Thursday, March 10, 2016

Ta-Nehisi Coates gives us his 'BlackPanther'



Ta-Nehisi Coates' treatment of the Black Panther has us on the edge of our seats. In the latest piece on TheAtlantic, he writes:
"Some of the best days of my life were spent poring over the back issues of The Uncanny X-Men and The Amazing Spider-Man. As a child of the crack-riddled West Baltimore of the 1980s, I found the tales of comic books to be an escape, another reality where, very often, the weak and mocked could transform their fallibility into fantastic power. That is the premise behind the wimpy Steve Rogers mutating into Captain America, behind the nerdy Bruce Banner needing only to grow angry to make his enemies take flight, behind the bespectacled Peter Parker being transfigured by a banal spider bite into something more.
But comic books provided something beyond escapism. Indeed, aside from hip-hop and Dungeons & Dragons, comics were my earliest influences. In the way that past writers had been shaped by the canon of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wharton, I was formed by the canon of Claremont, DeFalco, and Simonson. Some of this was personal. All of the comics I loved made use of two seemingly dueling forces—fantastic grandiosity and ruthless efficiency. Comic books are absurd. At any moment, the Avengers might include a hero drawn from Norse mythology (Thor), a monstrous realization of our nuclear-age nightmares (the Hulk), a creation of science fiction (Wasp), and an allegory for the experience of minorities in human society (Beast). But the absurdities of comics are, in part, made possible by a cold-eyed approach to sentence-craft. Even when the language tips toward bombast, space is at a premium; every word has to count. This big/small approach to literature, the absurd and surreal married to the concrete and tangible, has undergirded much of my approach to writing. In my journalism here at The Atlantic, I try to ground my arguments not just in reporting but also in astute attention to every sentence. It may not always work, but I am really trying to make every one of those 18,000 words count.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

'Urbance' pilot promises to take black animation to new heights



"In the big city, gender war rises. Sex is prohibited because of a genetic deadly virus. Ruled by hate and anger, boys and girls grow up apart from each other, forming rivals gangs. Among these lost teenagers, Kenzell and lesya will fight adversity and defy all the rules in order to live their love and restore peace."
So reads the synopsis for the uber-lit "Urbance" trailer, which promises to take black animation to new heights.
While there's no release date set for the film from Canadian director Joel Dos Reis Viegas, ofSteambot Studios, there's no doubt this one will be a hit when it comes out.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Black art be ALL OVER Tumblr!



Want to find some cool black art? Head on over to Tumblr! There's tons of the stuff!

AfroPunk Tour hits U.S.


Afropunk is in the midst of a U.S. tour, having just left NYC and heading to Atlanta next month. Check it out.