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Writer: Mariko Tamaki // Artist: Bruce Guice // Publisher: Marvel

All Paths Lead to Dead Ends

Small town Arizona ain’t what it used to be. As the final issue of the “Claws of a Killer” opens, Sabretooth and Lady Deathstrike are trapped in what appears to be the worst of “Lose-Lose” situations. Trapped in a town that is the subject of an experiment by the Soteira agency, their healing powers have been negated, Daken has been killed,  and now two of their assumed dead loved ones have returned to torment them. Sabretooth, ever the king of cats, reaches his boiling point and is ready to level the entire city rather than end up as a mindless zombie.

The issue begins with Sabretooth and Deathstrike caught in their own personal battles. Graydon Creed, human son of Sabretooth and founder hate-ground The Friends of Humanity, returns while Deathstrike fights against her own father.  Sabretooth, eager to abuse his hatemonger zombie son once more, takes more of a beating than expected, but prevails with the help of Deathstrike.  He blames her for leading them into this trap, and he is well justified.  Upon her own battle with her Soteira controlled father, she learns that the adamantium signal that led her to Arizona belongs to him and not Logan. In the ensuing battle, Deathstrike is unable to hold out for long without a healing factor and loses her hand at the blade of her own father.

The agenda of the agency known as Soteira is slowly revealing itself over the course of the various mini-series. In “Weapon Lost” #4, Daredevil’s team recovers a dossier of digital information just before Soteira was able to purge any evidence. When Cypher decodes the contents, they are faced with video and photo evidence that shows Wolverine both very much alive and under the control of Soteira as an assassin. Daken’s body, presumed dead after being impaled in issue #3, is recovered by Soteira and on its way to becoming a new weapon. Meanwhile, Sabretooth, not one for easy deaths or sentimental goodbyes, decides that risking Deathstrike’s and his own life, is worth blowing the entire town to stop the spread of mindless drones.

“Claws of a Killer” ends on a strong note with surprising results. Confident in tone, style, and a hardcore roster of adamantium laced killers, creative team Tamaki and Guice feel right at home.  Visually, Guice’s linework for character details and backgrounds are unmatched amongst the four Hunt for Wolverine miniseries. The interplay between Guice’s arts and Colorist Jordan Boyd’s work creates a distinct comic that feels like “28 Days Later” meets “The Proposition.”  Instead of catering to the tired zombie tropes of late, writer Mariko Tamaki steers the narrative to a place where the major revelations are emotional and character-centric rather than merely a checklist of objectives from additional supervision.   We have not seen the last of the Sabretooth, Deathstrike, or Daken, as their fates are sure to collide in the upcoming conclusion, “Hunt for Wolverine: Dead Ends.”

For more of Tamaki’s work, check out the new X-23 series which features Laura Kinney reclaiming her first codename and mentoring her sister/clone Gaby.

7.9 out of 10 Family Secrets

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The post Hunt for Wolverine: “Claws of a Killer” #4 appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

Black-ish creator Kenya Barris just entered into a multi-year deal to create a new series exclusive to Netflix, according to a press release on Netflix’s website.

Industry-watchers, including those at Variety, estimate the deal to be worth approximately $100 million.

From Variety:

According to a source with knowledge of the negotiations, the deal, which carries an option for an additional two years, is valued at roughly $100 million— putting Barris in the same ballpark as recent Netflix recruits Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy.

Rhimes is slated to have eight original Netflix productions in the works. She left her longtime home at ABC Studios in 2017 and moved her Shondaland production company to Netflix. In return, the TV mogul signed a lucrative nine-figure deal with the streaming giant.

“Kenya Barris is one of our great modern storytellers,” said Cindy Holland, vice president, Original Content at Netflix in a released statement. “Kenya uses his voice to make audiences more aware of the world around them, while simultaneously making them laugh. His honesty, comedic brilliance and singular point of view, combined with the creative freedom he will enjoy at Netflix, promises to create powerful new stories for all our members around the world.”

“When my agents reached out to me about this little garage startup called Netflix, I wasn’t sure what to think,” said Barris via a press release. “But after I talked to Ted and Cindy, I started to believe that maybe this mom-and-pop shop with only 130 million subscribers might just be something… so I decided to take a swing… a leap of faith if you will, and take a chance with the new kids on the block.”

Netflix has been courting big names to produce content as of late. The company even managed to sign on the Obamas.

Oprah Winfrey is another media mogul who scored a massive deal not with Netflix but with Apple. In June, Cupertino announced it had formed” a unique, multi-year content partnership with Oprah Winfrey, the esteemed producer, actress, talk show host, philanthropist and CEO of OWN. Together, Winfrey and Apple will create original programs that embrace her incomparable ability to connect with audiences around the world.”

Winfrey’s projects will be released as part of a lineup of original content from Apple.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the pact includes everything from film, TV, applications, books and other content that could easily be distributed on Apple’s all-encompassing platform—not including podcasts. They also report that Winfrey’s Harpo Films will own any and all content produced under the Apple partnership, in line with Winfrey’s longtime business model.

The post Black-ish Creator Just Signed a Deal with Netflix and Insiders are Saying It’s Worth $100 Million appeared first on Black Enterprise.

In an attempt to right its past wrongs, The New York Times launched an obituary series titled “Overlooked” earlier this year to pay tribute to the women and people of color who were not recognized by the publication at the time of their deaths, despite their amazing contributions and strides in society.

“Since 1851, obituaries in ‘The New York Times’ have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times,” states the Times.

Edmonia Lewis

Edmonia Lewis (Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

Included in “Overlooked” is Edmonia Lewis, the first black sculptor to be internationally recognized for her art. Lewis was born circa 1844 in upstate New York to a free black man from Haiti and a mother who was part Chippewa. After her parents died when she was 9 years old, she was adopted and raised by her two maternal aunts. According to the NYT, Lewis attended Oberlin College in Ohio and was mentored by leading activists and abolitionists. She later spent much of her adult life in Rome where she joined a community of American sculptors.

Her Roman studio was a required stop for the moneyed class on the Grand Tour. Frederick Douglass visited her. Ulysses S. Grant sat for her. She made busts of John Brown, Abraham Lincoln and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (whose 1855 poem, “The Song of Hiawatha,” inspired her to create a series of marble sculptures on Hiawatha and Minnehaha), reads the NYT obituary.

Many of Lewis’ neoclassical-style sculptures are celebrated for their portrayals of black and indigenous people. For example, one of her most acclaimed pieces, The Death of Cleopatra, depicted the iconic Egyptian queen sitting lifelessly on her throne after committing suicide.

Her sculptures sold for thousands of dollars, and she had commissions from wealthy patrons on both sides of the Atlantic. When the United States celebrated its centennial in Philadelphia in 1876, she was invited to submit her work. Her piece, “The Death of Cleopatra” — more than 3,000 pounds of Carrara marble depicting the Egyptian queen with one breast bared and quite dead — created a stir for its commanding realism,  writes the NYT.

Yet, despite her talent and global recognition, Lewis was frustrated by the racial barriers she faced, particularly in the States.

In 1878, she told The New York Times: “I was practically driven to Rome, in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.”

Sissieretta Jones

Sissieretta Jones (Wikimedia)

Another unsung black woman honored in “Overlooked” is Sissieretta Jones, an opera singer who became the first African American woman to headline a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1893. Born circa 1868, she became the star of a touring company called the Black Patti Troubadours. However, to her dismay, she was dubbed “the Black Patti,” which compared her to white diva Adelina Patti.

She sang at the White House, toured the nation and the world, and, in a performance at Madison Square Garden, was conducted by the composer Antonin Dvorak, reads the NYT obit page.

 

But there were color lines she never managed to break, like the one that kept the nation’s major opera companies segregated, denying her the chance to perform in fully staged operas.

 

“They tell me my color is against me,” she once lamented to a reporter from The Detroit Tribune.

 

When another interviewer suggested that she transform herself with makeup and wigs, she dismissed the idea.

 

“Try to hide my race and deny my own people?” she responded in the interview, which was published by The San Francisco Call in 1896. “Oh, I would never do that.” She added: “I am proud of belonging to them and would not hide what I am even for an evening.”

Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells Barnett, in a photograph by Mary Garrity from c. 1893. Wikimedia)

The Times kicked off “Overlooked” in March with a tribute to journalist Ida B. Wells, an outspoken civil rights activist and journalist. According to the NYT:

She pioneered reporting techniques that remain central tenets of modern journalism. And as a former slave who stood less than five feet tall, she took on structural racism more than half a century before her strategies were repurposed, often without crediting her, during the 1960s civil rights movement.

 

Wells was already a 30-year-old newspaper editor living in Memphis when she began her anti-lynching campaign, the work for which she is most famous. 

National Geographic, another publication founded in the 19^th century, has also taken action this year to right its wrongs for its history of racist reporting. The April 2018 issue of the magazine included a scathing report detailing how the outlet overlooked and stereotyped people of color.

“[U]ntil the 1970s National Geographic all but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic workers,” wrote the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Susan Goldberg in the issue’s editor’s letter. “Meanwhile it pictured ‘natives’ elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché.”

The post The New York Times Pays Tribute to Overlooked Black Women Who’ve Made History appeared first on Black Enterprise.