Sweet Christmas! The Civil Rights Movement comes to comics

Black Avengers Assemble!

Black Avengers mock cover by Jim Rugg. Colors by Thomas Morrison

In the 70's the comics, like the rest of America, began to become desegregated. but it didn't all happen at once. It took some time before blacks were integrated into the mainstream superhero books and even got books of their own.

100th blog post anniversary!

This is a big post for me because not only is this my 100th post of The Great Comic Book Heroes but it also falls exactly on my birthday! So I would like to take this time to reflect on this blog, how it's been, where it's been and where it's going?

 100th post anniversary!

Black Panther pages by the amazing Sandy Plunkett

It was the late 80's. Moore and Miller had left mainstream comic companies behind for the brighter and freer prospects of the independent publishing movement. Long time editor-in-chief Jim Shooter was no longer spearheading Marvel comics. Todd MacFarlane was the hot new artist on the Amazing Spider-Man. And Mark Gruenwald was editing all the Avengers titles including the Might Avengers, The West Coast Avengers and even Solo Avengers, a book Hawkeye shared with other past and present Avengers alumni. A little known artist who was doing some spectacular covers for various Marvel books at the time finally got around to doing some interior art, and BOY did he pull out all of the stops. Sandy Plunkett stunned me when he wrote and drew an 11 page back up feature for Solo Avengers #19, June 1989.

In it he not only shows off his exquisite Frazetta-esque drawing ability but he also writes one mean story. He picks the Black Panther to write about, a totally cool character that was criminally under used and mostly poorly written at the time. Plunkett sets the story in the Black Panther's African back yard and even adds to the whole Black Panther mythos by giving him the role of having to dispose of the "supernatural incarnation of all that suffering manifests on this material plane". But more importantly Plunkett gives us some stunning images to soak in. I'm just in awe of his ability to create incredibly dynamic poses with stunning lighting and detail. Fortunately the hugely talented Scott Hampton was available to ink these pages as only he could with his delicately feathered lines. So go ahead and check out "The Vanities of Philip Whitehead" featuring our favorite king of Wakanda, T'Challa, the Black Panther!