The other day, I decided to stop at my neighborhood video store while I was waiting for the pizza joint next door to finish my vegetarian calzone. While skimming the DVDs for sale in the “4 for $20″ discount rack, I came across Adopted, a 2009 mockumentary written by, and starring, Pauly Shore. According to the synopsis offered by IMDB, the target of Pauly’s scorn was “…the international interest in Celebrity Adoptions, and the debate that surrounds these transactions on both sides of the Atlantic.” Of course, subtle social satire has always been Pauly Shore’s strong suit, which is why the image for the DVD cover was selected with such care. I offer it and one other image without further comment, ’cause I’ve already wasted one hundred twenty-three words on Pauly Shore:
I always imagined that one of the things that established the public’s affection toward the Avengers or the Fantastic Four vs. their antipathy toward the X-Men was not necessarily the presence of mutants or monstrous looking team members, it was accountability. When Krang or Galactus destroyed a substantial section of Brooklyn after a battle with either team, the public knew where to find them to learn the details of the incident, or one could easily imagine an after-action report or press conference by Captain America or Mr. Fantastic to let people know what happened. The X-Men would merely disappear, leaving millions of dollars worth of property damage behind with no explanation.
When Luke Cage joined the New Avengers, he stated to Captain America that he wanted to “try new ways of doing things” and that he wanted “to be heard.” Given these conditions of his acceptance, it seemed to make sense that Luke, ever on his grind, could have offered to assume the role of public relations officer for the Avengers. With his bold personality, arguably the least publicly known member of the New Avengers could use this position to build relations with the press to become the face and voice of the world’s premiere superhero team. The Luke Cage who decided to become a “Hero For Hire” would parlay that attention and success into other avenues. Luke Cage, Hero For Hire would start a clothing line. Just as Tommy Hilfiger made red, white and blue his signature colors, deep blue and maize could be his. He would grow that into a sportswear line, like UnderArmour, because honestly, those fit and designs of most UnderArmour athletic gear really mirrors what superheroes would wear anyway. Luke Cage, Hero For Hire, who once teamed with the world’s preeminent martial artist would sponsor mixed martial artists (”Cage Fighters,” anyone). For extra exposure, Luke might even wear different items from his clothing line on missions or during the press conferences, which, while not establishing a specific costume or uniform for him, the specific colors would make him readily identifiable and finally get him out of wearing the wifebeater all the time.
Luke Cage, was a man, who in his most desperate hour–cold, alone, broke, and a fugitive from the law– saw opportunity and took it. Luke Cage, Hero For Hire would not be standing around as the only guy on his team wearing clothing with POCKETS, asking somebody if he could borrow a dollar:
He may have plastic or a PayPal account, but Luke is old school, and he would always have a stack of cash on his person, because he would remember the desperate, lean times when he was broke. More than likely, when asked for a dollar, Luke would pull out a knot, peel off a hundred, and ask Tony if he had change. Given Luke’s history, I also can’t imagine him deciding to live on principle, literally and figuratively, now that he has a wife and child to provide for financially:
In the above sequence, from New Avengers: Vol II #7, Victoria Hand distributes the team’s first paychecks to them. Luke refuses, claiming that the money will make him beholden to Captain America and he doesn’t want his team to be answerable to anyone, even Captain America. Now remember, earlier Luke was willing to hire the aforementioned Victoria Hand, over his own wife’s objections, because Captain America vouched for her. So, Bendis’ Cage will gladly do what Cap says for free, but he won’t take a paycheck for it? That doesn’t make any sense. As a result of the paycheck situation, Jessica tries to have a private conversation with Luke over their family’s financial situation, but Luke elects to have the discussion in front of his team members. Jessica then reveals the embarassing truth that the Cage-Jones family is broke. In the above scenarios, Bendis’ interpretation of Luke Cage makes the most significant departure from the character’s established history.
Luke Cage is a hustler in the most positive interpretation of that word. He’s a street entrepreneur. It’s central to his character. After all, the title of his original series was Luke Cage, Hero For Hire. He’s the type of guy who is always looking for the angle. He’ll search for a way to make the most of his present circumstances, while keeping one eye on the horizon for the next opportunity. The above scene from the first issue of Luke Cage: Hero For Hire was his “I-shall-become-a-bat” moment. It was not only the first time he put on his costume,but it established that from the outset, Luke was a savvy businessman who intuitively understood the power of marketing.
Through the years, readers have mocked Luke Cage’s metal headband and yellow shirt with the butterfly collar, but Luke was always in on the joke, too. Luke recognized that superheroes were popular, and with his newfound abilities, he could capitalize on the public’s fascination with them to make money. He knew the costume was “hokey” the moment he put it on, but also knew he was selling the image of a superhero that anybody could hire. If that was his image — his brand –then he needed to look the part. Therefore, Luke used his meager reward money to satisfy his most immediate need for accomodations and then INVESTED the rest into funding his innovative business venture as a hero for hire. Without a bolt of cloth made from unstable molecules or Peter Parker’s sartorial skills, he bought a combination of off-the-rack pieces and assembled a makeshift costume.
In the Marvel Universe, prior to his affiliation with the Avengers, Luke Cage operated on a fairly limited scale. Although his base of operations was New York City where most of the Marvel Universe’s hereos are based and he enjoyed regular interactions with them, Luke’s own influence and reputation was fairly regional, with a few notable exceptions. Although the Avengers may offer a steady paycheck, health insurance, and the occasional belly rub by Captain America, it seemed more likely that Luke Cage would view his stint in the Avengers as a stepping stone to new opportunities and a way to build his profile on an international stage.
As I see it, the closest real-life parallel to Luke Cage is 50 Cent. 50 Cent came up hard, and had an extensive criminal history, which along with his well-received mixtapes, earned him street cred with the underground hip-hop community. His street cred was cemented by surviving an attempted assassination attempt, and the nine bullets he took that nearly took his life became in integral part of his biography. Historically, part of the allure of Black music with White America, from the blues to jazz to hip-hop, has been the aura of danger, the forbidden, and the illicit that surrounded it. 50 Cent understood that, and used his business savvy to package his muscular frame, alpha male swagger, and violent history into a carefully calibrated brand to become a platinum-selling artist. At every stage of success, 50 Cent pushed this brand and fine-tuned the image. 50 Cent sold a thug image, but thugs don’t sell flavored water franchises to Fortune 500 companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. Hustlers do that. That should be Luke Cage in a nutshell, except replace “thug” with “superhero.”
One of the principle obligations of a writer is to tell a good story with characters that people care about. In this regard, Brian Michael Bendis has always been tremendously successful. Finding and developing one’s unique voice for on character who has a long, established history must be one of the special challenges for writers of serialized fiction. However, I do believe that writing for a Black character requires a hard-earned understanding of the interior life of a Black man. I say “hard-earned,” not because you have to be Black to write Black characters, but because that interior life is not something Black men often discuss in frank, open terms, among outsiders or even among ourselves. It’s not what we say, but how we say it. It’s not something you’ll find in most of pop culture. Sometimes it can be dominated with feelings of shame and fear that we mask with bravado or bluster. It’s the constant weight of the realization that if the next man screws up, it’s a reflection on that person, but if you screw up, it can easily become an indictment of an entire race. It’s the hidden truths and brutal pain that we respond to in the humor of Richard Pryor or vintage Eddie Murphy It’s an interior life that is symbolized by the sharp, but casual nods we give to other Black men when we pass each other on the street, sometimes accompanied with a “Wassup?” That other guy may otherwise be a complete stranger, but the nod is a silent acknowledgment of a shared experience that says, “I don’t know who you are, but I know you.”
It’s an understanding that’s hard-earned, but it can be uncovered. In the director’s commentary to Foxy Brown, the film’s writer/director, Jack Hill exhibits well-deserved pride over the speech Foxy’s brother, Link (Antonio Fargas) delivers to justify his life of crime. Is Link right? No, he doesn’t have to be. He’s a character in a movie, not a walking polemic. Hill did his research, and using James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time as a resource, gave voice to a frustration that was, and sadly still is, echoed by young Black men around the country. There shouldn’t be any “politically correct” way to write Black characters, because that thinking usually leads to perfect paragons of virtue, who tend to be perfectly boring. As the film’s writer, Hill’s had no responsibility to make Link perfect and uplifting, but he did have an obligation to make Link’s voice and ideology authentic to who the character was.
If you’ve been following the weather-related news lately, then you know the southeast United States has been hit pretty hard by snow and ice. Here in Columbia, South Carolina, we got backhanded pretty hard by the frigid slap of Mother Nature, also. Businesses and schools were closed due to the hazardous driving conditions. Nevertheless, through rain, through snow, through sleet, and hail, The Internet’s #1 Blaxploitation Webcomic was intent on delivering its weekly dose of mayhem and drama.
However on Sunday, a high probability of a cuteness-related delay entered the picture when we got a new puppy:
He’s a rescue dog, who’s a beagle, hound, snipe, Holstein, whatever mix…basically a mutt. My wife and I don’t have a name picked out yet. He’s 12 weeks old and weighs about 15 pounds. Also , judging by the size of those feet he’s going to be pretty big, so we were considering “Major” after Rip Kirby’s Saint Bernard or ”Truck,” because he’s going to be a load and because his favorite album is Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul. However, given his obsession with eating leaves of all kind, the lead name right now is ”Folie,” which is short for “foliage.”
David Walker is a hard-charging multi-hyphenate. Most recently, you might have known him for his work on the Blaxploitation Star Wars mockumentary, Blackstar Warrior, but he’s also a director, producer, author, movie reviewer, MSN.com contributor, comic book writer, magazine publisher, businessman, and radio personality. He’s driven, fearless, smart, dead-serious about his work, but still funny as hell and personable. Also, David Walker literally wrote the book on Blaxploitation…two of them to be exact, REFLECTIONS ON BLAXPLOITATION: ACTORS AND DIRECTS SPEAK and BADAZZ MOFO’S BOOK OF BLAXPLOITATION, VOLUME ONE. David has multiple creative pies in the oven at any given time, and they all come out tasting delicious. In short, while you’re still talking about it, he’s BEEN about it. On the web, you can find him at BadAzzMoFo.com and MissingReel.com: The New Home of Grindhouse History.
David Walker’s most recent project is the book, WHY’S THE BROTHA GOTTA DIE?, a collection of essays on the propensity for Black characters in film to die ignominious, useless deaths. The next thing I want him to write is an introduction for a WORLD OF HURT collection, because I respect the fact that he helped keep the flame of old school Black cinema alive when most other folks had written it off.
I first became familiar with your work through your website, BadAzzMoFo.com, However, the site had its origins as the late, lamented magazine, BadAzz MoFo, which you created, published, wrote extensively for, and pretty much ran as one-man operation. BadAzz MoFo.com celebrates “pop culture at its baddest,” but the magazine’s basic focus was the Blaxploitation film movement of the 1970s. It’s obvious that you have a fascination with cinema in general, but what started your love affair with Blaxploitation, in particular?
Growing up in the 1970s, I was aware of blaxploitation films mostly through the things I would see in Ebony and Jet magazines, which my grandparents had subscriptions to (whose grandparents didn’t?). And there was also the music. I remember my cousin and I looking at his dad’s Shaft soundtrack album, and just dying to see the movie. The album cover has that image of Richard Roundtree crashing through the window with his gun blazing, and we were fascinated by it, because we had never seen anything like it before.
So, in a weird way, my first knowledge of blaxploitation didn’t even come from the films themselves. My love of the genre really started with Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon. Most people wouldn’t consider that a blaxploitation films, but it was one of the first films I actually saw with a totally badass black guy. Honestly, it was Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon that led me to Jim Kelly in Black Belt Jones and Three the Hard Way, and that helped open the floodgates.
In your opinion, what’s the biggest misconception people have about Blaxploitation?
There are so many misconceptions, but the first that comes to mind is the belief that these films were bad and portrayed blacks in negative ways. Sure, not all the films were good – I mean many of them really sucked. And some were nothing but a bunch of clichés and stereotypes, but the same can be said for all film genres. You don’t have to look hard to find some great blaxploitation films, and by “great” I mean films that are entertaining or possibly even provocative. The key is to get past all the stigmas and negative connotations of the term blaxploitation itself.
You just released the book, WHY’S THE BROTHA GOTTA DIE? through Lulu.com. The book is all about the cinematic trope of the “Disposable Brotha—the black characters that get bumped off in genre movies.” Tell us a little about the origins of the book and what it was about the topic that compelled you to make it the first all-new BadAzz MoFo production to be released in five years?
The origin of the book itself goes back to my childhood, sitting around with my friends and cousins, talking about how the black guy always got killed in the movies. It seemed like all the movies we loved had a black guy getting killed (Planet of the Apes, Alien, The Omega Man, etc.). And of course, there were the films with no black people at all – Star Wars, Logan’s Run, but that’s a topic for another book. Back when I was still publishing BadAzz MoFo as a magazine, I ran a piece about the black guy getting killed in movies. I always wanted to revisit that subject, only with something more in depth. And I really wanted to examine why black guys got killed in the movies. Over the years, I talked with various actors and filmmakers about the subject, as well as my friends, and even random strangers who I met. In many ways, the book is a culmination of those conversations, but it was also part of my obsession with history and the psychological perceptions of black people in this society. The cliché of the black guy getting killed in movies is a perpetuation of the notion that black life is cheap, and that goes back to the days of slavery. I wanted to explain to people, in the language of BadAzz MoFo, how Jim Kelly getting killed in Enter the Dragon was connected to everything from slavery to the Civil War to Reconstruction and even the Three-fifths Compromise.
My decision to put out WHY’S THE BROTHA GOTTA DIE? was two-fold. First, I wanted to do something to mark the 15th anniversary of BadAzz MoFo. It needed to be something that was in line with the origins of the publication, but wasn’t just a collection of old shit. I had no interest in simply reprinting old stuff, so even though the book covers a topic we explored in the original magazine, all the content is new. The other thing that motivated me to do the book was that I’m getting reading to self-publish my first novel, and I wanted to check out some of the print-on-demand options that were out there. Before I did the book through Lulu, I did a test run with this new machine from HP, but I wasn’t happy with the results. I went through Lulu, but I also have problems with them. I can’t imagine doing my upcoming novel through them, that’s for sure.
The magazine, BadAzz MoFo, featured some wonderful interviews with some of the legends of Blaxploitation and some of its forgotten players who still had interesting tales to tell, such as John Daniels of The Candy Tangerine Man.
What was your favorite interview?
Most of the interviews had been filmed as part of documentary I was making back in the 1990s. That whole experience was one of the best of my life, and it is difficult to narrow down any one interview as my favorite, because I have so many stories about how the interview came to be, what happened while I was at the house of whoever I was interviewing – you name it. But all of that said, the best connection I made with anyone was with Ron O’Neal. I’d like to think that we came away from the experience as friends. And we had seriously talked about doing a film together. His death devastated me. I also got to know Rudy Ray Moore fairly well. We didn’t hit it off that much during the interview, but he was the person I saw the most after the fact. I was hanging out with him at a film festival in Seattle less than a year before he died, and we had a great conversation. People never took Rudy that seriously, but the man was so smart and so cool and so full of information. I think people saw him as being little more than a dirty comedian, but the guy was so much more than that. If you look at Rudy’s movies, they are essentially the same as the black cast movies of the 1930s and 40s. You can see how much he was influenced by the “colored only” entertainment of the past, and the way he translated it to the 1970s was pretty amazing.
What was your toughest?
Jim Brown was difficult. The man is more intimidating in real life than you can imagine. He picks his words so carefully, and he expects you to do the same. I remember he wouldn’t even answer a question until I defined what being “black” meant. My interview with William Marshall was also difficult, but for other reasons. I had some technical problems with the equipment, and though I couldn’t say for sure at the time, he had Alzheimer’s. He wasn’t that far gone at the time, but still, I felt very uncertain about interviewing him. But his wife was very supportive, and he seemed very enthused to talk to me. And when the interview was over, there was a drive-by shooting at the house next door to his. I also interviewed Max Julien. For a variety of reasons his interview never made it in the documentary, and I never bothered to publish it. Max is a great guy, and over the years we had some incredible conversations, but again, for a variety of reasons, I never used the actual interview. But the worst interview I’ve ever conducted in my life would have to be Jamaa Fanaka. And keep in mind that in addition to the blaxploitation interviews, I’ve had hundreds of conversations, with everyone from Ice Cube to Nicholas Cage to Jet Li to Harry Reams to Peter Fonda – I think you get my point. But everything about that interview with Fanaka was terrible and pretty much useless.
Who do you wish you could have interviewed?
Back when I was making my documentary I had the opportunity to talk to some people but we never did a real interview. Ossie Davis had agreed to narrate the film, but that never came to be. I had a great conversation with Calvin Lockhart, but he was living in the Bahamas or somewhere like that, and we couldn’t make it work out in terms of filming. I really wish I had interviewed Dick Anthony Williams. We had some great conversations on the phone, and he was willing to do an interview, but for some reason it never happened. I tried to get Samuel Z. Arkoff of American International Pictures, but he was sick at the time. And even though I busted my ass, I never got to interview Gordon Parks Sr. or Isaac Hayes, both of which I really regret. Other than that, it is all people who were already dead – Rosalind Cash, D’urville Martin, Gordon Parks Jr. I don’t give a shit that I never interviewed Richard Roundtree of Pam Grier, both of whom were very rude to me. And Roger Mosely was the most unpleasant person I have ever dealt with.
Your love of comic books was also evident in BadAzz MoFo. “Black Santa’s Revenge,” which you adapted as a short film of the same name featuring Ken (The Devil’s Rejects) Foree, had its origins as a comic that you wrote for the magazine. Jim Mahfood (Grrl Scouts) was even a frequent contributor to BadAzz Mofo.
Growing up, what were some of your favorite comic book characters?
I loved Batman, but pretty much hated DC. If you put a DC comic in front of me and it didn’t have Batman, fuhgetaboutit. I loved Marvel. And I still prefer Marvel characters over DC. Of course, Spider-Man is my favorite Marvel character, but I was big into the kung-fu guys – Shang Chi, Iron Fist, Sons of the Tiger. I liked Luke Cage, even though me and my friends could not take him seriously. Two of my favorite comics as a kid were Marvel Two-in-One and Marvel Team-Up, because I always loved when The Thing or Spider-Man teamed up with other characters. It seemed like you were getting more for your thirty-five cents.
There used to be a time when I didn’t understand how comic artists/writers could NOT make a regular pilgrimage to the comic shops. However, as I’ve gotten older, my tastes have changed and it’s much less of a habit. Do you still read comics, and if so, what titles do you pick up?
I still read comics, but I’m not a regular reader, and there are no titles that I buy every month (those things are expensive). For the most part I read stuff that is recommended to me, either by comic creators that I know and respect, or by friends whose taste doesn’t totally suck. I tend to go more with writers than anything else. I will read anything by Brian Michael Bendis, and not just because he is a friend. I believe he is one of the best, if not the best writers currently in comics. I was very sick recently, and I got a bunch of Ultimate Spider-Man collections from the library (because again, those things are expensive), and I tore through those things like you wouldn’t believe. But aside from a handful of superhero stuff that I look at from time to time, I tend to lean more towards other genres. I enjoyed 100 Bullets and Ex-Machina. Powers, by Bendis and Mike Oeming is the only title I have consistently bought in years.
If given the opportunity, what character would you write?
Honestly, neither Marvel nor DC would ever let me play with their characters the way I would want to. I sometimes try to think of stories that I could pitch, but it is difficult for me to come up with new ways for Spider-Man to fight Green Goblin of for Batman to fight the Joker. Years ago, I had a great concept for Luke Cage, but it wouldn’t work now that he’s been re-invented. And to be honest, I like what Marvel has done with Luke Cage. About ten years ago I tried to put together a pitch for a Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu twelve-issue maxi-series that would feature all of the characters from the 1970s martial arts books Marvel was putting out. Even the supporting characters were in the series. It was epic. But I didn’t have the juice to get it looked at.
Speaking of writing for comic books, currently you’re working on the comic book series, KENJI: MASTER OF THE BLIND MONKEY STYLE with artist, Robert (Chocolate Thunder) Love. Can you tell us a bit about this title, its influences, etc.?
I’ve known Robert and his brothers for years. Individually and collectively I’ve talked with them about doing a project, but it was Robert that made things happen. He was invited to participate in the Popgun Comic Anthology from Image Comics, and he was looking for someone to script Blind Monkey Style. Robert and I have similar tastes, and we both love old school Shaw Brothers kung-fu flicks, so it was a no-brainer. Robert already had the idea in his head, and most of the pages drawn. His art was clearly a byproduct of kung-fu movies, early 1980s hip-hop, and some other crazy shit. I came along and provided a script, and enough character development to give the story some more dimension. Then we started talking about using that original story as a spring board for a KENJI mini-series that would be a combination of martial arts, magic and urban mayhem. I’m hoping the book will be out in 2011. We’ve also collaborated on a project called NUMBER 13, which is supposed to be serialized in the revamped Dark Horse Presents, also due out in 2011.
What I admire about you is that your projects embody this can-do, do-it-yourself attitude. With the magazine, you were doing DIY, before the Internet made DIY easy(easier?). BadAzzMoFo was an old-fashioned ink and paper, pound the pavement and dredge up advertisers endeavor. With Facebook, Twitter, Kickstarter, and a host of other social media, one can reach international audiences and get their work and name out there at a relatively low cost. Also, you are able to bring big Hollywood names to your film projects, notably Leonard Roberts from Heroes in Blackstar Warrior and Ken Foree in Black Santa’s Revenge. You even went eye-to-eye in an interview with Jim Brown, “the baddest man on Earth,” and lived to tell the tale. What’s the one piece of indispensable advice you have for aspiring creative types, regardless of the medium they chose to work in?
I hate to sound like Nike, but just do it. People get so concerned about time and money, and use both excuses to not be productive. There will never be enough time or enough money. Anyone who thinks that there will be is either a fool or an idiot. I know people who want to make movies, but they don’t have the money. I ask them if they have written the script, and they haven’t. How much does it cost to write a script? Paper and pencil don’t cost that much – you can borrow that stuff. And I hear people who want to make comics, but don’t have the money to self-publish. If that’s the case, then publish on the web. I don’t want to hear bullshit excuses. I don’t want to hear about how someone needs to pay you first, before you will express yourself creatively. If you want to be creative, then do it. If you want get paid, get a job cleaning septic tanks. But don’t be creative just to get a payday, because for one thing you may never get paid, and for another thing that’s not being true to your creativity. At this point in my life I have invested tens of tens of tens thousands of dollars in my creative endeavors, and I’m still waiting to recoup on my investment. The last full issue of BadAzz MoFo (Number 7) nearly destroyed me. My main distributor went bankrupt, owing me something just south of eight grand for that issue, and I never saw a dime of it. My other distributor told me to anticipate shipping at least 1500 units, and then only ordered 200. I printed 2000 more copies than I needed, and it cost me a ton of money. But here I am, years later, still foolishly doing what I do. And I do it because it makes me feel alive.
Most readers might know you through the Blackstar Warrior videos, which started as a three-part mockumentary featuring the search for a “lost” Blaxploitation version of George Lucas’ Star Wars. The culmination of the project was the release of the trailer for the unreleased film, which was sort of a prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy from Lando Calrissian’s point of view. The trailer quickly went viral. Besides being well-done, it was earnest, yet funny, and even fit within the Star Wars continuity. What was the extent of your involvement with Blackstar Warrior and your thoughts about how it was received? (Any cease-and-desist letters from LucasFilms?)
Blackstar Warrior started with an idea from director Matt Haley. Matt is a comic book artist who has been making the move to film director. He had an idea of doing a fake trailer for a blaxploitation version of Star Wars. He called me one day to see if I thought it was a good idea. I loved the idea, and within a day I had written the script. Once I finished writing the script, I handed it over to Matt, as he was the producer and director. We talked about every decision he made, down to the casting, but I always treated the project as being his. Because I wasn’t stuck with all the responsibility of producing and directing, I was able to have fun. Even though I believed in what we were doing, it all seemed silly to me. I still have trouble believing that the film has become as popular as it has, because we were just fooling around and having a good time. Rumor has it that George Lucas has seen the film and loved it. Apparently he screened it for some of his employees. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it certainly sounds cool. If Lucas called me or Matt and asked us to put together a proposal for a feature length version of Blackstar Warrior, I’d do it. But we all know that’s not going to happen.
What other projects do you have on the horizon?
I’m getting ready to launch the biggest project of my career. I’ve written a Young Adult action adventure novel, and despite the efforts of me, my agent and my manager, it has been rejected by every major publisher in North America (because apparently teenage boys don’t read). So, I’ve decided to self-publish the novel, which can best be described as Spider-Man meets Harry Potter, with a black kid as the hero. I can honestly say that there has never been a book like this one. I’m also developing a comic mini-series/graphic novel, and that can best be described as Indiana Jones on the Island of Dr. Moreau. I’m hoping to get someone else to publish it, and I’m already talking to some people. We’ll see what happens. And oh yeah, I have a new film that is just going out on the festival circuit. It is called My Dinner with A.J., and it is nothing but two black guys talking for ninety minutes. I really wanted to venture into the world of independent film the way black filmmakers never seem to do, which is in a purely intellectual way. I made a movie that defies the conventions of what black people are supposed to say and do in films.
QUICK HITS:
Favorite Blaxploitation movie?Today it is The Spook Who Sat by the Door. But tomorrow it could be something else. I love quite a few of those, but Spook has a special place in my heart.
Favorite Blaxploitation actress?Rosalind Cash
Actor?Ron O’Neal. Or maybe Yaphet Kotto. Or maybe Dick Anthony Williams.
Favorite comic book character? Peter Parker, followed by Spider-Man.
Which actor from that era should have been a bigger star?Ron O’Neal, Calvin Lockhart and Rosalind Cash all deserved to have better careers.
Thalmus Rasulala.Best name ever or best name ever? Yeah, Thalmus Rasulala is the best name ever, though Ji-Tu Cumbuka is a close second, and Warhawk Tanzania is a distant third.
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For your chance to win a copy of WHY’S THE BROTHA GOTTA DIE?, just answer the following question and e-mail your response to worldofhurtonline@yahoo.com by January 20, 2011:
What year did David Walker begin publishing the magazine, BadAzz MoFo?
This might take a little research, since it wasn’t stated above. The names of those who answer correctly will be placed into a hat and the winner drawn at random. Good luck!
My old college roommate is the talented Anthony Summey, whom you should expect to hear a lot more of soon when he introduces his own webcomic later this year. (Also, belated “Happy Birthday,” Anthony!) The talent gene runs deep in the Summey Family, because his brother, Jeremy is remarkably gifted in his own right. It’s always fascinating to see what he comes with next. Right now, Jeremy’s mostly focused on game design, so I was surprised, delighted and honored when he chose to make WORLD OF HURT the subject of his latest piece.
I love the use of negative space. Also the digital brushwork reminds me of the classicstyle you’d find on old pulpy adventure novels. Beautiful stuff!
