Bealz, Prince Of The SouthSide

Marvel has a billion dollar knack for mining the rich storytelling potential latent within a good ol' messy family legacy, particularly of the patriarchal sort: Iron Man with his dead Daddy issues. Thor and Loki with their dead Daddy issues. Spiderman with his dead Daddy/Uncle/Mentor issues. Black Panther with his dead Daddy issues. The over-riding, most enduring characteristic connecting them all has been this particularly repetitive dynamic. It's no wonder that Carol Danvers seemed to have a shitty flashback Dad, too. Either way, as far as an easily and successfully repeated formula is concerned, Marvel's corporate nature demands that they stick to what works. This gives the viewer the benefit of an ever-increasing scope and scale, but it also lends to a diminished interest or investment in the overall point of it all. Because, in the end, who really cares? We know how this plays out. Daddy's good lessons stick and the more troublesome aspects of h...

                                                         MASTER SARGENT ELSWORTH DANSBY                                                         http://omeka.decaturlibrary.org/items/show/128                                                                                                    OBAMA That shit was inspirational. Like a 14-year old kid seeing a partially...

This Country, indeed, the World at large, as ruled by The Ways of Men, specializes in the art of minimizing and marginalization. That being said, I'm on my way to see Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings , and I am excited for what is supposedly an epic superhero adventure, lush with a relevance of purpose and a cuturally appropriate presentation. It makes me think of my excitement to see Black Panther , another MCU epic, released in 2018, and told from a keenly, self-aware, African-American's global point of view, and just how impactful that story was to me at the time. Here, then, I'll revisit that initial experience and the subsequent article that I wrote as a sort of before and after experience. That was then, how I felt as a Black Man who had grown up on comics, limited to the very narrow slice of representation offered up, first, on the printed page, and later in cinematic form. I wonder, now, though, going into this experience with Shang-Chi , a com...

  Over a year ago my publisher, God Bless Her Heart, signed on for an ‘urban-fantasy’ novel and yet, here we are now, and I’m debuting my first book of poetry. You’d almost be forgiven to think, for good reason, that I’d pulled a fast one on her. Executed a sleight of hand; the old switcheroo — ! “Not true!” I’d harrumph in protest. The novel, all 3/4ths of which, by the way, is actually complete, is just gestating, I’d say. It’s nearly complete, but needs some time yet to ripen. I’m doing some additional research. Reviewing story lines and story structure and plot development and rhythmic flow and — Well, yeah. All of that. And more. And none of it. And COVID and spiraling levels of depression and parenthood and strained relationships and love and loss and — Yeah. So,  marjorie steele    (God Bless Her Heart) got a book of poetry,   Songs for the Cleveland Avenue Warriors , for her press, instead of a novel. She even acted as if she were enthused for the whole ...

We live within an incalculably discrete moment which exists between the definitive complexities of the past and the enduring inevitability of an infinite future. These opposing states of being meet within an ever-shifting moment with less relativistic substance than either of them. This is a point in time that can hardly be considered as real. A point with no proven parameters. Consider the question of where or when along our life's thread, our timeline of existence, does the present take form? This is most difficult, if not impossible to identify because the immediacy of the moment forever slips away into the past when perceived from our current position and is constantly overwhelmed by the looming presence of the future. All that we can know for sure is that from the one state, the other is constructed. The future, the reactive effect, is birthed from the ripe potential of the past, the catalyst. To attempt to pinpoint the one, however, to fix either in place within an ...

Two professors One, handing back a research paper marked angrily with a 'D', tells me to see him later. "This paper was obviously plagiarized,” he accused me. “I'll allow you the opportunity to take an essay test here in my office to prove that you know the material. I re-wrote and re-worded nearly five or so pages from the fifteen page essay I'd originally submitted. He read through it with a frown, said that he was still skeptical that I could write something of that caliber. He was convinced, in fact, that it had been plagiarized, that I had somehow managed some tom-foolery right there in his presence, in his office, under his scrutiny, while taking the test, and that he'd just been unable to locate the source of the original material. Based on this reasoning, he agreed to give me a 'C' for what he admitted was likely an 'A+' paper. Somehow, my 20 year old self, hurt and confused, felt that I really had done somethi...