AMAZING MAN!!!
I picked up Justice Society of America #12 at The Beguiling earlier today, it's a book whose, along with it's previous series, writing is normally quite good compared to a lot of other comic book crap about angst and zombies!
This issue however threw me for a mild "WTF?" , the JSA, a group of super-heroes led by a small number of "Golden-Age" (characters from 1938-1951 continuity) has taken it upon themselves to insure that future generations of super-beings are trained right, "the world needs better heroes" is their rallying call.
To facilitate this they start tracking down young heroes that are parts of 'legacies" (the grandsons/daughters or other younger relatives of deceased or retired heroes). One of these is the grandson of a black "mystery-man"
(the old time heroes are now called this because in the new retro-continuity Superman wasn't active till the 80s, so they can't be referred to as "super-heroes") called Amazing-Man. This was a character created back in the late 1970s by writer Roy Thomas for a book called All-Star Squadron, that revealed "untold stories" from the "Golden-Age" mostly to do with World War 2. Thomas at one point must have gone "no black super-heroes (sorry, mystery-men)back in the 40s I've got to do something about that, and thus one lame origin and bad costume later
"Amazing-Man" was bused into DC continuity. Except now, courtesy of writer Geoff Johns, we get to discover the remarkable 'history" of this character, how he marched with Martin Luther King Jr., how he investigated the murders of civil rights workers in the south, how it was he that captured James Earl Ray, and how "Along with King and Malcom X , Amazing-Man is one of the most important historical figures in American Civil Rights."
Wow, I'm so glad I now know all this Mr. Johns. And people wonder why I don't believe in Afro-centric schooling?
Stay eldritch
GT
PS- MC mentioned to me that this sounds, to her, like a classic example of the "Forest Gump" trap. (My character must interact with as many historical figures as possible.)
This issue however threw me for a mild "WTF?" , the JSA, a group of super-heroes led by a small number of "Golden-Age" (characters from 1938-1951 continuity) has taken it upon themselves to insure that future generations of super-beings are trained right, "the world needs better heroes" is their rallying call.
To facilitate this they start tracking down young heroes that are parts of 'legacies" (the grandsons/daughters or other younger relatives of deceased or retired heroes). One of these is the grandson of a black "mystery-man"
(the old time heroes are now called this because in the new retro-continuity Superman wasn't active till the 80s, so they can't be referred to as "super-heroes") called Amazing-Man. This was a character created back in the late 1970s by writer Roy Thomas for a book called All-Star Squadron, that revealed "untold stories" from the "Golden-Age" mostly to do with World War 2. Thomas at one point must have gone "no black super-heroes (sorry, mystery-men)back in the 40s I've got to do something about that, and thus one lame origin and bad costume later
"Amazing-Man" was bused into DC continuity. Except now, courtesy of writer Geoff Johns, we get to discover the remarkable 'history" of this character, how he marched with Martin Luther King Jr., how he investigated the murders of civil rights workers in the south, how it was he that captured James Earl Ray, and how "Along with King and Malcom X , Amazing-Man is one of the most important historical figures in American Civil Rights."
Wow, I'm so glad I now know all this Mr. Johns. And people wonder why I don't believe in Afro-centric schooling?
Stay eldritch
GT
PS- MC mentioned to me that this sounds, to her, like a classic example of the "Forest Gump" trap. (My character must interact with as many historical figures as possible.)