Back again after a whole year. Time to get writing.
Here’s what was nominated:
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest
Like last year, I’ll score each how I might’ve assessed them had I been sent to screen them as a regular Rotten Tomatoes-certified critic. And I’ll do so with zero spoilers.
Here’s the countdown … which is the most difficult I’ve had since starting these screenings back in 2015. Before I always had one or two that ran away with me or really had me nonplussed. But this year? Nothing quite does either.
(After the awards, in italics like this, I’ll mention the honors each won).
10
The Zone of Interest
I had forgotten the premise of this German-language movie when I went to see it (having intended to screen a different film but that didn’t happen), so, only knowing it was “War” genre, I was expecting to see this idyllic little family situation get blown apart when the war arrives at its doorstep.
With dawning, muted horror, I realized the family is actual Nazis, living next door to a death camp.
This is a sparse but beautifully shot film and that’s what makes it unsettling. It would be a great cautionary tale of how monsters can be the people next door. Like, the Final Solution is literally a day in the office for a certain character. But I kinda feel like too many are past heeding the warning — or even perceiving it.
3.5 of 5 stars. It’s a bit too dull at times.
(It won for Sound and International Feature Film.)
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9
Maestro
My film critic friend Sherin joked that the makeup was the star of this biopic about Leonard Bernstein. She’s not wrong: Director and lead Bradley Cooper is well transformed into the famed composer. But lead actress Carey Mulligan is the real deal otherwise. Maestro takes a semi-surprising turn by not focusing on the music quite as much as, say, Bohemian Rhapsody did in 2018, instead feeling a lot more like last year’s Tár, which also centered on a troubled composer. But it shares LGBTQ themes with both those previous Best Pic nominees.
3.5 of 5 stars. It’s about the last shot for me.
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8
Anatomy of a Fall
Starring the fantastic German actress Sandra Hüller (I first saw her in the German dramedy Toni Erdmann years ago and, more recently, in a supporting role in The Zone of Interest), this courtroom drama about a death that may or may not be a murder or an accident or a suicide manages to be surprisingly interesting outside of the whodunit aspects.
4 of 5 stars. I think I’m becoming a fan of Hüller.
(The film won Best Original Screenplay. Well-deserved because this should have been just totally boring but that script wouldn’t let it.)
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7
American Fiction
About a struggling Black author who accidentally writes a hit novel by pandering to the worst Black stereotypes, this movie lands here in my list. I wanted to love it — it’s whip-smart and funny and thought-provoking and co-stars Erika Alexander. (Still have a lil’ crush on her from Living Single). But it doesn’t quite stir my emotions enough. When I talked about it with Sherin, she put it perfectly: “It’s almost an academic film rather than a heart toucher.”
4 of 5 stars. This might be one that’ll grow on me with future viewings.
(It won for Best Adapted Screenplay! Definitely my favorite of those nominees.)
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6
The Holdovers
At first, I thought director Alexander Payne’s clear homage to ’70s-style filmmaking was … cute. But this R-rated future classic Christmas period movie about a misanthropic schoolteacher who has to babysit some boarding students over the holiday break has a lot of heart, really letting us know the characters and taking us on a journey with each of them. Still, in the end, though I loved it, it didn’t quite feel exceptional to me, so it lands a tad lower on my list.
4 of 5stars. Best Supporting Actress nominee Da’Vine Joy Randolph is what really makes this one sing for me.
(And she won the Oscar!)
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5
Barbie
Ever since the Academy opened up the number of films considered for Best Picture, it’s given room for pop culture fare like Greta Gerwig’s wacky doll satire. This is a film you either absolutely love in spite of what it is or you kinda hate it for the same reason. I’m closer to the positive end of the spectrum. I love how subversive and, well, WEIRD Barbie is, even though the A-plot finale falters a little bit for me. But Gerwig really walks the tightrope here. And the actual finale manages to touch me to a surprising degree.
4 of 5stars. That speech by nominee America Ferrera is worth the price of admission.
(“What Was I Made For” won Best Song.)
———
4
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oh, Martin Scorsese. You’ve been in the news again grousing about superhero films taking all the screen time from better movies. But you take screen time FROM YOURSELF with your seeming inability to make a film under 3.5 hours long. To its credit, Killers of the Flower Moon doesn’t feel as long as its runtime. And this true story of how 1920s Native American tribal folk hit it rich when oil’s discovered on their lands and then start mysteriously turning up dead is a story that needed telling. It just could have been done in 2.5 hours and been an absolute knockout of a film.
4 of 5stars. It’s also slightly hampered by the fact that Scorsese has to focus on the crime aspect — inadvertently sidelining lead Lily Gladstone — because that’s his lane.
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3
Oppenheimer
This excellent biopic about the father of the atomic bomb is as standard a film as Christopher Nolan’s ever made. Like the best biopics (and not unlike Nolan’s Dunkirk a few years back), it’s focused on a single point in history rather than trying to sprawl across Oppenheimer’s entire timeline. But Nolan being Nolan, he also decides to weave a seemingly unrelated late-career episode in the scientist’s life (via flash forwards rather than flashbacks) throughout the film’s long running time. It paid off for me and that’s why I rate this one rather high on my list. (It didn’t hurt that Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh, two of my favorites, both show up.)
4.5 of 5 stars. I must say I really wasn’t expecting all the sex to be what earns this film’s R rating.
(The runaway winner of the night: Film Editing, Cinematography, Original Score, Directing and Best Picture awards all went to it. Robert Downey Jr. won the Best Supporting Actor and Cillian Murphy was the Best Actor winner.)
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2
Poor Things
More like “Porn Things!” I love Emma Stone. I was not expecting to see quite so … MUCH of her in a decidedly adult Frankenstein-esque steampunk (emphasis on steamy) fable that asks: “What if a child’s mind were in an adult body?” It’s the most challenging of all the nominees with a cast of characters who can be a bit hard to like. But it’s the themes of empowerment and examination of society that make it a winner.
4.5 of 5 stars. I don’t like it as much as The Favourite, the director’s Best Pic nomination in 2018, but this is a pretty fantastic film.
(Poor Things won for Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design, Costume Design. Emma Stone won Best Actress.)
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1
Past Lives
When I heard the premise of this one, a quiet little drama about childhood sweethearts reuniting although one is happily married, I was intrigued. Probably because it’s so … grounded. Of all the movies in this list, it’s the least showy. The least challenging. The least important. But it’s the most REAL.
The impressive thing about it is it’s a story that works without a villain — and that’s a rare thing.
It won’t win the top award. But I’m glad it’s here, or I would have missed it.
4.5 of 5 stars. My favorite of the 10.
———
After the award show on March 10, I’ll make a few remarks in this space.
Then the pandammit (to use a term coined by friend Adonica) took the legs out of any desire to risk my life to go to theaters.
But I’m feeling safer these days (though I still stay N95-masked up when I go to the cinema). And so I got the itch to view what passes for the best in film these days. (And I’m also considering going back to watch the ones I missed the past couple of years. If I do, you’ll read about it here.)
Anyway, here’s the alphabetical list of nominees:
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Fabelmans
Tår
Top Gun: Maverick
Triangle of Sadness
Women Talking
A caveat: I still am not necessarily impressed with what tends to impress the Academy. Intelligent, entertaining popcorn fare can represent what’s exceptional about American cinema just as much as the art-house affairs the Academy prefers — though I like the latter quite a bit, too.
An additional thing: During the pandemic, I learned that I am a bonafide Rotten Tomatoes-certified film critic! Apparently, much of the review work I did while at the Gwinnett Daily Post got listed on the famed internet movie review aggregator. So I’m going to score each of these films how I might’ve if I’d been sent to screen it.
Counting down my rankings, with VERY short takes (and after the awards, in italics like this, the honors each won):
:
10
The Banshees of Inisherin
This little film about a pair of Irish fellas in the 1920s whose long friendship comes to a unilateral end hit me a little close to home because I suffered a lost friendship last year myself. But it’s … weird, because these characters are weird. And not in a particularly fun or quirky way. A slow-going affair, it had to draw me in. It eventually did, but I wanted more payoff than I got. 3 stars out of 5.
——
9
Elvis
I don’t love Elvis, so this biopic had an uphill climb. But in the end, it’s the Baz Luhrmann direction that did it in. So many quick cuts drove me batty even as they kept things visually interesting. I also wasn’t a great fan of the anachronistic covers of certain of Elvis’ songs, Moulin Rouge-style — but again, it’s the same director, so it’s to be expected. I rolled my eyes every time. Austin Butler plays the iconic rocker pretty perfectly, though. 3.5 stars out of 5.
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8
Avatar: The Way of Water
I didn’t care for the overlong, under plotted 2009 original about Space Capitalists Versus Space Indians so I was not expecting to love the sequel. And I didn’t. But it’s better than the old film by far and it’s such a technical achievement. That it still has such heart is a testament to director James Cameron’s storytelling skill. Every time I rolled my eyes at an onscreen happenstance just seemed too, too convenient for the story, the story actually backed it up with solid worldbuilding. And they replaced the damn Papyrus font! I just wish it were only 2 hours long instead of the 3-plus length Cameron’s been stuck on since 1997. 3.5 of 5 stars.
Unsurprisingly, The Way of Water won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
——
7
Tár
I somehow came to this film thinking it was based on a true story about a problematic music conductor’s problems (apparently the Real Tár meme happened for a reason) which initially made me forgive the not-quite-compelling narrative. Reminds me a bit of how I felt about 2017 Best Pic nominee Manchester By The Sea. This film is better — way better — but I wanted it to be as great as lead actress Cate Blanchett plays the title role. She’s fantastic. 3.5 of 5 stars.
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6
All Quiet On The Western Front
I read the novel in high school but forgot nearly every bit of the story. (Hey, it’s been multiple decades, sue me.) I’m not sure it’s better than 2020 Best Pic nominee 1917 (which I loved and probably overrated a bit) but it works, telling the tale of The Great War from the opposite side of the trenches. 4 out of 5 stars.
The film won several awards: Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Production Design and Best International Film.
——
5
Triangle of Sadness
This very dark comedy about an Instagram model couple who end up on a yacht cruise for the super-rich takes too long to get to its point. But it’s unpredictable and interesting once it does even though you either start out or end up hating every character at least a little. It’s kinda Love Boat meets Knives Out and Parasite. I didn’t love it and don’t intend to watch it again but repeat viewings might prove rewarding: this is a pretty subtle flick. And, sadly, it’s the last role for lead actress Charlbi Dean, who died of sudden illness shortly before the film’s release. 3.5 out of 5.
——
4
Top Gun: Maverick
Surprised to see this one made the Academy’s list but rather delighted it did. A sequel to the 1986 original, Maverick leans on nostalgia A LOT but does it all in service of the story and the lead character and not just pure fan service. It’s a popcorn movie, to be sure, but an almost perfect popcorn movie — and that’s well worth a nod in my book. 4 stars out of 5.
It was awarded for Best Sound.
——
3
The Fabelmans
Unlike what I thought about Tár above, this semi-biopic about Steven Spielberg’s youth and how he came to love filmmaking actually IS based on real people (him and his family) and it works SO well. Michelle Williams as the hero’s mother stands out as usual. Definitely one of the year’s best. But I always wonder in these sorts of films how much is fact and what’s fiction. And that’s intensified in this fully fictionalized version of Spielberg’s life.
In the end? I hardly care. 4.5 of 5 stars.
——
2
Women Talking
I walked in a bit late to this one — stupid TRAFFIC! Stupid indie theater without 20 minutes of trailers! — but even without seeing the inciting incident, it was so compelling. About an isolated Mennonite colony and sexual abuse, it’s a little hard to watch. Not because it’s graphic but because these women talking hold nothing back as they discuss how to deal with the injustice they face — and have ALWAYS faced. 5 stars out of 5.
Writer and director Sarah Polley won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
——
1
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Starring Michelle Yeoh, this sci-fi drama is about the multiverse — sort of. It’s hard to explain how a film with fanny pack martial arts and googly eyes and laundromats and hot dog fingers and butt plug jokes and failed love and roads not taken makes any dang sense or even works. But when I saw this back in May, I kept thinking, “Is this the best movie I’ve ever seen?”
In the end, I had to say no it isn’t*, and I’m not sure how well it’ll hold up on repeat viewing. But it started out as my pick for the best picture of 2022 and none of the other nominees, as good as they are at their best, came close. This film IS movies at their very best, which is why it leads with like 11 nominations. 5 stars out of 5.
* (I’m not sure what IS the best movie I’ve ever seen.)
It won seven of its 11 nominations: Supporting Actor and Actress, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Director, Actress and Best Picture — the first time my favorite has EVER won that honor.
——
POST AWARDS EDIT (March 13, 2023):
Pretty much every award went to the folks and films they should’ve, in my humble outsider’s opinion.
My sole actual disappointment of the evening was Angela Bassett not winning a long overdue Academy Award. That one — Best Supporting Actress — went to Jamie Lee Curtis. And it’s a clear case of a superlative film — and more robust role — buoying Curtis up while Bassett was weighed down by the not-nearly-so-good Wakanda Forever. (That’s a future essay.)
I wrote a little ode to my 1995 Sentra back in 2012, about half a year before I replaced her with a 2007 Altima.
THAT is a story about God’s providence. And that’s partly why I was literally grieved to see her go this week.
STORY TIME!
So only about two months after I wrote “Driving to the Moon,” my Sentra gave its first sign that it was giving up the ghost for good. My brilliant mechanic at the time managed to coax back to life an engine he’d said was garbage, but I knew it was just a reprieve. I began shopping for a newer vehicle. It was September 2012.
By late January 2013, I was close to pulling the trigger on a Mazda of some sort. But I remember getting home and almost audibly hearing a still, small voice:
“Go visit the dealer where your brother bought his car.”
So out of the blue, this thought. In it, I recognized the voice of God — the one He uses with me from time to time. And this time I listened.
Went to the used car dealer. And there she was: a 2007 Altima in the style I’d fallen for 10 years earlier. A manual transmission, which I REALLY wanted. And which the dealer couldn’t really sell because nobody wanted those, especially with 109K miles on it.
Well, I did. And so we dealt.
That was 2013. After 17 years of driving the Sentra, this new car felt like a LIMO.
I happily drove my folks on road trips to Miami and Myrtle Beach and friends to various Heroclix tournaments (both in and out of state) and of course my own commuting. The car survived sliding around into curbs during Snowmaggeddon 2014 and the Ga. Highway 316 incident later that spring (hitting railroad tie-sized debris in the dark road) and that QuikTrip collision the day Avengers: Age of Ultron released in May 2015. And after my new brilliant mechanic replaced the engine in 2019, once I’d racked up some 260K miles on the old one, I was ready to roll for years more, thanks to the pandemic reducing by far the daily wear and tear on her — and even though I was already looking to the next vehicle.
But I think the Lord knew I’d never give her up willingly anytime soon. So this happened.
No storm. No wind. Just a slow, splintering crack and the sound of what I thought was just a large branch landing in my yard, as I talked with my mom on the phone one June evening.
It took nearly a week to get the tree off. The damage was minimal to both home and car, leaving them livable and drivable, respectively. But the car was determined a total loss because the roof is the most expensive part other than the engine to repair.
So the next vehicle I was considering went from a possibility to a somewhat urgent need. God had that covered as well — and that’s a story for another time.
Today, it was about goodbyes. I’d been removing all the stuff from the car for weeks (except my sunglasses in the overhead compartment that I COMPLETELY OVERLOOKED) and thought I was ready to surrender her to the salvage yard and collect my total loss check. It was melancholy, but it was time. She’d served me super-well.
But when that tow truck actually came and put her on the truck bed? I was not ready. The tears welled up.
“It’s just a car,” I told myself. “You didn’t feel this way at all with any of the others. Why this one?”
On June 24, 2022, in a 6-3 opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion (via right to privacy and whatnot).
I have a LOT to say.
BUT…
Because of my professional life as a working journalist, I’m not allowed to give my full-blown opinion about this opinion publicly.
(It’s to avoid accusations of bias and whatnot. We’re only supposed to deal in the facts. So no personal opinions. At least while I’m working this job — which is kind of my dream job.)
I guarantee you I’m not on “the side” you think I am, anyway … no matter which side you think you’re on.
Pre-pandemic, aka the Before Times, I used to write about the Best Picture nominees and watched the Oscars. But I haven’t the past couple years because, again, pandemic.
Well, y’all know what happened. Best Actor nominee (and eventual winner) Will Smith marched onstage and slapped comedian (and Smith family acquaintance) Chris Rock square in the jaw after Rock roasted Jada Pinkett-Smith, Will’s wife, over her hairstyle.
Oh my Lord, the memes this has inspired. And will continue to.
So I have a lot of thoughts about it. There’s an entourage’s worth of stuff to unpack here. But I’m just going to touch on each bag.
It’s about toxic masculinity. Both the resorting to violence for the “honor” of a woman and the next item…
It’s about Will’s fear of appearing weak, documented in his memoir. He grew up seeing his father abuse his mother when he was too weak to defend her. That almost certainly was the trigger here. But, again, it’s also rooted in toxic masculinity.
It’s about punching down. Rock did it to Jada, as a man teasing a woman’s hair — and as a comedian, going for the low-hanging fruit of picking on the audience instead of telling truth to power in the best tradition of comedy. Will did it to him — literally, being a taller, stronger man.
It’s about misogynoir. Women and people of color have been targets of comedians for decades and of course Black women get it both ways.
It’s about ableism. Alopecia is a range of hair loss diseases — one that Jada suffers from, hence her shaved look. (And, it must be said, one that I learned, just hours after The Slap, that I also have.) Rock is not blameless here.
It’s about BLACK WOMEN’S HAIR and Chris Rock of all people should know better. He starred in a whole documentary called Good Hair defending Black women’s natural hair and critiquing the culture and industry that urges those women to straighten it.
It’s about Will and Jada’s weird relationship. They’ve been criticized a lot and Will’s hurt over an affair Jada had has left him mocked for it. I imagine some of his reaction Sunday night might spring from that, as well.
It’s about Hollywood’s weird relationship to reality. They stood and clapped for Will when he won — because it was well-deserved — but maybe he should’ve been escorted out after The Slap. That lapse could be forgiven because no one watching could tell whether the whole thing was staged — at least, not until Will returned to his seat and yelled “KEEP MY WIFE’S NAME OUT YOUR [expletive] MOUTH!”
It’s about the double standard. Now the Academy’s talking about holding Smith accountable, and stripping him of his fresh award is on the table. But Roman Polanski, a literal statutory rapist and fugitive from justice since 1979, has won SIX SINCE his conviction so we shouldn’t be talking about Will — esp. with Rock not pressing charges.
Bottom line: There’s zero justification for what Will did, but I understand it. And you can bet Chris probably won’t cross that line again. But it’s a line he should not have toed.
I’ve been giving the side-eye to anyone who’s fully Team Chris or Team Will. There are no heroes here.
It’s been a long time since I regularly wrote anything here. And it’s NaNoWriMo … National Novel Writing Month.
I’m still not writing a book.
But I AM inspired to do a little writing here, as I was about exactly four years ago, I (re)discovered during a search for “Halloween” references on the blog.
See, I was going to do a review of a Halloween movie marathon I did this October (first ever). But I found this list of stuff I was planning to write about back in 2017:
Can “Justice League” continue the redemption of the DC Comics movies that “Wonder Woman” started?
And more
As you can see from the links, I actually hit a BUNCH of those subjects. As for the ones I whiffed on, here’s a quick make-good:
How I celebrated Halloween
I…..don’t remember what I did Halloween 2017. I probably had to go to work. Same for 2018, probably. But 2019, I was at Anime Weekend Atlanta, the first year the convention had been held at the end of October instead of September.
Not last year, of course.
But some neighborhood folks held a small, outdoor, socially distanced gathering. It was nice.
This year? AWA again (this time with vaccinations and masks required), with the World Series happening just across the highway. I don’t seem to have caught COVID.
Updating my ranking of the Marvel Studios films
This is gonna happen later, probably in depth. These movies hit different since Black Panther and Endgame. (Have not yet seen Eternals, and won’t for some time I think.)
Election 2016
This really should be updated to Election 2020, which so many people refuse to acknowledge is a year over and done and legit. I’m so tired of talking about President Trump. But I gotta say one more thing about him.
Why Trump is not going down on collusion charges
I was gonna write about this, back in 2017 when the Mueller investigation was still going on. I knew 45 wasn’t getting nailed on this then, and I knew he wouldn’t get removed by his impeachment later in 2019. But I was reasonably sure he WOULD be impeached eventually because he’s so darn messy. That’s why Senate Republicans opted not to hear evidence during the early 2020 trial — they knew they were likely to ring a bell that couldn’t be un-rung.
Unfortunately for Trump and the rest of us, he decided to take a victory lap/get political revenge instead of focusing on the pandemic brewing in 2020. If he had focused, he’d still be president today. And maybe at least a couple hundred thousand Americans would still be alive.
Why TF people policed a teenaged girl’s breasts
This was about a high schooler who decided to not put a bra on underneath her hoodie sweatshirt and got sent home because of it.
I was going to write about how we need to stop shaming and sexualizing and policing women and especially CHILDREN about their bodies. But too much time has passed for me to really recall the particulars about that incident. And I maybe addressed it in this missive about a meteorologist getting body-shamed.
Guess what? Everyone’s problematic.
I was PROBABLY going to write about my problematic faves? Or whatever we were calling “cancel culture” back then? But I don’t rightly remember.
Can “Justice League” continue the redemption of the DC Comics movies that “Wonder Woman” started?
So … this one aged poorly.
See, I enjoyed the theatrical version of Justice League well enough on first viewing. It was a great change of pace from the grimdark tone of director Zack Synder’s Man of Steel and especially Batman V Superman. But it didn’t get better with time. And we’ve since learned how much of an absolute toxic trash fire director Joss Whedon was.
We’ve also seen that Wonder Woman maybe wasn’t quite all that, either … and its sequel just gets worse the further you get from it.
And then there’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a movie that’s both better and worse than Joss-tice League. Like, there’s an OK 2.5-hour movie in there, but Snyder put so much unneeded garbago in it and it’s just not worthy of its 4-hour runtime.
Usually, I’ve gotten hyped up to watch some of the best cinema that the movie biz has to offer.
But with
the pandemic happening since last year and
The 2020 elections and
The U.S. Capitol getting stormed on some old QAnon bulls**t and
My state of Georgia’s Republicans passing a bunch of bulls**t “election security” laws to restore confidence in an election process shaken BY REPUBLICANS yet proven secure BY REPUBLICANS via THREE DIFFERENT RECOUNTS, one by HAND and
Black people still getting gunned down by police trained to use force despite a rare actual conviction for one of those killings — one that could well be overturned…
… I just didn’t have it in me this time around. Maybe I’ll pick up on the Academy watch list next year.
It’s a pretty significant event in my life, one whose anniversary I’ll mark for the rest of it. But this year, it hits differently.
See, I have great regard for first responders, from the police officers who showed up to aid my unwounded brother and myself to the EMTs who tended my head wound — and, memorably, reassured me that I only looked like I’d lost a fight and might not have permanently lost my then-boyish good looks.
This week, the police officers who killed first responder Breonna Taylor — themselves first responders— were not indicted in her untimely death, a death that was in her own home, like mine could have been.
Of course, our cases were vastly different.
Neither I nor my brother were armed that evening, and no amount of arms would have helped us; Taylor’s boyfriend, who took the raiding police for home invaders, was armed and fired the shot that prompted the officers to return fire.
The criminals at my doorstep fired once, in premeditated fashion, with a shot they assumed would be lethal. The Louisville officers fired a hail of bullets, at least six of which struck and killed Taylor. (The sole officer to be indicted this week was done so on the charge of hitting the wall and endangering innocents in the neighboring apartment. Apparently, the woman in the actual apartment is not given the status of innocence.)
My assailants, as noted, were criminals who were never held to account for this attempted murder (on Earth, anyhow; who knows if they’re still alive? They will be held to account by the Almighty). Taylor’s assailants also have not been held to account for her death. But they are not criminals; they are sworn protectors who should be held to a far higher standard than criminals.
And yet, both sets of gun-toting assailants remain free and uncharged in their respective assaults.
I’ve served on a grand jury, so I know this case was presented essentially as a defense testimony for the officers. The jury likely got a great deal of the state’s case suspecting Taylor of being an accomplice of the imprisoned primary suspect. The jurors likely heard every possible extenuating circumstance to make the officers’ actions that night look like heroism that ended in a collateral loss of life rather than the colossal screw-up it actually was — at best.
I don’t usually do this with celebrities. But this is a special case. We’re connected.
I’ve written a lot about the Marvel Studios film “Black Panther,” before, during, and especially after its record-breaking run in theaters. But now my thoughts are on the man who played the title character: Chadwick Boseman, who died August 28 after a long and mostly hidden battle with colon cancer. He was 43.
I’m writing this about an hour or two after I heard the news. It’s one of those events that I’ll always remember where I was: reclining in bed, from a live text from my friend Johanthan, who’d just heard.
Joe probably thought of me because I’m one of the bigger Black Panther fans he knows. When we lived in the same city, Joe and I would encounter each other at DragonCon, a massive annual festival celebrating all things pop culture/sci-fi/comic books/gaming/etc. So he saw me the first year I cosplayed as the Marvel superhero, back in 2015, well before any of the BP film appearances starting in 2016 with “Captain America: Civil War” and culminating with last year’s “Avengers: Endgame.”
That’s the first commonality between Boseman and myself — dressing up like this great cat character, probably about the same time. (He looked better in his costume, though.)
Boseman in 2015 on the “Captain America: Civil War” set
Me on Halloween 2015
The second: we share Howard University (the greatest of HBCUs) as our alma mater. I’m his upperclassman by several years and had graduated before he attended. But we’ll always be fellow Bison.
The third, and saddest: My maternal grandfather’s life was claimed by the same disease, almost exactly 19 years earlier. Granddaddy also had Alzheimers’ but the cancer was the killer.
Boseman was first diagnosed in 2016. That year, I’d had a scare myself and had my first colonoscopy. Black men especially are at risk from colon cancer and doctors recommend we get checked much sooner than white men, who typically don’t get the screening until age 50.
All was well for me. Not so with Boseman.
And so I find myself feeling so much like the supporting cast in the mid-movie Warrior Falls scene of “Black Panther.” At the time, I thought it served as a minor allegory for the seismic political shift of the 2016 election, though Hillary Clinton was certainly no T’Challa and Donald Trump was no Erik Killmonger.
But now, with our country reeling from unrest from unresolved systemic racial injustice and a pandemic exacerbated by our leader disrupting government beyond its ability to handle a crisis that only it is best equipped to do, that feeling and allegory both seem all too apt. And unlike a superhero genre film, there’s no near-guarantee of a final-act comeback.
———
One more bit about Boseman.
He changed my life a little. Not simply because of the character he played in his biggest role, but HOW he played it. The long version is at the end of this November 2017 blog post, but the short version is this: It was his decision to play Black Panther with an African accent. That may seem like a small thing, but it was a bigger deal than I realized at first.
“The projects I end up doing [are always those] that will be impactful, for the most part, to my people — to Black people.”
@chadwickboseman
He did this with pretty much all his roles. Thurgood Marshall. James Brown. Jackie Robinson. And, of course, Black Panther. What he probably understood was that although he was focused on lifting his culture, the rest of the world benefited as well. And that simple decision with T’Challa’s accent, being king of a never-colonized African nation, went a long way toward doing that work.
So now, when I cosplay as Panther, I do my best to use a similar accent.
(His will always be better.)
Rest well, Mr. Boseman. You were my little college brother. You were a quietly heroic inspiration, more than we knew. You will likely — hopefully — inspire many of us to treat our health and others more kindly. And you were truly a king of an actor.
As that Wakandan king often said … “PHAMBILI!” (Onward!)
And onward go we shall. May we walk as well as you did.
So my blog often talks about race, lately. I also like to dip into pop culture, and one of my longest-enduring passions is comic books such as the Legion of Super-Heroes. What follows is a long-form piece I wrote for a website early this year that never quite got published before said site semi-shuttered. I had it reclaimed then updated it for August 2020.
Late last year, a new Legion of Super-Heroes comic by Superman scribe Brian Michael Bendis and artist Ryan Sook finally debuted after months of anticipation — and following years of no Legion title at all, which was a first in the DC Comics franchise’s storied, byzantine history.
Designed in the late 1950s to give Superboy some super-powered pals, the Legion of Super-Heroes concept grew from its Silver Age beginnings into one of DC Comics’ most successful and enduring franchises with its positive and utopian view of the future.
Unfortunately, that future was also a racist one.
The Legion of Super-Heroes as seen in the 1976 DC Calendar. Art by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano.
Look at the image. What do you see?
One thousand years in the future, there’s not a single black person on the team. There are more non-terrestrial skin tones here (3) than brown ones — and even one of those is white-coded with his blond hair.
It’s not just the main team, either. There’s a shocking lack of black/brown characters among supporting cast or even in background crowd scenes.
The message: Utopia is a future without black people.
It wasn’t intentionally so, of course. Contrary to how one overly defensive Legion fan that I encountered online characterized the situation when I challenged his thinking on this, there was no smoke-filled back room of white supremacists plotting how to keep the Legion (mostly) lily white.
No, American society was doing that heavy lifting of exclusion of black faces from power (even the symbolic kind represented by superhero comics), such that it simply didn’t cross creators’ minds to include these characters — or if it did, society kept them from actually following through.
Case in point: In the mid-1960s, a teenaged Jim Shooter became writer of the LSH, and during his tenure, he introduced four new Legionnaires (well, three: One was a secret traitor), including what would have been the first black superhero in comics: the mysterious masked FERRO LAD.
But it wasn’t to be, thanks to a white supremacist America.
Shooter’s plan was for Ferro Lad to unmask and reveal his ethnicity to a collective “so what?” from the rest of the Legionnaires, because, in the utopian 30th century, racism was a thing of the past.
But racism was very present in the 1960s and Shooter’s editors shot the idea down, fearing a widespread loss of sales in the southern United States.
I’m not sure how I feel about this anecdote. The same year, Marvel Comics introduced Black Panther, a much stronger and, eventually, more culturally relevant and enduring character than Ferro Lad would have been. There’s also the tack that Shooter took instead when he couldn’t integrate the Legion: He killed Ferro Lad off in one of the Legion’s most classic and indeed groundbreaking stories, which let fans know, even in the utopian 30th century — and in this Silver Age comic in particular — that the stakes could sometimes be deadly.
So either a black Ferro Lad robs us of this classic storyline, or … the black guy dies.
———
It would be many years later before the Legion truly tried again to diversify its ranks. At some point after his Shooter-penned debut alongside Ferro Lad, Karate Kid was retconned to be half-white, half Asian. And two other characters of color with Earth-bound heritages emerged: the winged, native American-lineaged tracker Dawnstar and sonic-powered black separatist Tyroc.
Both were welcome but problematic.
TYROC (Superboy #216) 1975
“Tyroc.” Just a few letters from “Tyrone.” Artwork by James Sherman and Jack Abel from Superboy and the Legion of Super-HeroesAll-New Collectors’ Edition (1978).
Did I say “welcome?” Actually, not really, he wasn’t.
Essentially, he came from Marzal, a black separatist colony that existed in another dimension.
So wait. All the black people? That’s where they’d been throughout the Legion’s nearly two-decade history? And that’s how you introduce the first black member of the team? As an angry separatist who has to be taught a lesson in tolerance and acceptance by the Legion?
That “ALL ALIENS MATTER, TYROC” moment from Superboy #216, starring the most diverse sub-team the franchise could muster without cheating by including shapeshifter Chameleon Boy. Written by Cary Bates and drawn by Mike Grell and Vince Colletta
SUPERBOY: When it comes to race, we’re color-blind! SHADOW LASS: Blue skin, yellow skin, green skin… KARATE KID: …we’re brothers and sisters… BRAINIAC 5: …united in the name of justice everywhere! TYROC: I guess I’ve been wrong … about a lot of things…
from Superboy #216, written by Cary Bates
*calmly steps onto soapbox*
This scene is well-intentioned but insulting.
Why?
Because IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN BLACK AMERICANS WHO HAVE TO TEACH OTHER PEOPLE THIS.
But this strip wanna pretend that white folks have some moral authority of their own in this lane.
*steps off soapbox*
If only it were just his origin that was problematic.
Mike Grell, who’s on record as hating the character’s background about as much as I do, deliberately designed one of the worst costumes in comics history.
But wait, there’s more! Tyroc also had the worst-defined super power possibly in mainstream comics history: reality-warping sonic powers. According to Wikipedia (and Legion lore), here are the powers connected to each onomatopoeia:
EEYYAAAHH! – pyrokinesis
AHHRRRRRR! – force field
OYYUUUUUU! – teleportation
ARRRRHHHH! – explosions
ZZZRRRUUGGHH! – telekinesis
UIUUIEEEE! – transmutation
ARRREEEEG! – weather manipulation
IRRRRWWWW! – plant manipulation
CCCIIIRRR! – vertigo
RRRYYYY! – wind manipulation
WHEEEEW! – retrocognition
Uhhh… what?
Later Legion writer Paul Levitz found Tyroc too challenging or too stupid a character to write and never included him in his long 1980s tenure on the series. But he was committed to adding diversity to the team, so in 1977, he and Grell added Dawnstar.
DAWNSTAR (Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #226) 1977
Like Tyroc, she was also from a separatist nation. I guess the precedent for the overwhelming whiteness of the 30th century had to be respected. But unlike Tyroc, she had a spectacular visual design and well-defined abilities as a tracker.
Wait, really? A tracker? Like every native American sidekick/bit player in every Old West story, ever?
As a boy, I went with it. It was and is a neat power, along with her ability to fly through space at interstellar speeds under her own power with those feathered wings. And she had a fantastically fetishized and stereotyped costume.
Wait, that’s not entirely good, that the first real-life representation of a woman of color was so dang sexualized in a buckskin outfit. But this being the ’70s and alongside Mike Grell’s sexualized redesigns across the board, it’s not exactly proper to single out Dawny’s look. Compared to Shadow Lass, Cosmic Boy or Saturn Girl, Dawny looks almost prudish.
The Legion of SEXY Heroes.
What comes across somewhat worse to me now is her eventual romantic pairing with energy being Wildfire in a relationship that could never consummate, rather than with any of the more corporeal — and, as it happens, white — Legionnaires.
SO! That’s two representatives of non-white people on the team at last. One in reserve status because he’s such a problematic embarrassment and the other serving as the Exotic Minority but not allowed to touch anyone with flesh in a non-platonic fashion.
More work needed to be done. And so came the next:
INVISIBLE KID II in Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1 in 1982.
Jacques Foccart was a legacy character, inheritor of the invisibility powers of the slain Lyle Norg.
Unlike the strident Tyroc, Jacques was a tentative, newbie hero, unfailingly polite and boring as hell.
Yeah, I said it.
Levitz gave him a dynamite intro, it’s true, with him being instrumental in defeating resurrected uber-villain Computo and saving his younger sister. And he got to participate in one of the greatest storylines in Legion (and comics) history, the Great Darkness Saga.
But he was also saddled with a background that had him peppering his speech with French catchphrases in that Claremontian manner of characterization shorthand (see: Nightcrawler, Colossus, Gambit) with non-English words. It seemed an extra layer that marked him as “The Other” in contrast with his other humanoid teammates who did NOT get similar speech patterns.
Even in the 1980s, it seemed there was no place for a truly black American representation on the Legion.
———
The decade wore on. No additional characters of color reflecting Earth’s diversity would make the roster for the rest of the ’80s. Worse, even the half-Asian Karate Kid was killed off midway through.
When Keith Giffen (who some blame for Karate Kid’s demise) revamped the Legion for his dark “Five Years Later” reboot, there was a great opportunity to inject some much needed diversity into the team due to most of the old favorites being sidelined by war, life events and other circumstances.
That opportunity was almost completely squandered.
Art by Keith Giffen and Al Gordon, circa 1991
Of the six new characters among the stripped down (by LSH standards) roster of 16, nearly all are still white or white-coded. The sole black/brown character is a little girl (Ivy) whose place on the team is more as a ward than as an active member.
But at least some attention was given to side characters. For example, both Jacques and Tyroc, somewhat maligned black members of previous eras of the Legion, got the roles of president of Earth in their post-Legionnaire careers.
And then there was SADE. Though she was introduced in issue #29, it was #36 that left the real impression.
This was my first Legion of Super-Heroes comic. Cover by Jason Pearson.
I loved the art style of Jason Pearson far more than Keith Giffen’s. I loved the nine-panel grid promising great value for my money. And unlike earlier issues of the series I’d thumbed through, I could actually follow this story somewhat.
But more than anything, while I can’t say that I consciously was drawn to it because it featured two women of color, in retrospect, I think that may have been the tipping point.
As a character, Sade isn’t great shakes. She’s a cynical, hard-bitten killer (with the power of short-range teleportation) who got little panel time and was grating when she did. But that unlikability made her work because she was neither the model token that Jacques was nor the borderline stereotype that was Tyroc on introduction. She was just a character who happened to be brown and hung out with the Legion as a distinctly amoral counter to their idealism.
Even though I was new to the team, it was still refreshing, because such a portrayal of a black character was largely missing from comics across the board.
Still, she wasn’t a Legionnaire proper. The next real attempt to diversify the Legion was KID QUANTUM in Vol. 4 #33 (1992).
Art by Jason Pearson and Karl Story
In the 5YL continuity, he was a retcon as one of the earliest members of the team … and the first to be killed, fulfilling the “black guy dies” trope. But in the present day, said death was written to have been faked, so here he was, set to rejoin the team, maybe.
Cover by Jason Pearson and Karl Story
Like Jacques, he was a bit of a dull cypher. Even his power to create stasis fields was kinda boring. But his face (and hairstyle just like mine at the time!) was welcome. So I was glad to see this:
Legionnaires (1993) promo art by Chris Sprouse and Karl Story
And I remember this question from my mom during a holiday break, when she saw my poster version of this cover:
“Where are the positive-looking black characters?”
I think she was just glad that, for once, a comic book I was reading didn’t look like it was on some DARK’N’GRITTY violence tip as usual. And happily, as compared to the group images from every previous iteration of the then-35-year-old franchise, I could actually point to not just one (Kid Quantum), but FOUR characters of color!
CATSPAW
Art by Jason Pearson and Karl Story.
This borderline feral type avoided the trap of being the token model minority. Unfortunately, she fell into a worse stereotype: that of the oversexed ethnic female, as she seemed to always be trying to get in the boys’ pants. That wouldn’t have been much of an issue if that hadn’t been the effective extent of her character development.
DRAGONMAGE
Art by Chris Sprouse and Karl Story.
A tentative magic user, D-mage was another dull cypher who didn’t get much chance to shine. His name and likeness would be reused in later iterations of the franchise, so there’s that at least.
COMPUTO
Art by Ty Templeton.
Invisible Kid II’s kid sister got to grow up to be one of the senior members of the younger Legionnaire team. As a side effect of the 1982 story that introduced her and her brother, she gained the ability to speak to and control computers with her mind. She also got saddled with probably the worst uniform of the entire team. And why was she — and she ALONE — extra curvy (though it doesn’t really show here)?
She also didn’t get a whole lot to do, as she and the rest of the SW6 Legion got swept aside before the book completed its second year by Zero Hour — a wholesale reboot of the franchise in 1994.
———
With the Legion essentially starting over again from scratch, pretty much all the meager diversity that the previous 30-plus years had mustered was gone. But here was a great opportunity to make up for the loss by providing some from the beginning. (Re-)enter Kid Quantum (in Vol. 4 #62)!
Art by Lee Moder
Where the previous version of Kid Q was a mature, almost spiritual cast member, this reboot take was an arrogant blowhard. And so, when he became the first one of the nascent team to die, no one was sorry — not even me, who liked the previous version of the character.
He sure did lean hard into the “black guy dies first” trope, though.
Fortunately there was a better character already on the team (as of Vol. 4 #62).
XS
Art by Philip Moy.
A descendant of then-20th-century hero Barry Allen, speedster Jenni Ognats was one of the very best of the new Legionnaires. Writer Mark Waid was also helming The Flash at the time, so he clearly favored this character, a great example of the organic fashion of creating new characters that many fans vocally prefer over other methods of achieving diversity.
But she sort of ends up illustrating the failure of that method as much as she’s a success.
Art by Alan Davis
This wonderful poster showed up in Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 4 #100 (1998), 76 issues AFTER the Zero Hour relaunch. And in terms of the diversity of its membership, the team and supporting cast in 1998 — numbering at nearly 30 — was nearly as white as in the 1960s, with Jenni being the lone brown face.
It’s hard to “just make new characters” when the old ones take up all the room.
Still, the creators tried a bit. Dragonmage reappeared in the reboot, though he never became a member and he had the same unpleasant personality switch as the original Kid Quantum. Speaking of whom, it seemed the creators wanted to give his concept one more go:
Art by Olivier Coipel and Andy Lanning.
Jazmin Cullen, the younger sister of the slain Kid Quantum, had shown up some time earlier (Vol. 4, #82 in 1996) as the new KID QUANTUM. But her admission to the team was somewhat delayed (in sister title Legionnaires #60, May 1998). Perhaps it was for the best, as Jaz was a slightly problematic character at first:
• Though understandably so because she blamed the Legion for her brother’s death, she was unfortunately fitting of the “angry black woman” stereotype in her first appearance.
• She was also a legacy character, another trope that seems to follow black characters. At least she wasn’t taking up a white character’s identity. But of course the fact that she was taking up the slot of the “1st character dead” did her no favors.
• Add to all that her somewhat nebulous “stasis field” powers, and essentially, she had the sad potential to become another Tyroc.
Thankfully, she was a favorite of later writers Abnett and Andy Lanning, and so rose to some prominence in the team’s latter days. She shed the angry girl characterization, got plenty of panel time (thanks to being one of the castaways for the “Legion Lost” miniseries) and even became team leader — with a side relationship with Cosmic Boy.
GEAR (Vol. 4, #117 July 1999)
Art by Tony Harris.
A member of a race of techno-organic beings, Gear was a rare character of African phenotype that was neither a legacy nor a stereotype……I think. There’s a gap in my Legion reading, so I missed the introduction of this final black member of the Zero Hour Legion. In any case, he was purely a background member (even joining off-panel) with little to do and his Legion tenure was cut short by the next big reboot: the Threeboot.
So here was the then-new team, reimagined as though created in 2004 instead of 1958-1963.
The Threeboot Legion, by George Perez in The Brave and the Bold #5, 2007
Hmmm. There remains a distinct sea of white-coded faces aside from pretty much the same ones from 40 years earlier (Brainy, Cham, Shady) and the now-fully-Asian Karate Kid.
*climbs soapbox again*
This is how white supremacy works.
After it actively enforces its exclusionary policy, it creates a norm. And so, even when a creator explicitly intends to reimagine the Legion, it always reverts back to this status quo.
*climbs off soapbox again … for now*
Waid, still wanting to at least try, made Star Boy black.
Left: Keith Giffen and Larry Mahlstedt’s 1980s Star Boy. Right: Barry Kitson’s threeboot Star Boy in 2004.
No explanation. He and Kitson just made him different. And because this was another hard reboot, they didn’t have to explain why.
But here’s the problem: He was the only one. Nearly every single other rebooted figure could have completely passed for their original 1960s personas, just modernized a little.
Sure, I at first appreciated the token effort, and Waid wrote the character likably enough. But as time has passed, I find that the effort was wanting.
It was LAZY. And INSULTING.
It’s lazy because rather than expend any risk or effort in truly diversifying the cast — say, using Jacques instead of Lyle as the Invisible Kid to be the Legion’s newbie, or having any other members besides the now-fully-Asian Karate Kid deviate from the white American baseline look — the creative team just revamped THIS ONE CHARACTER to be completely unrecognizable.
It was insulting for reasons that are hard to articulate. One reason is that Star Boy is kind of a B-tier Legionnaire, classically a bit more known for being the stunning Dream Girl’s paramour than as a team mainstay. That in itself is OK, because a large part of the Legion’s charm is that many of them are B-tier characters.
But when the only character to be wholly remade as a person of color is one of those B-tier figures — and he doesn’t even get the connection to the still A-list-even-in-this-reimagination Dream Girl that his predecessor had — it definitely comes off as insulting.
The Threeboot had a 50-issue run. But despite three different writers and a membership drive or two, the team’s roster remained pretty much just as lily-white as ever — moreso than ever, given that we were solidly into the 21st century by now.
Artwork for the cover of Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 6, #9, by Yildiray Cinar.
The Retroboot brought back the Legion of 1958 — and with it, much of that same old racist status quo. But at least it already had some built-in diversity to work with in the persons of Invisible Kid, Tyroc, XS (who inexplicably left her Legion team to join the elder force) and the ever-popular Dawnstar. And Tyroc finally got used as leader of the stranded-in-21st-century squad in the New 52’s Legion Lost spinoff. But XS was rarely seen again and Jacques as Invisible Kid remained mostly, well, invisible, as most of the old guard took up all the room again.
An exception: HARMONIA.
Introduced in vol. 6, #1 in 2010, she was a mysterious woman who, while seeming to be an Asian woman in her prime, also seemed to be much older than her early 30s appearance. Possessing powers over the elements, her mystery was never solved.
It’s also worth noting that CHEMICAL KING, a long-dead Legion codename, got reclaimed by one Hadru Jamik, a young man whose ethnicity was indeterminate. In my head canon, he maybe had some Indian or Middle Eastern ancestry, but I have zero evidence for either. And, in any case, he and this version of the Legion are both moot points with the newest version upon us.
———
Now comes the Rebirth Legion. Brian Michael Bendis was handed the reins to the future team as part of his defection from Marvel to DC. He’s said he’s a longtime fan of the franchise, and it shows. The team’s early appearances in Superman #s 14 and 15 and in Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #2 every bit evoke the youthful optimism reflecting the utopian future in which they reside.
It also still unfortunately somewhat evokes the anti-black vision of said utopia.
The “Rebirth” Legion. Art by Ryan Sook from Legion of Super-Heroes (2019) #1
Not all the new cast has been revealed by name even as of issue 7 (Vol. 8), so some of this remains speculative. But similar to each previous reboot of the Legion, the core remains the basically all white-coded characters introduced during the Silver Age … plus Dawnstar.
• No new Tyroc.
• No new Invisible Kid II. (Although he remains invisible on panel, he’s confirmed to be Lyle Norg, the first Invisible Kid.)
• No new XS.
• No new Kid Quantum … either of them.
• No new Gear.
• No new Computo.
• No new Catspaw.
Almost none of the Legionnaires who were black have returned in any form.
Instead, Bendis has repeated the “facelift” approach that Waid took with Star Boy in the Threeboot with Lightning Lad and his twin sister Light Lass in the Rebirth Legion.
The newest Legion’s first appearance. Art by Ivan Reis, from Superman (2018) #14.
This could be a good move for a few reasons.
First, as one of the founders of this new Legion, this newly black character will be a central figure rather than a peripheral one like Star Boy. So while he might be something of a token, he’s possibly a leader — maybe THE leader — neatly sidestepping the sidelining that often befalls a black character.
He’s also a two-for-one, as he has traditionally been paired with his twin sister, Ayla, bringing another black character into the lineup. And just like that, this new Legion already doubles the amount of melanin on the team as compared with the Threeboot.
Moreover, the team is more diverse across the board.
• The traditionally white Cosmic Boy now has a distinctly Asian look.
• Ultra Boy looks possibly south Asian or Latinx.
• Princess Projectra and Shrinking Violet, previously pale-skinned and platinum blonde and brunette, respectively, have purplish-skinned complexions.
• Blond-haired and green-skinned Brainiac 5 is twinned with Element Lad, who used to be a pretty-boy blond.
Classic ’70s and ’80s Legion designs above their 2019 Ryan Sook-designed counterparts. From left: Blok, Dawnstar, Dream Girl, Element Lad, Matter Eater Lad, Superboy
And they get weirder still: former pinup platinum blonde Dream Girl is now apparently a being of living sand (perhaps in connection with either Neil Gaiman’s or Geoff Johns’ 20th/21st century-era Sandman characters), Matter-Eater Lad and Timber Wolf both are husky, hairy guys instead of the lithe figures their previous incarnations cut; Star Boy appears to be literally black — like space — while Sun Boy is on fire perpetually (at least in the few images seen so far. And existing “ethnic” characters Karate Kid and Dawnstar only deepen their visual connection with their cultural heritages (although the former character’s aesthetic strongly hearkens back to a Chinese rather than Japanese look).
Amidst this greater degree of diversity, the lack of black-coded characters doesn’t cut nearly as deep as before. But it still breaks the skin.
But a pair of unlikely bandages came in issue 5. First, the story is introduced by a new version of Computo, an artificial intelligence that bears a striking resemblance to the Black woman of Legions past.
page 1 of Legion of Super-Heroes (2019) #5
And later in the same issue, despite an invisible Lyle having introduced himself as Invisible Kid in an earlier story, here the invisibility is dropped for the first time, revealing the new Invisible Kid to be Jacques Foccart after all!
Page 6 of Legion of Super-Heroes (2019) #5
Or as he seems to prefer, Invisible Gentleman. (I wonder if there might be actually two Invisible Kids, with only Lyle claiming the name?)
As of this writing, there is still a LOT to learn about the new Legion. The first seven issues have given only the most cursory of glances at most of the cast. An upcoming 2-part story is supposed to spotlight each member of the team somehow (something to do with a trial). And this image was very recently shared from said story:
Art by Mike Allred, from Legion of Super-Heroes (2019) #8
It’s Ferro Lad, apparently — and as a Black hero this time as originally intended. The new Legion appears to be bringing things full circle.
So despite my grousing about the racist utopian ideal that the original future alluded to, I’ve always loved the Legion and, so far, love this latest one as well — warts and all.
Bridge Over Troubled Opinions 