I’m a real process junkie.  I love to see how artists work and will take any chance I can get to peer up under the hood to see how different artists get their creative engines to run.  So I thought I’d do an occasional post to share some my own process with you.  This one is a little more on the writer side than the pencil artist side, which is ironic, since I actually prefer the latter.

When I first started working on WORLD OF HURT, its original working title was “My Hands Are My Weapons.”   Actually, the ONLY thing I had was the title, I just had to find a story to go with it. 

I played with a few ideas before something started to coalesce around the basic Blaxploitation concept.   My initial idea for a strip in that vein could be summed up with the elevator pitch, “John Shaft and Bandit from Smokey And The Bandit, driving around and kicking ass.”  The basic outline of the character “Pastor” and his buddy “McCroy” emerged from that brainstorm.  Strangely enough, I couldn’t come up with any decent plots to work around that concept.  Fortunately, in a bit of serendipity, the Muse of Face-Kicking and Vehicular Carnage visited a couple of other guys at the same time, and they actually knew how to listen to her (Come to think of it, she may live at Chris’ house).  I worked with them for a while, and believe me, they’ll do a much better job with it than I ever could.  Also, I didn’t necessarily want to use the “Black Guy and White Guy Buddy Team” Paradigm.  At the time, Image Comics was publishing ‘76, a miniseries set in 1976 (natch) that featured two separate, unrelated stories, “Jackie Karma” and “Cool.”  Both stories featured a BGAWGBT, so that made it an easier choice to leave McCroy by the side of the road. 

My Hands Are My Weapons went through a few more permutations before I settled on what I thought would work: a pastiche of Blaxploitation and kung fu movies.  As the title implies, Pastor was going to be a master street fighter, well versed in the down-and-dirty and more esoteric forms of martial arts, so he would never use a gun.  Then, I ran into a few problems:

1)  I wanted to keep the strip more realistic than fantasy-oriented, so I didn’t want to strain the audiences’ suspension of disbelief by having Pastor beat impossible odds with kung fu alone.  This realization sunk in while I was watching Three The Hard Way, a later entry into the Blaxploitation genre, featuring Fred Williamson, Jim Brown and Jim Kelly.  Each actor is given a solo action set piece, which are all well done, but when the three tough guys get together at the end to storm the enemy compound, Kelly looks a little silly sneaking around dispatching his gun-wielding opponents with throwing stars and spinning back kicks while Williamson and Brown are hosing everyone down with automatic weapons fire.  At one point, an exasperated Brown pretty much thrusts a gun into Kelly’s hands and tells him to stop being so stupid.  I’m not saying Pastor always comes strapped.  Most of the time he still won’t use a gun.  Which leads me to my second problem.

2)  Once I settled on the idea of Pastor collecting favors as payment, he evolved into a strategic thinker, not just a fighter.  Of course Pastor knows how to handle himself in a scrap, but he tries to stay a step ahead of everyone, friends and enemies alike.  If that’s the case, are his hands really his primary weapon?

3)  Although I know, understand, and have a great affection for Blaxploitation movies, I only had a passing knowledge of kung fu flicks.  The kung fu fanbase can be as rabid as any subset of genre fans, so I didn’t want to fake it, for fear of RZA riding down with Method Man and the ghost of Ol’ Dirty Bastard to empty 36 Chambers into my skull.

My problem was that I thought I had a pretty nifty title and I was determined to shoehorn in a story to fit it.  Here’s a tip to all you creative types out there – Don’t do that.  It only creates massive headaches.

By the way, if you know anyone looking to buy the domain name myhandsaremyweapons.com, drop me a line.  I know someone who can give you a good deal on it.

- JEP

Welcome to the first, in what will become a recurring segment of WORLDOFHURTONLINE.COM, The Unsung Badmother******* Awards!

The Unsung Badmotherf****** Award recognizes Outstanding Achievements In The Field of Badassery Deserving Wider Recognition.  The Unsung Badmother****** is the guy who made a splash and kicked some ass, but remains largely forgotten by the masses.

The UBMF Award is named after the oft-quoted moment in the “Theme from Shaft” when Isaac Hayes is abruptly interrupted by his backup singers before he can fully extol the badass virtues of his man, Shaft.  If people remember nothing else about the movie “Shaft,” or Blaxploitation in general, they remember that line, and it immortalized Hayes and made John Shaft a cinematic icon.

Now, without further ado, I am proud to announce that the first recipient of the coveted Unsung BadMother****** Award is none other than…Avery Brooks as Hawk!  Take a bow, Mr. Brooks.

Um…actually, you don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do.  We still cool?

Cool.

Anyway, for those who may not know, Hawk debuted as a literary character in 1976 in “Promised Land,” one of the series of detective novels in the “Spenser” series written by Robert B. Parker.  Spenser, a tough, but smart, Boston private investigator, described Hawk thusly in his first appearance:

Shepard appeared from the door past the stairs. With him was a tall black man with a bald head and high cheekbones.  He had on a powder blue leisure suit and a pink silk shirt with a big collar.  The shirt was unbuttoned to the waist and the chest and stomach that showed were as hard and unadorned as ebony.  He took a pair of wraparound sunglasses from the breast pocket of the jacket and as he put them on, he stared at me over their rims until very slowly the lenses covered his eyes and he stared at me through them.

I looked back.  ”Hawk,” I said.

“Spenser.”

That ensemble sounds atrocious, even by 1976 standards, but only “the toughest muscleman Boston’s big boys could hire” could pull off a pink and powder-blue outfit and STILL seem dangerous.  As the above pull quote from the back cover of the novel indicates, Hawk worked as a freelance enforcer for the mob, but he had a history with Spenser, and would often come over to the side of the angels to assist the private detective.

In 1985, the television network, ABC, brought the “Spenser” novels from the page to the small screen with the series, Spenser: For Hire, with Robert Urich as Spenser and Avery Brooks as Hawk, with a markedly improved sense of fashion.   In Brooks’ depiction of Hawk, he maintained the clean-shaven dome, but he paired it with a goatee, which gave him a sense of devilish menace.  Hawk rocked the Big, Bald, Black Man With A Goatee look long before it became fashionable.  I started shaving my head in ‘91 and I still remember getting strange looks when I walked into Frisch’s Big Boy Restaurant in Fairborn, Ohio.  Now the BBBMWAG look is the default style for every Black tough guy in fiction, particularly comic books.  Heck, even Luke Cage ditched his signature Afro for a BBBMWAG. 

Avery Brooks completely inhabited the role of Hawk.  The man has presence.  He controlled the screen, and politely, but forcefully, walked off with every scene he was in.  If you YouTube Spenser: For Hire, you’ll find a series of clips dedicated to the best moments from the show.  Every single one of them has Hawk.  Every.single.one.

Brooks' Hawk and Robert Urich as Spenser

Hawk was a man of few words, and Brooks’ delivery of those lines with his precise diction wrapped in a thundering baritone, sold the intensity and conviction behind everything Hawk had to say.  The only thing that boomed louder than Hawk’s voice was the long-barreled .357 Colt Python that Hawk carried with him everywhere he went.  Hawk also was a master of “The Batman Grin.”  

The Last Thing You'll Ever See

“The Batman Grin” is that brief flash of a smile displayed by an otherwise stoic character that lets his opponent know he is absolutely and irrevocably fucked.  Hawk was a predator, and his smile was rarely a sign of mirth.  He was baring his teeth.  

In 1989, ABC spun Hawk into his own series entitled A Man Called Hawk.  It fit the “One Man With A Mysterious Past and Even More Mysterious Connections, Out For Justice,” theme that I loved so well in my youth.  Some of my favorite shows from the 1980s, like The Equalizer, Airwolf and Street Hawk (No relation, but YEAH, I SAID STREET HAWK!) carried this theme, and I obviously revisited it with WORLD OF HURT.  

A Man Called Hawk relocated the character from Boston to Washington, D.C..  With the move, Hawk’s fashion sense became a little less “wiseguy legbreaker” and more urban as he transitioned from sharkskin three-piece suits and skinny ties to patterned kufi hats and leather pants.  Although Hawk still worked as a bodyguard from time to time, he mostly left the mob contracts behind to focus on helping the little guy.  Hawk also developed a slightly philosophical edge as evidenced by circuituous, metaphysical conversations with his new confidante “Old Man” played by Shaft and Shaft’s Big Score alum, Moses Gunn. 

The series began as a midseason replacement and only lasted 13 episodes, partly because ABC scheduled A Man Called Hawk on Thursdays opposite the unstoppable juggernaut that was The Cosby Show.  Nobody, not even Hawk, could withstand The Coz.  Hawk’s brief time on the TV landscape is kind of sad, because how many dramatic series featuring a Black male lead can you name in the history of television?  I’ll give you a minute…

OK, I got the Kojak reboot with Ving Rhames and Day Break with Taye Diggs.  Anything else?

However, TV One has snagged the rights to re-air A Man Called Hawk, and on a good day you can catch a Hawk mini-marathon , so make sure to set your DVRs. 

Fortunately, Avery Brooks returned to television in 1993 as Commander – later Captain - Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  Deep Space Nine featured an insane, only-in-science-fiction concept about a planet full of White folks who viewed a Black man as a savior, sent to restore hope and to deliver them from darkness and fear.  They believed his destiny was to return their people to greatness after years spent under the rule of an oppressive, secretive regime.

Sorry, wrong picture.

But, yeah, he’s a Bad Mother******, too.

- JEP

You know I like to keep things positive here at WORLDOFHURTONLINE.COM.  Sure, the strip is in the middle of a murder mystery, but I try not to be too negative or overly critical in my blog posts.  WORLDOFHURTONLINE.COM is supposed to be a celebration of a genre, a style, and a moment in time.

But sometimes bullshit has to be called by its name.  Thankfully, Valerie D’Orazio at Occasional Superheroine sums up my thoughts about the matter quite nicely.

As a writer and producer for the animated series, Justice League, which featured some of the best Justice League stories in any form, Mr. McDuffie obviously demonstrated his familiarity with the property.  One would presume that Mr. McDuffie was tasked to bring that same skill, care, and craft to the comic book itself when he was assigned to write Justice League of America by DC Comics.  Mr. McDuffie ran fast and hard with that mandate, but seemed creatively hobbled time and time again by capricious editorial fiat.  Now they act surprised that he said his foot hurt.

- JEP