Lando and Post Credit Pandering

I took the day off from work today so I could relax.  I got up, got my kids off to school and sat down to watch Rogue One.  As I am watching the movie, I checked my Twitter( @brothascomics) and see this article from the Mary Sue concerning Lando and his sexuality.  I paused my movie and read the article and now I am furious on my day off.

Screenwriter of the Solo, ( really this is a Lando movie as no one even cares about the actor playing Han Solo) Jonathan Kasdan stated in an interview that Lando is pansexual and that the portrayal by both Donald Glove and Billy Dee Williams belies as such.

Lando is Pansexual

Now alot of straight, cis Black Men are going to go off today when they see and read that article and qoute.  Their primary reasoning being their perceived perception of the femiminzation of Black males in media.  And maybe there is a discussion to be had about that, but its not the bigger issues with Lando being pansexual.

To me the biggest issue is that Empire Strikes Back and this Solo don't really show any real evidence to the fact of Lando being Pansexual.  Sure there is a line in the movie where a droid tells Lando to stop flirting with Han and he calls Han adorable but word? That's it?  We gonna make this leap that Lando is Pansexual based on two lines?  But even bigger than that, why not make it explicit that he is Pansexual and not tell us after the movie has premiered in an interview to promote that movie? 

There have been 10 Star Wars movies now and in this galaxy far far away, there has never been an explicity queer character.  It was hinted and implied that Chirrut and Baze were lovers but they never really said it until after the movie came out.  So the Star Wars Universe can have humans,  Jawas, Ewoks, Mandalorians, Jedi's and Sith and Droids with human personality, but nobody can be Queer until after the movie comes out? That seems kinda suspect on Disney's part.

Plus, to say nothing of the fact that in the past when people asked about Luke's sexuality, the Star Wars people were never forthcoming about his Luke's sexuality.  But, one of the few Black men in the entire universe- "oh no, that nigga he is definitely Pansexual" playing into a racial stereotype of Black men being overly sexual people.

I am all for more representation on all levels of sci-fi and fantasy.  Its long overdue! And I am totally fine with Lando being Pansexual in this movie and potentially his solo movie that is rumored to be in the works.  But for the love of Pete, allow him to be Pansexual.  Let him say he is Pansexual don't just play semantics with his words after the movie comes out.  Show that shit  and say that shit IN THE MOVIE!

The Producer

More Threats from Dark Phoenix

More and more news keeps coming out about the delayed, X-Men: Dark Phoenix movie.  As stories from earlier in the spring moved the release date and talk of massive 3rd act re-shoots, news is still trickling out about what may be the last Fox X-Men movie before Disney buys back the rights to their characters.

Today's new bit came from director Simon Kinberg who is making the rounds with the Deadpool 2 release.  In giving up an update on his directorial debut, he seems to be talking out both sides of his mouth.

On one hand, he is saying the movie is not at operatic and more grounded than previous X-movies.  But also saying the movie has an intergalactic twist to it- something all the previous X-movies avoided.

Look, I am not sure if you can make a worse movie than X3.  It was bad on many levels and took and flushed away all the positive momentum the X-franchise had coming out of X2.  When they relaunched the movies and forced fed Phoenix into the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, it seemed unnecessary at the time and now this movie feels rushed and pointless as everyone knows these movies are gonna be long forgotten with the Disney take over.

The original Phoenix/Dark Phoenix story is a Claremont classic that goes from Earth to space and back again and mixes in a myriad of mutants and intergalactic creatures to build this world that X-fans love to come back and visit.  These X-Men movies- especially this most recent group has struggled to establish a team that you can root for and is cast bound to Magneto and Mystique who have no real place in the Dark Phoenix saga.

Word on the street is the stars of the movie love the movie, but really what else are they gonna say at this point. I'd like to say I am excited about this movie but I am not going to lie to you.  This movie seemed doomed from the beginning and every bit of news coming from Fox makes me even more concerned.

The Producer

Batman Origin with a Booster Gold Twist

Batman Origins with a Booster Gold Twist

As I was checking out some comic book news, I ran across this recap about what is happening in the current run of Batman.  First off, let me just say, I am not a Batman fan so to speak.  I get why people like him and why he is the face of the new DC.  He is cool and the anti-hero and people flock to characters like that now.  its why he has passed Superman as the flagship for DC fans for the last 20 plus years.

I did read the Snyder- Capulo run on Batman because the art was amazing and the story was somewhat fresh for me.

On the Marvel Hacks we did a review of the most recent relaunch and I was pretty much out because the writers of Batman have just gotten to this point where anything is possible for Batman( even given enough time). I have called it that Batman Bullshit.  And in issue 1, he is on top of a plane steering it in between high rise buildings and meets Gotham Man and Gotham Girl.  I was out and really have not paid much attention since then.

Well, it seems that I may not have been too far off staying away from the book.  And the article in Dan of Geek reaffirmed that.  First off, no matter what anyone tells you, Booster Gold is an ass cheeks, terrible character.  So him being in the book is already a problem.  And to compound this problem, DC allows him to go back in time and in a convoluted way, cause shenanigans with Batman's origin story regarding his parents. I am not gonna spoil it because you can read the article yourself, but I will say this- why mess with his origin story?  Plus, all they are going to do(already did) was retcon it anyway.

I swear, the DC people love to torture Batman and Bruce Wayne and Bat fans love to see him be tortured.  Its an abusive relationship at this point as his character has not evolved as much as he as devolved.  Sure he has a son now( who is an asshole) and he is getting married which seems like stunt casting that will end sooner than later- but the essence of the character is troubled Bruce and Batman without him being able to grow past his torturous origin which they keep fucking with.

So good luck Bat fans watching and reading this mess. I am sure we will discuss this on the Marvel Hacks- Big Hutch loves him some Booster Gold.  But, man let that poor (Bat) man have some peace.

The Producer

Fan Con Shenanigans

At work on Friday, April 20, I am sitting in my office in between lunch periods really just waiting for the day to end.  If you follow me on social media, you know I work in education at a high school and 4/20 day is not an easy day for schools.  Between the national walk out day and the 4/20 Smoke Out Day, it had been somewhat stressful on administration.

I come into my office and pull out my phone to check my email at brothascomics and I see a message from Jamie Broadnax- the head of Black Girl Nerds- one of the most influential sites in Blerd culture.  I have never met Jamie and was kinda puzzled as to why I was getting an email directly from her.  So I opened it and saw that Universal Fan Con had been postponed and I was stunned.  FanCon was to be the next weekend and the event was being cancelled a week out.  I immediately went to Twitter to see if maybe I( or they) had been spammed.  In my mind, I thought there was no real way they were gonna cancel this event so close to the actual opening.  Twitter was initially silent about it which made me think it was spam.  I tweeted a couple of people I know and trust on Twitter and they had not heard anything either.


Maybe an hour or so later, the floodgates burst and all the tea just began spilling out about the Fan Con debacle.  It seems all that Kickstarter money, whatever money they had made from pre-sales, merchandise, etc was not enough to cover and pay for the event that weekend. People were shook and still are.  Reading the tweets and information that came out during and after has sent a ripple effects through the Blerd Community.  People have lost trust, jobs, money, and friendships over this.  And really for what?  Pride, ego, and hubris.

From what it sounds like, the people running FanCon wanted the first year of this event to be a big, special event celebrating diversity within nerd culture.  No one disputes that POC, LGBTQ, women, et all are all underrepresented in the culture of comics, sci fi, gaming, etc.  FanCon was to help bridge that gap.  But piecing together information that has come out, it looks like in all this planning, no one had the big picture involved.  It seems that organizers wanted to stunt to make this event about themselves and how it was gonna help their brand- forgetting all about the fans who bought into the purpose of FanCon,

Info from affiliates and those who are being transparent show that the con was in serious trouble in early February.  There was talks that maybe the event should be scaled back or even at that time, postponed.  For whatever reason, which I am sure will come out eventually,  the organizers decided to push through and the thing collapsed around their feet leaving in its wake pissed off fans and creatives who put their money and heart into FanCon.

Now what?  Brands have been severely damaged.  Peoples names is being dragged all over the place and, trust in starting or funding a Kickstarter for similar events or projects is now trashed.  If the founders of FanCon run that money to all the people, that would be a start.  If people came out and said" yeah, I fucked up". That would also help but early in this crisis has been a lot of hiding and passing the buck with very little accountability.  As of writing this, many women writers from Black Girl Nerds have resigned as did the founder and President, Jamie Broadnax.

This has been alot for me- no matter how many jokes you seen me get off on Twitter. As a Blerd who has a very small imprint in our community, FanCon did mean something to me.  I was an original Kickstarter backer. I didn't donate much, but I did put some money down.  I had originally planned to go to the event, but had to back out because of financial constraint brought on by a medical situation with my mom.  But Brothascomics was still gonna represent with one of our supporters being there for the weekend.

Its a shame because the idea behind FanCon and its purpose still hold true and strong.  Marginalized people are still underrepresented in this genre and having  a safe place for that is needed.  We just put our faith in the wrong people.

The Producer
Brothascomics

Venom Trailer React

I am going to kinda, sort of, a little bit, go against the grain here about this trailer.  The first teaser trailer where we did not see the symbiote, people ran that one because if you have a movie called Venom, people want to see Venom.  And I get that.  Now with this new trailer, you get the full reveal and people is mad because Venom looks like a pinata.

Overall, besides the reveal, the movie looks kinda, sort of interesting.  I do love the idea of an evil corporation using the symbiotes for evil purposes.  The CGI, besides Venom, looked okay.  I think overall people just don't like the idea of Sony messing with Venom after shitting on the character so hard in Spider-Man 3.  And that skepticism is fully justified.

Will I see it in theaters, tho and pay my hard earned money?  I don't know about all of that!

The Producer
BrothasComics

Is it worth a Redbox: Wonder

As a lifelong educator- with many of those years spent in elementary school, I have seen the cover for the book Wonder for many years.  In Georgia, Wonder was one of the literacy books for 5th grade that every 5th grader would need to read.  For some reason, when my son was in 5th grade, they chose a different book while he was in 5th grade so he never got to read it.  Then when we moved to Florida, they did not have a 5th grade book requirement and my daughter didn't read it either.

I heard about the movie coming out, but I didn't have any real desire to see it.  Honestly, a movie starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson is kryptonite to me.  I had no thought of seeing it.  But then my daughter, as she is known to do, convinced me to rent the movie at Redbox.

And surprisingly, even with those 2 actors, the movie is very good.  It tells the story of Augie, a very bright young man who was born with a genetic defect that makes him look different.  Often times he wears a mask or a space helmet to hide his face from others.  Even though his family loves him, they are super protective of him as well and when the family makes a decision to send him to public school after years of being home schooled, there is rightful sense of fear.

And Augie's first few days are rough, he has a hard time making friends and some of the so called friends he has are not to be trusted.  The movie gives a fair look at all the people who inhabit the orbit around Augie: his parents, his sister, and even his "friends" at school.

Honestly the movie is wonderful.  So Wonderful, I went out and bought the book for my daughter so she could compare the similarities and differences between the two. Plus, Wonder has several books related to the main book which my daughter is also reading.

So is it worth a Redbox? Absolutely!  A great family film with a lesson about being kind to others- something we all can be better at.

The Producer

We Watched it for You: Roxane Roxanne

You would have to know me pretty well to know how much I loved UTFO back in the 80's.  For those of you under the age of 30, UTFO stands for Untouchable Force Organization.  These rappers  consisting of the Kangol Kid, Dr Ice, The Educated Rapper( RIP) and their DJ Mix Master Ice were a staple of my hip hop diet in 1984.  The blew up in 1984 with a record called Roxanne Roxanne- a story of unrequited love between the rappers and a neighborhood girl.  It was their biggest hit and spawned so many copy cat records and disss records to respond- we could do a whole article on them.

Who was the real Roxanne that UTFO was speaking about?  Well the Netflix movie Roxanne Roxanne does not answer that question.  This movie is about the young girl who would grow up to become Roxanne Shante and her life growing up in the Queens Bridge Projects. 

As the story goes, Roxanne, played by Chante Adams, was a great rapper already in Queens Bridge and would battle rap all comers- even if they didn't wan to battle a girl.  As her friend would say, " The Champ is here" and her freestyle was known throughout Queens. 

However, if you have ever listened to any New York based hip hop, The Queens Bridge Projects aint exactly the best place to raise children, and Roxanne's mom recognizes that and does her best to scrape and save all her money to get her, her man, and her 3 girls out of Queens Bridge.  Sadly, her man, steals their house down payment money and runs off and the family is stuck in the projects.  The mother, played by Nia Long, devolves into alcohol and depression and this fractures her relationship with her daughter.  There is physical violence, but more emotional abuse than a 13 year old girl should have to endure.

From moving out and back in, Roxanne still raps and one day while doing the laundry, a local DJ has her come in a cut a rap over the beat for Roxanne Roxanne and the song becomes a hit and with her now taking the name Roxanne Shante.  This new found fame leads to signings, cars, clothes, and the hopes of money.  But as Q-Tip told us a few years later, the record business is shady and those shady dealings leave Roxanne with a hit record with nothing really to show for it.

During this time, she also meets up with local, hood legend, Cross, played by Mahershala Ali, who is twice her age and a terrible influence on Roxanne.  In between the physical abuse, they have a child together and its the only thing holding her there as the fame and no fortune begin to fade.

Without spoiling too much, the movie is well acted.  Check for some Easter Eggs by some of your favorite 80's and 90's rappers and the soundtrack is bumping for any old school hip hop fan. 

Overall a fun movie about a time in hip hop long forgotten.

The Producer