Black Dynamite #1 – Review

By: Brian Ash (writer), Ron Wimberly (pencils), Sal Buscema (inks), JM Ringuet (colors) and Chris Mowry (letters)

I have very mixed feelings about this issue.  Your enjoyment will really come down to how you like your Blaxploitation.  Back in the 1970s when the Blaxploitation genre existed, it was a deadly serious thing.  It was all about strong black men (and women) taking a stand for the community when politicians, police and businessmen didn’t care what happened in urban black neighborhoods.  Being a suburban white kid, I obviously couldn’t really understand it.  But it was clear than films like Shaft, Dolemite, Foxy Brown, Super Fly, etc. came from a place of anger rather than a place of laughter.

Then the 1980s happened and “we” decided all those afros and hot-girls in bell-bottom pants and strong black men learning kung fu was really silly and we started to get films like I’m Gonna Git You Sucker that turned Blaxploitation on its ear and made fun of everything….and I do mean EVERYTHING.  But, within those films, there was always a sense of homage to why the genre existed in the first place.

This story leads off by showing 1970s Black Dynamite fixing a problem in the neighborhood with nunchucks only to be cast out of the community for causing more wreckage than he solved.  After being cast-out, he goes on a walkabout only to be tracked down by the government at the very end of the issue.  I presume that the first issues of this miniseries will detail his exploits in present day with the government – and probably lead him full-circle back to the neighborhood.

Afrodisiac – Graphic Novel Review

By: Brian Maruca & Jim Rugg

Review: “Alan Diesler, a frail, humble janitor in Hardwood Elementary, awoke to his true calling the day jerk aliens invaded his turf.  While trying to protect the student body, Diesler used the only weapon at his disposal – an old beat up cane – the magical pimp stick, Mackjolnir.  Slamming it on the ground for emphasis magically transformed the meek, crippled janitor into the legendary… AFRODISIAC!

This is but one of the many origins that Maruca and Rugg give as the origin of their hero in the awesome original graphic novel, Afrodisiac.  Although they were deadly serious at the time, 1970’s blaxploitation movies have become the kings of unintentional comedy and this book pushes very hard to ramp up the unintentional comedy factor while NEVER knowingly making fun of itself.

In terms of presentation, Afrodisiac is 94 pages of 6″x9″ fun.  The book is presented as a compilation of silver age comic material, so you get a series of shorter stories (5-6 pages) with random covers interspersed throughout.  The only downside to this presentation is (alas) Afrodisiac was not a real silver-age comic and unfortunately you cannot go buy the back-issues.  Maruca and Rugg made it up.  Sigh…..

Although I and most others have lumped Afrodisiac into the blaxploitation-spoof genre, the stories really are not pulled from that type of source material and that is why this book really shines.  I’m not sure if there were blaxploitation comics in the 1970’s or not……  But, if there were, they wouldn’t have been able to do more than a story arc or two about the hero protecting his turf from slum lords or white drug dealers who were selling heroin/guns/booze in their neighborhood.  Pretty soon those comics would have moved onto the types of situations you see in Afrodisiac: fighting aliens, staking vampires, dealing with kung-fu guys, thwarting killer computers, etc.