deerstalker

Writer: Rainbow Rowell / Artist: Andres Genolet / Marvel

Rainbow Rowell really decided to flex her writing skills and interconnectivity to kick off this new arc titled, “Canon Fodder.” We find out who the guardian angel in tights and helmet is, while the team grapples with the revelation of a crime-fighting duo operating right under their noses! Rowell and Genolet also decide to give themselves some new material to work with as the Runaways are forced to assume their group name once again.

Canon Fodder

First off, let me sound like a parrot as I repeat what seems to be the most obvious fact when reading anything by this author. Rainbow Rowell is so damn good at getting character relationships and dynamics right. The phone call between Nico and Chase alone tells you everything you need to know about their sibling-esque shared leadership flow. The reactions to Nico and Karolina’s skin tight and full on shinobi costumes are a look into everyone’s genuine feelings. Molly is beyond hype that some of the big sister figures in her life are out there kicking ass and figuring themselves out. Gert’s takes one look at Karolina’s body suit and drops the most severe eye roll west of the Mississippi. Victor couldn’t see the superhero costumes if they slapped him in the face because of Chase’s Gert tattoo burning holes in his circuitry. It was quite comical.

Gib Watch: Stuffed Kitty sacrifices ain’t gonna cut it, Runaways. I’m officially worried about what might happen if this baby God doesn’t get a human sacrifice…and like now. That boy is looking pale and ashy.

But the big issue #25 bomb drop is all about the mystery savior of LA. The only reason Karolina and Nico escaped those Jabbawockeez villains (they were deadass dancing in the alleyway battle) was because of the return of Doc Justice! I’m just as familiar with this guy as the girls were, so I was all ears during the explanation to the team.

Sidebar: Victor, the Doc Justice superfan is absolutely hilarious!

This is all part of Doc Justice’s return to Marvel comics in Doc Justice and the J Team coming out in November. Can’t lie, in a world of multiple Marvel superhero teams, this one looks pretty promising. Anyway, he becomes somewhat of a hero mentor to Karolina and I don’t blame Nico one bit for being skeptical — he was low key stalking them for the last couple of weeks..and knows their names…and knows all about Pride and their devious ways.

But back to the namesake. The crew jumps to wild conclusions and believes this interaction means their secrets are out, which drives them back into the world of being Runaways. I think was a smart move on Rowell’s part. Brian K. Vaughan’s original Runaways team encountered so many interesting characters, good and bad. They found themselves in wildly surprising, unpredictable situations and the experiences helped them grow as a family.

A move opens up a lot of possibilities, like running into some cool Marvel characters. Love Rowell’s use of Doombot but I could stand for a few more wild encounters. The crew could get into some high stakes battles, perhaps against an established villain? Can my guy Andres Genolet get the chance to draw some of these wild name drops that have been peppered into various issues? Runaways #25 is another good one but it works as more of a setup issue than a great standalone book. Regardless, it leaves you excited to read next issue.

8 Abandoned Hideouts out of 10

Reading Runaways? Find BNP’s other reviews of the series here.

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The post Runaways #25 Review appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice believes it’s essentially wrong to call people racist. This belief seems to be her ultimate solution to healing the racial divide in the country.

Rice, who was a part of the Bush administration from 2005 until 2009, said during an appearance on CBS’ Face The Nation that the White House “needs language that recognizes how raw race is as a factor in America.” However, her solution to that is keeping quiet about calling out racist people. As she stated to CBS, “But I think we could all be better in the way that we deal with this very raw nerve, which is race. I think it’s time to stop labeling each other and using explosive terms like ‘she’s a racist, he’s a racist,’ that stops the conversation. When you say that, that’s meant to stop the conversation and we need to have the conversation.”

In other words, according to Rice, pointing out that people’s viewpoints are racist doesn’t help stop racism. We should keep quiet about it and instead and try to have a conversation. However, this doesn’t make much sense because part of having a conversation about racism is pointing out how it manifests and how to unlearn it. Therefore, you have to bring it to light, which means people should be called out when they’re being racist.

Another issue many have with Rice’s statement is President Donald Trump’s long documented history of racism. In order for people to see Trump as a racist, then people must call out his racism. A few examples include his housing discrimination lawsuits during the 1970s, his racist birther movement against Obama, the Muslim travel ban a federal judge said it was racist), and Trump calling for the execution of five black teenagers with a full-page ad in the New York Times in 1989 (the Exonerated Five).

This is an opinion piece and does not necessarily represent the views of BLACK ENTERPRISE.

Majestic volcanoes, lush rain forests and beautiful beaches off Lake Kivu are just a few of the things that make Rwanda one of the continent’s most stunning, yet experiences that run deeper than Instagram worthy photos have turned to Rwanda for once-in-a-lifetime moments they know they won’t find anywhere else. Even other Africans, like South African native Senzelwe Mthembu (@senz_m) have begun exploring the country’s wonders and found that in many ways, Rawanda feels like a home away from home.

Take a look at our exclusive guide to learn more about all there is to discover in Rwanda so you can plan your own African adventure of a lifetime.

The post Black Travel Vibes: A Visit To Rwanda Will Make You Feel At Home appeared first on Essence.

Every love story has a beginning.

This is a relatively innocuous truth, but it’s an important one to remember especially the older you get. The love I’m talking about today is not romantic in nature although there is a deep-seated passion underlying the contents of this article.

No, today’s story is more akin to an origin story of how I became the prolific comic reader I am today, although there are surprisingly few superheroes involved. Before I was a staff writer here at Black Nerd Problems, I recounted how my journey into physical comics started in 2010 when I discovered a shop on the Delmar Loop in St. Louis. Before that I loved graphic novels from the greats like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. But before all of that happened, there was a different inciting incident, a particular story that itself starts with a search for something special…

Gateway Media

In middle school, I was very much a nerd, although back then I spent a disproportionate amount of time playing video games compared to the rest of my nerdy hobbies. You may or may not remember the pre-YouTube/pre-Reddit era of the internet where information was mostly given in text-based format, and thus you may or may not remember a site called GameFAQs, a hosting site for various user-generated text based guides. This was the pinnacle of video game aides given that Prima Strategy Guides cost money that exceeded allowances. I used the site daily, voting in their polls, looking up information for my limited play time, and most importantly for this story: reading the forums.

I was just shy of 13 when I started browsing and couldn’t make my own account, so I mostly just read the conversations. I read the sig file at the end of each post. It’s weird to think that we used to have a digital stamp with the exact same information every time we posted information, but that’s how things worked back then.

Now I couldn’t tell you which precise sig file finally convinced me to go searching for the source material, but memory is foggy and all that really matters is that after seeing a bunch of gamers constantly reference this one webcomic, I eventually navigated my way to Nuklear Power. I stared at the several years of comics in the archives before promptly reading 8-Bit Theater. I wouldn’t then realize how much of my life was going to be consumed by the decision to read this daily-ish strip or how strongly and inadvertently it would lead me down the path I continue on to this day.

8-Bit Theater, Summarized

8-Bit Theater was one of the forefathers of the “sprite comic.” Authors took video game sprites and wrote their own comics with these stock characters in various environments. 8-Bit Theater itself is a parody/deconstruction/reconstruction/genre-defying thing based on the original Final Fantasy. And for nine years, Brian Clevinger dutifully updated this sprawling saga of the Warriors of Light:

• Fighter McWarrior
• Black Mage Evilwizardington
• Red Mage Statscowski
• Thief Khee’bleer

Alongside a varied supporting cast, most notably Garland and White Mage, we saw the group as they conquered dungeons, dissected (and sometimes brutally vivisected) video game and role playing tropes, and developed one of the most meta-textual, self-referential, self-deprecating encyclopedia of esoteric in-jokes*. Nearly a decade later, I remember oh so many of them.

There was the time that Thief stole his class upgrade to Ninja from the nebulous future. Red Mage casting Ice-IX in an unexpected reference to Kurt Vonnegut. Fighter literally blocking the Earth to prevent fall damage (what a legend). Black Mage defeating the ruler of Hell and somehow becoming more incredibly evil than a Black Mage named Black Mage Evilwizardington already was. The Armor and Armorie of Invincinibility, and a several year set up of a brick joke where an off reference to 4 White Mages defeating the final boss of Final Fantasy came to fruition in the final arc of the webcomic.

8-Bit Theater thrived on Clevinger’s love of video games and ability to use serialized webcomic formatting to tell this comedic tale. It was my first webcomic, although it certainly wasn’t my last.

The Age of Webcomics

The 2000’s was an incredibly fertile time for webcomics, and I think at my peak I was reading upwards of 30 some comics strips regularly. See after 8-Bit Theater, I delved into all sorts of comics hosting sites and linked recommendations. I got hooked on the original incarnation of Ctrl+Alt+Del, PvP, Penny Arcade, Bob and George, and a general trend of gaming-related comic media. At some point I slowly pivoted outwards to things like Questionable Content, XKCD, and Multiplex Comics, all stories that I sat down and climbed through months to years of archives.

Reading all of these comics incessantly eventually led me to things like Watchmen and Sandman, but more importantly to Scott McCloud. By the time I was a junior in high school, I was obsessed with the media and the things that could be done with a comic that couldn’t be done outside of them. Then I became enthralled by what only webcomics could do. Implementations of infinite canvases, animations, stealth editing of old pages.

8-Bit Theater did a lot of cool things with its narrative, but some of its contemporaries and successors fundamentally altered my understanding of what was possible. Comics like Kidd Radd, another 8-Bit Parody (and a better version of Wreck-It Ralph‘s main premise),Homestuck utilized the internet’s functionality in weirder and more novel ways, and Order of the Stick made use of different drawing styles to enhance its world building (admittedly, it wasn’t the only one to do this, just the one that made the most narrative sense).

In many ways, it is fitting that 2010 was the end of 8-Bit Theater. Right at the time my webcomic list had slowly whittled down. And how lucky that I found a store right next door to me that managed to keep kindling the passion for all comics…

Continue? / Continue.

These days I only have about three webcomics** from my original reading list still in my RSS feeds (surprisingly, I still use RSS feed). Most of my comic consumption lies in single issues now. I have amassed 10 boxes worth of floppies. Mostly DC, some Image, and increasingly number of Marvel titles. My weekly visit to Star Clipper is one of my most valued rituals. I’ve made so many friends thanks to comics, which I only truly loved thanks to webcomics. Although strangely enough, thanks to WebToons I’ve somehow managed to find myself with a slowly growing list of new webcomics***.

I’d say it’s funny how that works, but it’s really more just narrative appropriateness. It’s really more just how comics work. The callback, the flash forward, the odd continuity. It’s important to remember where we came from and where we’re going. How our first loves helped us find our true loves. I love comics now, and that’s because I loved 8-Bit Theater first.

* For the most meta-textual, self-referential, self-depreciating encyclopedia of esoteric in-jokes, I will direct you to this piece about Homestuck, another webcomic that devoured a significant chunk of my life.
** If you’re curious, those would be XKCD, Questionable Content, and Order of the Stick. Although, strangely Homestuck may be making its way back on to my list.
*** Messenger, Blue Chair (Shen of Owl Turd Comics), and Let’s Play. Because of course we brings things back fully circle.

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The post The Comic That Made Me Love Comics: A Retrospective on 8-Bit Theater and Other Webcomics appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.