Pop Smart - Who’s the best black superhero?

The new film Hancock (reviewed here) takes two steps forward and at least one step back in advancing the cause of black superheroes, who are solely underrepresented in pop culture. On the plus side, Hancock is a lavish summer movie scheduled for the prime July 4 weekend spot, starring arguably the world’s most popular African-American screen actor. In the debit column, the title character is a surly, accident-prone boozer who sets such a bad example, he makes Charles “I’m not a role model” Barkley look like, I dunno, President David Palmer from “24.”

Black superheroes have a spotty history in comics, cartoons and movies. Before the mid-1960s, you’d be hard-pressed to find any African-American comic book superheroes, and the ones who subsequently emerged were frequently treated as tokens with either utterly bland or highly stereotypical characterization. With so many real-world heroes breaking the color bar in arts, sports, politics and civil rights over the past generations, it’s not a surprise that the likes of, say, Black Vulcan from “Super Friends” never made much of an impact. For simplicity’s sake I’ll focus here (mostly) on the black superheroes who have crossed over to other media, with varying degrees of success.

Blade-++-

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By default, the character to make the most successful leap from comic books to other media is Blade, played by Wesley Snipes. The super-powered vampire hunter first appeared in Tomb of Dracula in 1973, remained on the margins of Marvel Comics but in 1998-2004 received the big-screen treatment in three films (not to mention a short-lived TV series with Kirk “Sticky” Jones). The success of the Blade films blazed the trail for higher-profile Marvel Comics adaptations like X-Men and Spider-man. Despite his pointy silver weapons and vampire-type powers, Blade is arguably more of an R-rated horror/action hero than an iconic superhero in his own right. Still, director Guillermo Del Toro made Blade II into one of the most surprisingly entertaining guilty-pleasure hero films. The clip above features Ron ‘Hellboy’ Perlman as a racist vampire and includes some of Snipes’ liveliest macho posturing.