6.14.2017

Sit Y'all's Paranoid Asses Down – The ‘Black Panther’ Poster Isn't ‘Too Militant’


Chadwick Boseman's enthroned image pays homage more to legendary African rulers than the Black Panther Party's Huey P. Newton.

It wasn't long after the release of the new teaser poster for next year's MCU film Black Panther that the internet was set ablaze. Keyboard conspiracy theorists were ringing the alarm that the white genocide was a-coming, and the latest sign of the racial apocalypse was a superhero movie poster.

Credit: Marvel

According to critics the image composition for the poster appeared startlingly similar to an iconic image of the Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton sitting confidently in a wicker chair––holding an African spear and a rifle. And aside from the fact that Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman holds no weapons, there are some uncanny similarities. 

For instance, both men are seated with their arms resting atop the armrests of their respective chairs. Both are dressed in stylish black outfits and – maybe most remarkably – both men are African-American. But despite those senses-shattering similarities, the film poster takes its cues from another image that, like the Newton photo, has deep historical significance.

Credit: Blair Stapp, 1967


The image in question is a 1959 photograph of the Nigerian King Olateru Olagbegi II (1910–1998). Olateru was the ruler of the ancient city of Owo, which was once the capital of the Eastern Yoruban city-state. In the photograph, which was taken outside his palace, the king sits under the shade of a velour umbrella, framed between two ornately engraved elephant tusks. 

Oba Olateru Olagbegi II, the Olowo of Owo

And it is this regal image of Olateru to whom homage is paid with the poster of the enthroned T'Challa, the superhero king of Wakanda. An image that is most apparent in the tusk-like structural design elements jutting from the left and right sides of his throne. In the mid-1970s, the photo of Olateru had a similar influencing effect on another promotional print image.

In 1975, the Anheuser-Busch Company began commissioning artists for a series of prints created to bring awareness to various African leaders throughout history. The series was called The Great Kings and Queens of Africa, and one of the 28 prints in the series featured an iconic image of the great Hannibal (247-183 BC), ruler of the ancient North African city of Carthage.  

Credit: The Anheuser-Busch Company / Artist: Charles Lilly

Released in 1977, the Hannibal image was painted by artist Charles Lilly, but shows the unmistakable influence of the photo of the Nigerian king Olateru. In the print, the celebrated military strategist – whose soldiers were famed for riding elephants into war – sits on a high-backed wooden chair framed by two large elephant tusks whose tips are adorned with gold rings. 

Sold in sets of four, ads for Anheuser-Busch's The Great Kings and Queens of Africa print series were carried in the pages of publications like Ebony, Jet magazine for decades––and the prints themselves were subsequently found adorning the walls of classrooms across America. And in the process, the print images forged an indelible impression on several generations of African-Americans.

Now, while it is certainly possible that the teaser poster for Ryan Coogler's eagerly-awaited Black Panther shares a slight resemblance with iconic photograph of Huey P. Newton, the influence of the photograph of the Nigerian king Olateru cannot be denied. But let's leave it to those uber-paranoid keyboard conspiracy theorists to give it another try. 

Speaking of conspiracies, are you also equally disturned by the fact that we have to wait until friggin' February to see Black Panther? 

6.07.2017

Suffering Sappho! This 'Wonder Women' Fan Art Is Breaking The Internet

[Credit: @marcusthevisual]

As the hit DCEU movie Wonder Woman was in its fourth day of breaking the US box office this past weekend, Atlanta-based illustrator Marcus Williams (Tuskegee Heirs) started breaking the internet — or Facebook and Twitter, at least — by posting a spine-tingling tribute to WonderWoman and her largely forgotten fraternal twin sister, Nubia.

And as you can see, the artwork is wondrous.



On June 2, a pulse-pounding preview of this now full-color work was shared in the form of a pencil sketch of Nubia and Diana. That piece showed off the pure form of fine line work for which Williams is becoming well known, especially due to his remarkable renditions of fan favorite comic book heroines like Storm, Captain Marvel, Psylocke, and too many others to name.

At the time the sketch was posted, Williams was just showing his enthusiastic support of the then-upcoming Wonder Woman film. Fans of the artist's work were quick to show their enthusiastic support of his enthusiastic support!

Yet, there were also many new school comic book fans who weren't aware that Diana had ever had a sister, aside from Donna Troy of the Teen Titans, let alone a black fraternal twin. But, once upon a time, she did indeed have one.


In February of 1973, during the rise in popularity of blaxploitation films like Shaft, Coffy, Black Caesar and many others, DC Comics showed themselves as "hip to the times" by introducing the Amazon warrior Nubia, with whom Diana duels in issue #204 of Wonder Woman. But Diana — who'd just recovered from amnesia — had no idea who her tall, dark and lovely adversary actually was. The same was also true of her book's readers.

By way of a flashback in Wonder Woman #206, it was revealed that Nubia and Diana were twin sisters, formed as babes from dark and light clay by their mother Queen Hippolyta, and animated into life by the breath of the Goddess Aphrodite. After their miraculous creation however, the God of War Mars appeared and stole Nubia away from her mother and sister.


[Credit: DC Comics]

In the mid-1980s, DC Comics released the popular but also controversial series, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This complex story would serve as a reset button of sorts for the publisher's then-sprawling, multi-dimensional universe. Many of the plot twists that came about in the ensuing years since Wonder Woman and her peers were first created in the 1940s and onward were erased.

Among those countless casualties was Nubia's audacious origin, which left the character being just one of many Amazons on Paradise Island with no special relation to Diana and Hippolyta. The ripple in Wonder Woman's continuity created in 1973 by writer Cary Bates and artist Don Heck never faded, and the appreciation of this little known Amazon warrior endures.

In fitting tribute to that now classic tale of the "Wonder Women," Nubia and her fraternal twin sister Diana — as they forever remain in the minds of many old school comic book collectors — have been given a picture perfect family reunion in a gorgeous work of fan art by Marcus Williams.


[Credit: @marcusthevisual]

Though Nubia has never really had the place in comics that her character deserves, the vision of this talented artist from Atlanta makes you realize that it would be some kind of wonderful to see the separated twin sisters together again on the silver screen in Patty Jenkins' senses-shattering sequel to Wonder Woman — even if only for a moment.

What say you, Patty J? Do you wanna break the box office again?