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Writer: CM Punk / Artist: Dalibor Talajic / Marvel Comics

Marvel’s god of fisticuffs, Shang-Chi, is back in these panels. I’ve been lowkey riding for Shang-Chi since he re-trained Spider-Man to develop his own unique fighting style and incapacitated the fuck outta folks in Secret Avengers. I’m glad to see him back in action, even if it’s only for one issue. We got CM Punk back in these panels again too?! I see you, Marvel. Punk scripts a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Kung-Fu adventure for Shang-Chi. We join our guy Shang-Chi doing push-ups for brunch. We catch wind of animals disappearing from zoos on the news in the background.

The adventure begins once Shang and his sidekick go on an ice cream run. They’re attacked by ninjas in broad daylight which then leads to humorous circumstances. The story feels right out of the Silver Age with how out there it is. Shit is cute man, what you want me to say?

Shang’s dialogue may feel campy at first but once the attacking ninja’s personalities shine that changes. CM Punk excels in small nuances and quick ad-libs in conversations. That sharp wit is an easy translation to the page as he has these henchmen become the everyman in this story. Their commentary on how ridiculously punny their villainous boss’ actual name is lets you know this isn’t an issue that takes itself seriously.

Dalibor Talajic’s art follows the vibe of this book splendidly. When the action scenes are taking place, Talajic highlights how efficient Shang-Chi is in fight sequences. We also see these very low-level villains take the spotlight as the comedic relief this issue. Shang-Chi plays the straight-man in his story instead of being the snarky smart-ass, which works for him.

My only complaint is a long monologue that Shang-Chi delivers. I can overlook that though cause you only have so many pages to get the story across in a single issue. So, I’m not hung up on it. It made me wonder what this creative team could do if they had more issues to tell their story (or stories).

Long story short, CM Punk and Dalibor Talajic deliver a fun side-quest for Shang-Chi. Check out what the master of Kung-Fu gets into on when not breaking faces on the clock.

7.4 concerns about spilled diet soda ice cream out of 10

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The post CM Punk Takes Shang-Chi On a Hilarious Silver Age Side Quest appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

The first few scenes of a new series can be critical as a means to setting up the tenor and tone of a show. So even if you don’t know anything about Mutants or Sentinel or the world of the X-Men, you know from the first scenes you’re entering a dystopian landscape.

The streets are dark and foreboding and we see a young woman frantically elude capture by the police. Once she opens a portal and escapes their grasp, you realize the police are hunting her not for what she’s done, but for what she is. You can’t help but be taken by the pervasive sense of wrongness of this world.

We watch as other Mutants come to her aid and the police shoot one of them, Marcos (Eclipse). And we’re with Lorna (Polaris) as she’s fed up with the police and Sentinel hunting Mutants like animals. She stops using her powers defensively and instead goes on offense, lashing out at the people who hurt Marcos.

A few well placed taser hits and Lorna’s down for the count and arrested; and we the audience feel just as helpless as everyone else is to stop it.

On the flip side of life, the Struckers have it relatively good. Sure, they have their standard family dramas like bullying at school, and so forth. But even in their semi-idyllic life you see how the feelings and biases about Mutants trickle into their thinking. We see the different sides of the debate from those not actively involved in it: from Andy we see soft bigotry. From Lauren (who’s secretly a Mutant), we see support. From Caitlin, we see neutrality and from Reed we see antagonism. But then they don’t have to deal with the issue personally, right?

Except soon they find themselves on the flip side of the debate. After the school bullies attack Andy, his powers activate. Then Lauren reveals she too is a Mutant to save them both. And Caitlin, once with little to no opinion on the issue, now finds herself a fugitive of the law in order to protect her family from Jace Turner and Sentinel Services. Good thing Lauren’s shield powers were working well enough to push cars out of the way!

Reed too is learning the hard way how his hard line prosecutorial techniques are truly unfair and an abuse of power. It’s a shame he didn’t realize this before trying to manipulate Polaris in regards to her unborn child.

Ironically, he has to ask for refuge from his previous targets: the Mutant Underground. Eclipse is only willing to hear him out when he learns Polaris is with child. HIS child.

Sentinel’s dogged determination to apprehend Lauren, Andy and their parents strains their uneasy alliance all the more. Sentinel wants the Strucker family and anyone associated with them or the Mutant Underground. It’s only Thunderbird’s perseverance and Blink’s awesome portals that get them all to safety. All but Reed. Sentinel Services shoot him in the back and take him into custody.

Reed gets to learn another hard truth he chose to be blind to: Mutants and their allies have no justice. No rights. At the snap of a finger, the “law” can take it away. Then Sentinel parades his mother into interrogation as a possible terrorist collaborator. Reed is both horrified and heartened because Jace has overplayed his hand.

He’s ready to make a deal to save his family but the price is his own freedom and the Mutant Underground.

That’s something Caitlin would take great issue with were he to go through with it, I think. Life has tossed Caitlin’s into the deep end but she’s finding her own way and drawing from her strengths. When Blink suffers a terrifying and deadly reaction to over extending her portal skills, it’s up to her to come up with a treatment plan. She is a nurse after all.

A quick trip to a local clinic with Eclipse and they’ve got the goods to save her. Of course, it’s never that simple though.  Eclipse provides a distraction while Caitlin gets all the meds they need.

Through it all Caitlin’s learning what life is like for a Mutant, not only from her personal experiences but also from Marcos’ personal anecdotes from his childhood and how the police and doctor treats her and Marcos with suspicion and bias. With a bigotry born of assuming Mutants are inherently violent.

The trek out of the clinic is tough and Caitlin’s path to Blink is difficult to say the least. It’s a veritable sea of portals popping up everywhere. But she jumps through one to Blink, just in time to save her.

Caitlin’s now invested, having seen things with new eyes. She wants to be useful. But she thinks they can go through the legal system and Marcos and the others know it’s a mistake. So she takes the kids and sneaks away to try do some good through her brother, Danny and she too learns some hard lessons. At first Danny isn’t comfortable with them even being there. But eventually he lets them in. But he’s scared and he gives Caitlin anecdotal evidence so she accepts the truth. This is a new reality. A  new normal. Just her being there puts his family in danger.

Danny’s son isn’t quite so…aware. He shares a pic showcasing a fraction of Andy’s power and inadvertently puts targets on their heads. Thankfully Eclipse and Thunderbird are already en route and ready to whisk them away from danger.

Except that danger follows them in the form of a posse of neighbors and former friends now out for a Mutant bounty.

It’s only because Blink opens a portal in the nick of time that they’re able to escape. And it’s only because Dreamer put the whammy on Blink to make her have a connection with Thunderbird that motivated her to try to open the portal in the first place.

Caitlin’s learned an important lesson about how things are versus how things should be. Thankfully, so does Danny. He remembers family is family and you don’t abandon them in times of need.

Reed is facing his own set of challenges and vital life lessons. At first he begrudgingly goes along with Jace’s plans to track the Mutant Underground down. But he meets a young mother and her Mutant child and sees how scared they are. How desperate they are for a safe haven. So he bails from the van, nuking Jace’s plan.

I’m really excited that he did this. I was concerned Reed was so unbending that he’d choose sticking it to a bunch of Mutants in the name of saving his family. And perhaps he might have had it not been for the people he met along the way. But the point is, he realized he almost made the worst mistake of his life and, regardless of what comes next, he’s at peace with his choice to submarine his deal with Jace. And honestly, almost anything that screws up Jace’s plans is a good thing.

Of course, that means Jace is going to screw him over too.

Thankfully Danny finds out what’s going to happen to Reed and tells Caitlin what he’s learned. Sentinel are relocating Reed and a Mutant to a special facility. Danny might not know the Mutant’s name, but we sure do. It’s Polaris.

Speaking of Polaris, life on the inside has been suckish for our green haired girl. First, dealing with the “flea collar” that prevents Mutants from using their powers without experiencing a great deal of pain. Then with inmates and guards who treat her like…well I’d say a second hand citizen. But that’d be an upgrade. It’s only after another inmate “approaches” her (and by “approaches” I of course mean beats down) and that inmate specifically targets her unborn child that Lorna uses her powers to protect herself. Which earns her another beating, and time in solitary confinement.

Jace comes by and offers her a deal where she might eventually get to see her child at some point if she turns in the entire Mutant Underground. Lorna finds his offer underwhelming.

And with that, she’s knows she’s on her way to the deep, dark hole Jace aluded to. That is unless the team can save her and Reed in time.

The Gifted showcases so many important themes: Bigotry in all its forms. Abuse of power. Ignorance. Oppression. So far, it’s done a fantastic job of showing the deep complexities inherent in these themes. It doesn’t excuse prejudice, it challenges it. Further, it shows that sometimes soft bigotry is due not to malevolence but to a lack of understanding and identifying. Through the Strucker family in particular, we’re given a window into their thinking and how each of their mindsets and world views are formed and amended given what they experience or learn others have experienced.

Through Jace and Sentinel Services, we see the logical conclusion of ceding liberty for the illusion of absolute security. And what’s worse, is that Jace is just a normal guy with a family who he loves and who loves him. He believes his actions are righteous. And that is the framework of the most terrifying villains around: those who believe their evils are justified for the greater good.

The Gifted is not only insightful and thought provoking, it’s also fantastically well paced and engaging. And you can’t help but identify with one or several of the characters in one form or another.

So far, I can’t think of anything they need to improve. It’s just a great show that I highly recommend. And with that, I give the first three episodes of The Gifted 10 Stan Lee cameos out of a possible 10.

QUESTIONS…

How worried should we be:

– That Andy is getting more and more willing to exert his powers in order to get his own way?
– That Dreamer’s whammied Blink into having feelings for Thunderbird?
– About Roderick Campbell’s interest in the Strucker kids?

The post The Gifted S01E01-03 Review: In Their Shoes appeared first on The Nerd Element.

By all accounts, being black in America is stressful. But African Americans seem to have found a way to prevent some of the effects of that stress.

Researcher Shervin Assari and his colleagues, through numerous studies, have shown that blacks seem to overcome many of the factors—such as lower educational attainment, increased anger and hostility, feelings of hopelessness, and a high number of stressful life events—that usually lead to mental and physical disorders.

Even having a greater number of depressive symptoms early on didn’t lead blacks to the same higher risk of chronic medical conditions or higher mortality rates as their white counterparts.

Assari, assistant professor of psychiatry and public health at the University of Michigan, writes in an article for The Conversation:

Research, including work I have done with my colleagues at the University of Michigan, demonstrates that although white Americans are, on average, the “healthiest group,” they are also, on average, far less “resilient” than black Americans. It seems that vulnerability is a cost of privilege, and resilience comes as a result of adversity.

He goes on to write that:

White Americans seem to be more vulnerable to certain psychosocial risk factors for a wide range of physical and mental health outcomes compared to minority groups. In other words, they are less resilient—less able to successfully adapt to life tasks in the face of highly adverse conditions.

One of the studies showed that blacks and Hispanics had a lower risk for depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and social phobia. And that blacks, specifically, had lower risk for panic disorder, substance use disorders, and impulse control disorders.

Another study showed that the prevalence of a lifetime major depressive disorder was significantly lower in blacks, at 10.4%, than whites, at 17.9%. But it did note that the burden of the disorder was higher on blacks, who received treatment less often and were more likely to rate their disorder as severe.

So why is it that blacks, despite having more stress, are less susceptible to that stress leading to mental and physical health problems? Assari theorizes that it’s because blacks, through their history of adversity, have learned to deal:

Minority groups … have consistently lived under economic and social adversities which has given them firsthand experience and ability to believe that they can handle the new stressors. For blacks, a stressor is anything but new. They have mastered their coping skills.

So as Assari himself puts it, for blacks, it’s basically true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.