone who saw the Spike Lee movie Bamboozled knows. But here, creators Rachel Bormann and Nate Powell recontextualize it in the person of an innocent, yet clearly ignorant, pre-teen white girl in a tiny Midwestern town. What I found fascinating about this story is all the things that go unsaid, most importantly: why does Sara identify so strongly with a semi-fictitious, middle-aged black character like Aunt Jemima?

This was more than just a chance to play dress-up on Halloween for Sara; the final two pages make it plain that she really wants to be a black person, if only for a day – but precious little in the rest of the story offers anything in the way of a motive. That she is surrounded by people with racist attitudes (including her parents) doesn’t appear to offend her sense of morals; indeed, she comes across as fairly amoral throughtout the story. Dressing in blackface is something she does because she feels she can, and should do, in order to look like Aunt Jemima, so she does. Morality never enters into the picture for her.

I think it comes down to a common theme throughout American cultural history: white people like appropriating the characteristics of blacks and other minorities, and may even emulate those that appear in pop culture, from Bruce Lee to Michael Jordan to Jennifer Lopez to Beyonce – but actual, non-celebrity black people are for the most part kept out of arms reach, deliberately so in many cases (such as when Sara talks about her parents making her lock her car door when they drive through a black neighborhood).

Sara’s not around black people much, and when she is, it’s at a distance and detached from normal social interaction. When she passes Angela in the hallway (I’m assuming Angela is supposed to be black; the way Powell renders her doesn’t make it as clear as it should be), she feels something she cannot put a name to which might well be shame, but the feeling quickly passes. Clearly Angela is not part of Sara’s circle of friends; one wonders how different this tale would be if she were. Unfortunately, we don’t linger long enough on Angela to see how she feels about Sara’s costume, so we can only speculate. I would imagne that a black family in a predominantly white neighborhood would be conscious of race daily. One wonders if Angela tells her parents what she saw in school that day. One wonders what, if anything, her parents would do if she does.

And the one person who objects enough to Sara’s costume to take action, Mrs. Trankstill, doesn’t take the time to explain to her why what she’s done is wrong. It’s more important to squelch the embarrassing situation before it gets out of hand than it is to point out the error of the child’s ways – and sadly, that too, is far too often the case in many adult-child situations where the child does something out of ignorance.

Bormann writes this in a way that engages the reader’s imagination. Not everything is spelled out; she trusts the reader to fill in the blanks and allows for speculation, and it’s very much “show-don’t-tell,” which is quite satisfying. Powell, an Ignatz winner and Eisner nominee this year for his graphic novel Swallow Me Whole, gets the job done art-wise (except for the part about Angela). I like his use of hatching and cross-hatching.

Cakewalk is a gutsy attempt to depict the insidiousness of institutionalized racism in everday modern society, and it leaves me wondering what kind of person Sara will eventually grow up to be.

Next week is Bike to Work Week, where people around the country leave the cars at home and commute on bicycles for a change. Here in C-bus we’ve started the celebration a week early, so we put on twice as many events around town. I’ve had to bike out of necessity, but I’ve grown to really appreciate it for a whole bunch of reasons. That’s why I’ve put this print up now, during the B2WW festivities. If you’ve never biked to work before, you might wanna give it a try next week. It’ll change the way you look at commuting in general.

Here’s the official press release for Zulu Mech 1, the forthcoming webcomic developed by Wesley Snipes. It’ll debut at this year’s Book Expo America.

Will Smith and the Sci Fi (soon to be renamed Syfy) Channel will team up for a TV movie with an eye towards making it a series.

A new Zoe Saldana interview.

1)Post a poem by a woman of color. Your choice must be a poet who has written in the last forty years. Do your best to avoid the most anthologized, popular poets unless poetry is new territory for you. In that case, check out why the popular poets are well loved.

Finding a poem by a female comics creator of color turned out to be easier than I thought – and I didn’t have to search far! Nominated for two Glyph Comics Awards, Shatia Hamilton’s webcomic Fungus Grotto is something I’d never heard of before (though I do recall seeing her name over at the Ormes Society page). It’s a fantasy series done in the manga style that all the cool kids love these days, and it begins with this poem, which I’m only gonna link to because it’s pretty long and I don’t wanna have to type it all out.

2)Tell us why you like the poem you chose. Don’t worry about the technical aspects of writing poetry, devices or forms. Give us your reader’s response. How does it make you feel or what does it make you think about? What questions does it raise for you?

The poem sets the proper tone for the story to follow, which is about a human teenage girl who stumbles into an enchanted world that lies literally beneath her feet, populated with unusual characters. A familiar storytelling trope, perhaps, but FG doesn’t come across as a children’s story. (A proper comparison might be to Neil Gaiman’s Stardust.) The poem is cleverly composed in the sense that it starts off sounding sweet and innocent, before taking a sinister turn. The enchanted world lulls the reader into a false sense of security before revealing its hidden agenda, and indeed, many parallels to this can be found in nature. Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that FG is set in a forest.

The poem, even if it comes across as a bit cliched, definitely makes one wonder how its tone will be reflected in the story, what challenges the heroine will face, and how they’ll be overcome, if at all. People tend to forget that the fairy tales we all have grown up with over the generations have become sanitized and have had its rougher edges smoothed off. Much of modern children’s entertainment in America sticks to the middle of the road and makes a conscious and concerted effort to be as inoffensive and tame as possible. Though FG is not meant for young children, I would argue that it has more in common with those long-ago original incarnations of fairy tales, when parents were much less uptight about content.

3)If you are a poetry reader and you can recommend a contemporary woman poet of color, who do you recommend and why? I would really love to hear about emerging or lesser known poets. Introduce us to poets from around the world.

I am not a poetry reader of any kind (though I do own a book of Langston Hughes poetry) and I certainly don’t know of any black women poets outside of Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni, who everyone knows. As for FG, to be honest, it’s not the kind of comic that I could seriously get into, but I can attest to its superb art and excellent storytelling skill. Hamilton is immensely talented and deserves both her GCA nominations, and if you dig girls’ manga, then you should definitely give this a look.

Every time I think about quitting comics altogether, something comes along that makes me go “Wow, that rocks. I wanna see more of that.”

I give you Jennifer Crute. Please look at her comics and tell her how awesome they are.

MLK in science fiction

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Faces of Evil: Deathstroke

Georges Jeanty website

The Buffy artist draws this one-shot.

Amazing Spider-Man #583 2ND PRINTING

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Also this week:

Black Lightning: Year One #1, 2

Justice League of America #29, JLofA: Sanctuary. Written by McDuffie.

Stormwatch PHD #18

Tangent: Superman’s Reign #11 (of 12)

Spawn #188

Secret Invasion: War Machine TP

Squadron Supreme 2 #7

War Machine #2

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Also notable:

Dark Avengers #1

3 Geeks: Slab Madness #1 (of 3). Rich Koslowski’s paean to comics fandom continues with this new mini-series.

Star Trek Countdown #1. The prequel to the forthcoming film.

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Erik Larsen fires back at Marvel in their war of words regarding the Spidey/Obama story.

Here’s an interview with Battlestar Galactica star Kandyse McClure.

Two new Obama cartoons on the eve of his inauguration: one from 08 artist Dan Goldman, the other is a “remix” of the Spidey/Obama story.

“Jeez, man. JEEZ.”

Spike

Also: South African cartoonist Zapiro gets sued over a cartoon.

What makes this of particular interest to PCS and those who share our love of cool geek shit is that the webcomic is illustrated by Scott McCloud, of Understanding Comics fame. Definitely go check it out.

Google Chrome aims to be a bit of a revolutionary browser, and as such, the intro comic is 30 pages long or so. If you just want a quick rundown, Blogoscoped has a summary of what Chrome is all about.