Essential bibliography: Rise of the Black Panther (Marvel); Wakanda (Marvel); Batman: Gotham Knights – Gilded City (DC); WWE The New Day: Power of Positivity (BOOM! Studios)
First Comic: “It was this old digest collection of Superman stories. I think the theme was Superman versus magic, and it was one of those small, squarish, trim-sized digest collections and it was a bunch of stories from the Fifties, Sixties, and probably Seventies. That was the first comic I can remember reading, but the first comic I remember buying with my own money was DC Comics Presents and it was a team-up between Superman and the Blackhawks, where he had to travel back to World War II and rescue Einstein.”
Currently working on: Static Team-Up: Anansi (DC). “I remember reading Static in college and thinking, ‘That’s me. This kid is sitting around with his friends, playing video games, talking shit, listening to hip-hop.’ I had to imagine Spider-Man was Black under that mask. I didn’t have to imagine with Static.”
“I remember seeing the first Christopher Reeves [Superman] movie in the theatres. … As a kid, I didn’t know what I was seeing, but as an adult I have to recognize the genuine, guileless, deep-rooted altruism that he made manifest in the character. He believed that shit. Think about the guy: trained at Juilliard, and you watch him doing interviews for the movies and he means it. He’s like, ‘We need a friend.’
“A lot of what I call nerd shame turns up in these adaptations. Like Zack Snyder turns everything dark and gritty, and has all this disaster porn, because there’s a deep level of embarrassment to engaging with these symbols. Reeves never had that, and I feel that there’s a direct line between Reeves’ full-hearted embodiment of that character and Chadwick [Boseman] playing T’Challa. He realized, this is important beyond any preconceived notions about superheroes as a genre or putting on a costume or anything like that. It can mean something bigger if we execute it the right way.”
This article appears in May 5 • 2023.
