I fear no man, but I fear Jim Rugg. I fear him, because one day, he’s going to put Afrodisiac online, and immediately I’ll lose my title of “The Internet’s #1 Blaxploitation Webcomic!”
Yesterday, I gazed upon this, and wept:
Then, I saw this and cursed the heavens:
If you don’t know by now, the hardcover edition Afrodisiac, by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca ships this December from Adhouse Books. It will feature the collected Afrodisiac stories, mock covers like those above and an assorted assload of Awesomeness. Trust me, if you’re visiting this site, you’ll need this book in your life like you need oxygen!
So visit your local comic book retailer, look him or her…who am I kidding…look HIM dead in the eye and say “Afrodisiac. Order it. NOW! ISBN 978-1-935233-06-0.” If he throws you shade, or if you, like me, struggle to remember 13-digit ISBN numbers, then there’s always Amazon.
Today, I was wondering what I would do for my Friday blog. I actually had a piece on Luke Cage in the pipeline that I needed to finish, but my heart really wasn’t in it tonight. Thankfully, this week, I received two Blaxploitation movies that I had never seen before: Black Caesar and The Candy-Tangerine Man. I’d wanted to see both for a long time, but I had to show my respect to Fred Williamson first. So, while I thought about the gameplan for my Luke Cage article, I popped Black Caesar into the DVD player. Twenty minutes into it, I thought, “Why don’t I do a liveblog review of the movie?” I’d never done a liveblog before, but I figured I could kill two birds with one stone.
Therefore, I present to you, Black Caesar, the story of a Black shoe-shine boy who works himself up from errand boy for the Italian mafia, to the boss of the New York rackets, starring Fred Williamson, D’urville Martin, and Gloria Hendry,
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW.
00:32 - Caption “September 5,1953″
00:42 – Based on the outfits of the bystanders and the principals, I’m not fully convinced.
02:12 – The kid playing a young Tommy Gibbs, shoeshine boy, looks a bit too much like Chris Brown for me to root for him wholeheartedly.
03:15 - Director Larry Cohen is doing a nice job of keeping cars and other anachronistic details off-camera with smart shot selection, but it’s not obvious unless you’re looking for it.
04:51 - Nice creepy lighting in the stairwell.
05:44 – The cop starts roughing up and then frisks Tommy. Suddenly, there’s the sound of running water and the cop and the kid pause for a moment and look down. Was that meant to imply Tommy pissed himself?
05:55 - The cop on the take, named McKinney, is accusing young Tommy Gibbs of skimming some of his mob pay-off money. Love the righteous indignation from lil’ Chris Brown here. ”Look you fuckin’ ass, I didn’t take your money. You don’t get pissed at me!”
06:21 - They’re fighting and Tommy is down! The cop wails on him with his nightstick. Nice use of the trash can lid as a shield, Tommy, but, man, your ground game sucks. Who do you think you are? Kimbo Slice?
07:01 - Tommy’s laid up in a hospital with a broken leg chatting with Joe, his nerdy friend. Tommy’s going away to jail for a while after he heals up. Acting’s a little weak here, but it nicely sets up the friendship. He tells Joe to get laid while he’s away.
08:10 - Caption: “October 23, 1965″ Fred Williamson’s now playing the adult Tommy Gibbs. He limps into a barbershop where some mob goon is getting a shave from a Black barber.
08:32 – There’s never a good time to be a bigot, but you really don’t want to launch into a racist monologue while a Black man has a straight razor at your throat.
09:48 - Tommy’s holding the whole barbershop hostage while he toys with his prey. Williamson is his usual devilish and devious self, but there’s a nice, subtle air of desperation there too. This dude is hungry to prove himself.
11:41 - He’s cutting off the ear!
12:00 - New scene. There goes the ear into the pasta of the mob boss who called the hit. ”I thought you could use some more MEAT in your sauce.”
13:47 – Tommy lays down a nice rap on why he’d be a perfect contract hit man for the mob. ”I got a built in disguise. They never look at me. They never look at my face, my nose, my lame foot. All they know is that I’m Black.” It reminds me of the film Dirty Pretty Things (2002), with its theme of an ever-present, but still unseen, underclass of immigrant servants.
14:10 - Tommy’s always hustling.
14:33 - Montage of James Brown’s “The Boss” over a sweet montage of Tommy’s rise to power! Sing it! ”I’ve paid the cost to be the boss!” Just noticed “Chairmen Of The Board” on the marquee behind Tommy in the picture below as he surveys his domain. Nice touch. Real nice touch.
15:55 - Love Williamson’s rueful glance at the neon shoe sign.
16:08 - D’urville Martin as a phony, corrupt preacher, Reverend Rufus.
17:47 - Gibbs has got himself a shiny new mob lawyer and he’s laying out his plan to consolidate his power by stealing the McGuffin some mob ledgers.
18:15 - More James Brown incidental music is always welcome. In the early 1990s, Das EFX jacked this instrumental for their debut song, ”They Want EFX.”
18:58 - Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Ms. Gloria Hendry.
20:57 – Tommy rubs out the mob accountant, two gangsters and takes the ledgers. ”You know what this is? Power. Political power!”
23:22 - The tension between Gibbs and McKinney, now a police captain, who crippled him as a kid, is really powerful. Great stuff by Williamson, lulling him into a false sense of security. “I want him nice and fat before I kill him.”
25:59 – Tommy buys the lawyer’s apartment, clothes, and everything in it, including his maid, out from under him. His wife seems haughty, highly medicated, and slightly attracted to Tommy, despite her better judgment.
27:47 - Just snatched the leopard shawl off the shoulders of the lawyer’s wife on their way out the door. Lady, he said EVERYTHING! Awesome, sometimes subtle, socio-political subtext throughout! There are a lot of dog whistles for Black folks.
30:01 – Sweet twist with the maid.
34:46 – Tommy can lay a trap like a spider. Most of the time, the last thing his victims see is his smile, but a surprising bit of mercy for the old mobster who took a chance on him. Not much, but some.
39:06 – There goes the competition and one delicious looking turkey. Tommy and his boys literally turned the pool into a bloodbath.
41:07 – ”Everybody’s a liberal nowadays, McKinney. Get with it.” *Sigh* How times have changed.
43:55 - ”No” means “No,” Tommy. Remember that.
45:10 - The great Julius Harris as Tommy’s estranged father. He was a really underestimated character actor. I didn’t realize how much range he had. For the first time, Tommy seems rattled.
49:41 - Gloria Hendry is RIPPED!
52:35 - D’urville Martin’s been playing a crooked preacher, and you get the feeling that this is the first time he’s had to pray and really mean it.
55:54 - Re: The lawyer’s wife being attracted to Tommy. I was right.
56:41 – Uh-oh! Tommy made Joe promise that he’d get laid, but I don’t think he meant like this.
102:01 – Well I’ll be. There really is a horse and buggy drive-by shooting in this movie.
102:29 – Even the baby’s smart enough not to trust McKinney.
104:43 – Great framing with that shot. Williamson could have used it to get himself cast as James Bond.
105:01 -Gloria Hendry’s way hotter with her natural hair. She’s got fantastic skin, too.
106:29 – I wish movies today were ballsy enough to embrace nudity.
108:03 – Evocative use of the hand-held camera.
111:58 – That is one shoddy hit. It’s like they’re hunting deer with a bow. I guess they’re counting on Tommy bounding off into the brush where they’ll recover the body on they’re own sweet time.
113:34 – Tommy just garrotted (yes, that is a word) one of the would-be assassins with his tie. Even with a bullet in his gut, Tommy Gibbs is still one bad dude.
115:45 – Love how Tommy incredulous is once he realizes that Rufus has actually turned into a real man of faith.
119:41 – Is she really going to let her husband walk into a trap?
123:40 – Finally the stand-off with McKinney. Anytime a villain tells the protagonist to kneel, it never ends well for them. Just ask Zod.
125:43 – Shoeshine box-fu.
128:16 – Very powerful scene with Tommy painting McKinney in blackface and pistol-whipping him. A lot of raw, genuine emotion from Williamson here.
129:56 – Whereas Curtis Mayfield’s score for Super Fly was compared to a Greek chorus, providing a counterpoint to the action, James Brown’s score for Black Caesar underlines the scene in very blunt terms.
131:44 – The mighty Tommy Gibbs brought low by common teenage street thugs. Meanwhile, the valued ledgers that everybody lied, fought, and died for are left scattered in the trash, their significance, or ultimately, their insignifance, exposed and ignored by the hoodlums.
CONCLUSION: This was a really good movie. It was solidly acted throughout, and the director, Larry Cohen, was willing to take some chances that really paid off. This is truly Fred Williamson at his best, because he was called on to bring sympathy to an often unsympathetic character and he knocked it out the park. Despite his easy smile, there’s a lot of sadness and hunger for power and respect that drives him. Also, Fred Williamson has charisma to burn. If you could turn it into an alternative energy source, you could light up Las Vegas for a year. Black Caesar comes highly recommended.
FACT: Art Lund would have been one of my Top 5 Blaxploitation Villains if I had seen "Black Caesar" before I compiled my list. #
@StephenRL Did you try to contact me on Facebook? I just got a "Chat history cannot be retrieved" message when I pulled up the IM box. #
@gunshowcomic The conclusion of "Crab's Lost Love" was so sweet, it almost made me cry. Stop that sentimental crap, dammit! #
I'm digging my new profile pic. I think I might work on changing my background design this weekend, time permitting. #
Today, a liveblog review of "Black Caesar" starring the legendary Fred Williamson. #
Just finished my Friday post. It's a liveblog review, and has everything from MMA references to shoeshinebox-fu. http://www.worldofhurtonline.com#
I didn't know that the dude from "District 9" is playing "Howlin' Mad" Murdoch in the new "A-Team" movie? That's really inspired casting! #
@GangStarrGirl Normally do an automatic Adam's apple check on anyone compelled to use "Lady" in their name, but DAMN, ain't no WAY she's 40! in reply to GangStarrGirl#
@GangStarrGirl Any smug hipster trying to sport that shirt "ironically" deserves any beatdowns that come his way. Hell, ANYONE wearing it… in reply to GangStarrGirl#
I'll cuss up a storm in my strips, because I try to maintain a certain fidelity to the era and the genre, but… http://bit.ly/13TCNQ#
@GangStarrGirl "The Cleveland Show" was OK. Sanaa Lathan's comedic timing is off. Aisha Tyler or either of FRANGELA would have nailed it. in reply to GangStarrGirl#
I was informed by my fiancee that my "Black Caesar" and "Candy Tangerine Man" DVDs arrived in the mail today. Solid! #
…or Space-Time Continuum-Shattering Swipe File? You decide!
Earth X was a Marvel Comics limited series, based on a concept by Alex Rossand Jim Krueger. The series was published in 1999. John Paul Leon illustrated the series, and his rendition of Wolverine is below:
I vote for blatant swipe, since I wouldn’t put it past Alex Ross to have built a time machine in the present, just to take this photo to himself in 1999. Why? Because, A) the freakishly talented Alex Ross is big on photo reference, and B) he’s sitting on Uncle Scrooge-esque piles of money, which he could easily replenish in an afternoon by selling a Battle Of The Planets diptych or his thumbnail sketches of Space Ghost. Hell, he and his brother built a full-size replica of the Batmobile from a 1950 Studebaker, for Pete’s sake, so with his ability to crank out 50 fully painted covers before breakfast, bending the laws of physics would be a slow day for Alex Ross.
- JEP
(Special thanks to The Juice* for the mug shot link.)
As I’ve said before, despite the theme and subject matter of the webcomic, WORLD OF HURT, I try to keep my blog a fairly upbeat. I talk about things I like and enjoy, because I want to share a more positive experience with my readers. However, there occasionally comes a time when I must depart from my desired path and get a little critical.
Recently, I discovered Obama Action Comics!, a webcomic by Jason Buckley. Buckley describes it as a “blaxploitation webcomic featuring an Obama action figure.” Now anybody who knows me knows that I’m a bleeding heart liberal and two of my biggest passions are comic books and politics. If you check my Facebook status from today, you’ll find me waxing on about creating a Thundarr, the Barbarian comic, and admonishing Sen. Harry Reid to pull the seniority and chairmanships of any Democrat that would support a Republican filibuster of the healthcare reform bill. Now, it would seem that this would be the perfect webcomic for me, especially since Buckley is a fellow progressive. Sadly, as promising as the idea is, the execution leaves a little to be desired.
Now this may seem like a bit of territorial pissing, since I have “The Internet’s #1 Blaxploitation Webcomic,” a tongue-in-cheek title I bestowed on WORLD OF HURTwhen I believed there were no other Blaxploitation-themed webcomics on the internet. Since then, I have discovered John Aston’s gritty and innovative Rachel Rage, and Maurice Fontenot’s humorous Ghost Pimp. I have corresponded with and befriended both creators and have actively supported and promoted their work. Obama Action Comics’creator, Jason Buckley also seems like a guy with whom I’d have a great time. We seem to share the same liberal philosopy. I even support Buckley’s outrage over President Obama’s frustratingly glacial progress, or outright reversal, on some of his campain promises, but in terms of “Blaxploitation” and “webcomics,”…Dude, you’re doing it wrong.
There’s nothing inherently “Blaxploitation,” or humorous, about a Black man cussing or threatening violence. The best kind of celebrity satire plays off or, or exaggerates, the audience’s established perceptions of that person, and Jason Buckley’s depiction of Barack Obama as a violent, angry Black man is merely a caricature of a stereotype. This Barack Obama is every Samuel L. Jackson and Dave Chappelle soundbite wrapped up in a presidential seal. Buckley himself states, ”I doubt [Barack Obama] goes around pistol whipping right wing talk radio douchebags, let alone referring to them as douchebags. Even in private, he probably has a very clean mouth.”
The image of the first Black President of the United States threatening to “choke a bitch,” even presented satirically from a fellow progressive, just feeds into the paranoid fantasies from the conservatives about how threatening Black men are. It is only because these fantasies are so powerful, insidious, and deeply rooted in the fabric of the American subconscious, that people could even entertain the notion that Barack Obama would want to kill their grandmothers via health insurance “death panels.” The humor is occasionally short-circuited by Buckley’s use of conservative frames to portray his subjects, such as the impression of Vice-President Joe Biden as a man who must be muzzled.
In terms of the webcomic goes, it’s a fumetti. Buckley admits that he is using borrowed images, which he reuses liberally (no pun intended) throughout the course of the strip. That makes it basically the photographic equivalent of a sprite comic, which are generally held in lesser regard in the webcomics community, because a) you’re merely re-contextualizing images that someone else took the time to create, and b) the relatively low level of skill required to do so.
I honestly believe Jason Buckley has a solid premise here, and I cannot find any fault with his passion for his work or subject matter. A serial editorial webcomic that speaks painful truth to power about a president you want to believe in would be a fresh and welcome voice in the webcomic community. However, Obama Action Comics! seems a little obvious and facile in its humor, and when you have to read the author’s blog notes to divine whether his intent was to support or vilify his subject, it is questionable whether the jokes are hitting their target.
Creepy! Can you find what's wrong (SERIOUSLY wrong) with this picture?http://bit.ly/HlYZh #
@hannibaltabu Re: Michael Steele. The fool doesn't realize he was just an affirmative action hire. Oh, the delicious irony! in reply to hannibaltabu#
1876-Alfred Nobel patents dynamite; makes things explode. 2009-Nobel Committee grants peace prize to Obama; right-wingers heads explode. #
@shawtyslim Throw in the word "club" and I guess R. Kelly has to release instrumentals next year, 'cause that's his entire vocabulary. in reply to shawtyslim#
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize affirms America's power, when a simple shift in how we engage the world is viewed as a stride toward world peace. #
Rep. Alan Grayson ROCKS! NEVER back down! NEVER apologize! This is what a REAL Democrat looks like! http://lilurl.com/?ctvdg#
I want to rename the "Weekly Twitter Updates" re-cap on my website. Any suggestions around the Blaxploitation theme? #
I hope they find water on the moon, and I'm curious about what footage of the impact will look like. #
Nobel Peace Prize Committee to George W. Bush: Suck my balls! #
@thomaslennon You need a Verified Account logo used on celebrity Twitter accounts like PeeWee Herman's. Dangle's bigger than PeeWee anyday! in reply to thomaslennon#
@cophotog Gracias! I had tons of them early on. They went away for a while, but now the zombies Twitters are rising from the grave again. in reply to cophotog#
@cophotog That sounded funny. Not to imply that you are, 'cause I know you, man! You just seem up on all things Twitter and whatnot. in reply to cophotog#
@cophotog Is there a technical name for these spam Twitter accounts that show up out of nowhere to follow you, then disappear? "Spitter?" in reply to cophotog#
@tbtjuice Was one of the brainwashed women Oprah, because she's responsible for foisting him on the public? in reply to tbtjuice#
I'm currently the third result on Google for the phrase "world of hurt." Just gotta knock The Drive-By Truckers from the top spot. #
Last night, I watched "Black Santa's Revenge," starring Ken Foree. Director/creator, David Walker, describes it as… http://bit.ly/UKNDb#
Last night, I watched "Black Santa's Revenge," starring Ken Foree. Director/creator, David Walker, describes it… http://bit.ly/2Xmk0F#
Sen. Harry Reid's brand of spineless, tail-tucking "leadership" is useless to the Democratic Party, but it's a godsend to the Republicans. #
@marcbernardin You obviously crushed those followers and drove them before you. Now you have to listen for the lamentation of their women. in reply to marcbernardin#
RT @AmericaBlog: Michelle Obama's Ancestors 14-Year-Old Slave Girl and White Slave Owner: F.. http://bit.ly/jEVMM #p2#
Blaxploitation Films Back In Vogue? – "If anything, this was a genre that was never exploited enough."… http://bit.ly/2e9v4p#
Do you think Prince owns a regular pair of jeans and a t-shirt? I think he lounges around the house in purple ermine PJs and full make-up. #
@hannibaltabu How's a guy named "Hannibal Tabu" gonna look like "Newman?" Either name invites a world of possibilities, none of 'em Newman. in reply to hannibaltabu#
@hannibaltabu In typical Marvel fashion, they'll release the next round of Deadpool books months AFTER the film is in theaters. in reply to hannibaltabu#
Yesterday was the six month anniversary of the day WORLD OF HURT went live. I should have picked up a cake… #
I find the fact that Brett Favre is the only quarterback who has defeated every NFL team to be a uniquely fascinating statistic. #
@russbynum A sunsword is better than a lightsaber, since Thundarr is the only one who can use it, and no stupid midichlorians in "Thundarr." in reply to russbynum#
@Showing_Out Gucci Mane and Plies on the same song? Haven't seen a supergroup like that since Steppin' Fetchit teamed with Amos & Andy. in reply to Showing_Out#
Deep down, I think Sen. Lindsay Graham, is a principled man, but the way he lurches from reasoned policy to wingnuttery is a bit bipolar. #
I tend to get a little long-winded in my Friday blog posts, so I’m gonna keep this short and sweet. Today, you don’t need to be sitting in front of your computer screen reading what I have to say about Blaxploitation. You need to be out there experiencing it for yourself at your local movie house, because the new film Black Dynamiteopens nationwide today.
Remember, if this flick does well, then we can bring more attention we can bring to this genre that we know and love so much.
So what are you waitin’ for? If you’re at home reading this, you need to be headed out the door and if you’re at work, score some tickets from Fandango and avoid the lines. Either way, quit draggin’ ass and get gone.
@BrianLynch "A sexy adventure movie about a few hookers who go looking for the legendary heart of gold?" I'd buy THAT for a dollar! in reply to BrianLynch#
"HURT" SO GOOD, SO FAR…We celebrate six-months on the Internet with, what else, a new strip! http://bit.ly/1vSWm#
