Brain Dead and Loving it!

Black Superheroes don’t have it easy. More often than not, in the movies, they have been relegated to sub-par lemons (The abysmal CATWOMAN , the embarrassing STEEL ), uninspired parodies (The puerile BLANKMAN , the well-intentioned yet flawed METEOR MAN or the messy HANCOCK ), or they end up in mere supporting roles in films like like X-MEN , CHRONICLE , SUICIDE SQUAD , and in the Marvel Universe films. Ever since the seventies, where the emancipation of African Americans in the movies went from the ‘’proper indignation’’ of Sydney Poitier to the rollicking badassery of Richard Roundtree or Pam Grier, they have not benefited from much representation in the superhero genre until more recently (Save maybe for ABAR, THE FIRST BLACK SUPERMAN (Frank Packard, 1977) who was using omnipotent god-like powers to change the world around him. He might have had powers, but to call him a superhero would be a bit of a stretch). The late 1990s did bring forth BLADE (Stephen...

Kong's misguided attempt at wooing women. (KING KONG. Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack. 1933) Why can't monsters ever get the girl? We’ve all been there before; We meet someone. It’s love at first sight. But it’s a one-way attraction. The target of your affection has no clue you are alive, is indifferent, or worse, is repelled by you. This unrequited love is a veritable plague that curses a plethora of monsters from classic horror films, but then again, maybe we can learn a little something from those doomed relationships. The first problem is in the approach. There seems to be this tendency to start the ‘’relationship’’ with an unhealthy amount of stalking. To observe the object of the affection from afar, letting the desire build within one’s breast. In itself, this isn’t unlike the very beginning of a healthy kinship. But it tends to prolong perilously and get downright creepy in its excesses. Erik, in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA , while d...