Rewind to where the whole thing starts. In 1938 two sons of Jewish immigrant families named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creating through the Depression, introduced an outsider from a dead world who defended vulnerable people because it was simply the right move. The familiar blueprint filled out piece by piece. A rocket, loving parents in the heartland, a newsroom, a stubborn brilliant woman who challenges him, and eventually a genius named Lex Luthor who cannot stand that decency might be genuine. Give anybody those pieces and the character sings in any decade. You would think that would settle the matter. It never does.

By the late seventies Hollywood proved the case loud and clear. Richard Donner’s 1978 film put Christopher Reeve in the cape and trusted the guy to be good, and a generation believed a man could fly. No irony, no apology, just warmth and a red S. Soon the comics got restless. The character had piled up decades of Silver Age excess by then, a version who once sneezed away an uninhabited solar system and regularly performed planet-shaking feats, so DC Comics launched Crisis on Infinite Earths in the mid eighties and torched the continuity to begin clean.

Enter John Byrne in 1986, handed the keys to rebuild from scratch. He dialed the abilities down, made Kal the last survivor of Krypton, gave him limits and a heartbeat. Smart work, and here is the part people forget. Byrne never touched the soul of it. He trimmed the god into somebody who could still lift a bus, and the storytelling breathed easier for the trim. The lesson sat there in plain sight. You can adjust the volume without rewriting the song. Nobody upstairs seemed to write it down.

The nineties turned weird, as the nineties do. They killed him off in 1992, wrapped him in a black recovery outfit, even slapped a mullet on the man for a spell. By 1997 DC had zapped him into a blue lightning bulb. In 1998 they split the poor fella into separate red and blue versions, a science fair project gone sideways. Cute for a summer. The classic colors returned, and of course they did.

A quiet miracle landed in the mid two thousands. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely released All-Star Superman, and it became one of the finest comics of this century by barely altering a thing, purely distilling the guy down to grace. Proof, once more, that the fix nobody needed was no fix at all. You could hand a reader the pure take and watch magic happen.

That memo hit the shredder in 2011. Flashpoint blew up the whole DC line for the New 52, and Jim Lee redrew Big Blue in a suit of Kryptonian armor with a high collar and, most controversially, no trunks. For the first time in more than seven decades, the mainline hero walked around without the red briefs, and grown men lost their minds. Two years on, the mood curdled even harder. Zack Snyder’s 2013 movie gave us a Kal who snapped a neck and watched his own daddy get swallowed by a twister because a rescue would blow his cover. Metropolis got leveled. The color drained clean out of everything. Plenty of folks respected the craft while quietly wondering where the warmth went. That take treated hope as a phase you grow out of and wrote off kindness as naivety. The Injustice gaming saga pushed it further, imagining the Boy Scout as a tyrant the second grief hit him wrong. Interesting what if for a weekend. Terrible thesis for who this man actually is.

The retreat began, dead on cue. Rebirth arrived in 2016 and dragged the older, married, fatherhood version into the light along with his boy Jonathan. Two years later the underpants returned as a prodigal son. The armor faded, and the heart came home. Readers who had grieved the change welcomed their hero whole again.

Editorial still could not leave the mask alone, though. In 2019 Brian Bendis marched Clark up the steps of the Daily Planet to tell the whole world who he was, glasses off, secret gone. Bold swing, and I follow the logic, since anonymity in a phone camera age feels like a reach. Yet by 2022 the specs sat on his nose again and the double life quietly resumed, and that tension between the mild reporter and the flying legend is half the reason the myth sticks. The disguise was never a plot hole to solve. It is a story engine about how much of ourselves we tuck away to move through a place that does not always deserve the real thing. Black folks understand code switching in a bone deep way, and that quiet duality is a big slice of why plenty of us saw ourselves in a Kansas alien long before anybody printed a champion who resembled us.

Which brings us to the summer of 2025, when James Gunn put David Corenswet in the cape and, wouldn’t you know it, let the dude be good. A kind person in a society that treats compassion as an antique. Krypto ran around, colors popped, the fella cracked jokes and saved the little guy and meant it. Most critics responded warmly. Audiences embraced it even more strongly and left the theater lighter than they walked in. All Gunn did was trust the same blueprint Siegel and Shuster drew up under Depression skies. The oldest idea in the medium, dusted off and glowing.

And now, in 2026, set photos from James Gunn’s 2027 follow-up, Man of Tomorrow, already show Corenswet wearing another updated suit. Nothing cosmic this time, but the fit is tighter, the collar has shifted, the blue appears deeper, and the familiar Kingdom Come-inspired shield looks slightly larger. Even when DC gets Superman right, somebody still has to tinker with the tailoring. Here we go again.

So here is my ask to the powers upstairs. Quit treating your flagship like a fixer upper. This is not a puzzle to crack or a brand to reinvent every fiscal quarter. He stands as a promise, that raw might in the right heart bends toward shielding people who cannot shield themselves. That idea does not age. It needs no grim reboot, no chrome collar, no public unmasking to stay relevant. What it wants is somebody brave enough to leave it be.

Because the real flex was never a fresh look or a darker frown. The real flex is somebody who could rule everything choosing every single morning to serve it instead. They cracked that code eighty-eight years ago. Every rewrite since has just been folks refusing to believe it landed that simple.

Staff Writer; Greg Tucker

GT is an old-school blerd who loves anime, comics, manga, video games, and collecting indie Black comic books.

Contact him at: GregT@AfroGamers.com.

Kevin Grevioux and Mat Broome rolled him out in 2008 across a five issue run called Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel, and the resume they handed him was almost greedy. He served in Korea as a Marine while still a student, came home decorated, returned to Cornell, earned doctorates in electrical engineering and theoretical physics, and had been good enough at football along the way to become an All American. After an antimatter reactor experiment transformed him, he could hold antimatter in his bare hands, which shoved his raw strength among Marvel’s heaviest hitters. There is a panel where he lands a shot on the Sentry and knocks him clean into orbit, and that should tell you plenty.

The tragedy sits underneath all that muscle. Brashear did his hero work in the early 1960s, smack in the middle of the Civil Rights movement, and a bad fight tore his mask open in front of everybody. Once the country got a look and realized its strongest protector was a Black man, the mood turned on him in a hurry. President Kennedy handed him a Medal of Freedom with one palm and quietly asked him to vanish with the other, insisting the nation was not ready for a superpowered brother who could flip the board any time he pleased. So Adam walked away. He aged slowly, left Kennedy’s medal on the moon, and lived largely outside the public eye while history forgot his name.

Read that setup again, because the poison in the well matters. His entire origin is a parable about a gifted Black man shoved into the shadows for the crime of being too strong while Black. Whoever cooked that up was writing something real, something that lands harder than most capes and punches ever could.

And then the company that owns him did the exact same thing to him.

That is the part that stings when you love this stuff the way I do. They retroactively established Brashear as one of America’s greatest heroes before the Fantastic Four era, a distinction that should ring out the way a trumpet does on Sunday morning. You would expect banners, an ongoing book, a seat at each major crossover. Instead the hero became the industry’s best kept secret, whispered about on message boards by the same folks who ride for every overlooked gem.

Al Ewing tried to right the ship. His Mighty Avengers run, which began in 2013, put Adam alongside Luke Cage, and at one point the two men stopped mid issue to talk, really talk, about what it costs to hold that kind of power with a whole community leaning on your shoulders. Two grown men working out loud how you keep showing up for your people without losing yourself along the way. You rarely get a beat like that in a cape comic, and it stayed with me long after the arc wrapped. Somebody in the building, for a stretch anyway, seemed to grasp what they were holding.

Ewing carried it into the Ultimates books from 2015 into 2017, dropping Brashear onto a roster beside Captain Marvel, Spectrum, T’Challa, and America Chavez. That squad tackled dilemmas bigger than existence itself. They cured Galactus of his endless hunger and confronted cosmic forces most costumed folks cannot even pronounce. On paper, he sat dead center.

Look closer, though, and the old habit creeps back in. Flip through those covers and count how often he lands up front. He floats in the background while flashier names soak up the shine. A being powerful enough to arm wrestle a deity somehow kept getting drawn as furniture on his own team. Nobody should call that respect. Call it what it is, which is neglect wearing a friendly mask.

The larger problem returned once the Ultimates run ended. Brashear eventually received another substantial role when Ewing placed him at the heart of Defenders: Beyond in 2022, where he served as a core member of the five issue team. Yet when that cosmic showcase ended, no fresh solo title arrived. Not one permanent home either. Brashear went back to scattered appearances, guest spots, and supporting work in other people’s stories. Since that original run, this man has never carried another book with his name on the spine for any real stretch. Sit with the weight of that. Here we are in 2026, pushing twenty years past his debut, and he still has no room of his own.

The screen situation reads even colder. Every few months the rumor mill floats him for some big debut, and fans even speculated that he might turn up in The Marvels, which tracked, since a physicist wired straight into antimatter belongs in a room with Carol Danvers and Monica Rambeau. Now and then an interview or report revives the possibility, dangles the maybe, then lets it go quiet before the next news cycle. Yet the credits keep rolling without him. Far shallower figures have already grabbed their live action moment while one of Marvel’s greatest forgotten heroes waits by a phone that never rings.

I keep circling back to that bitter joke because it refuses to leave me be. You built a hero whose tragedy is getting benched for being smart and Black. Then, decade after decade, the benching came from you. His solo spotlight vanished. Too often, each return shrank his frame. The theater skipped him entirely. That metaphor stopped being a metaphor somewhere down the line and hardened into a mirror.

None of this means the creation was a failure. The character is a gift, flat out. He served his country, earned two doctorates, built a marriage, and raised three children, with both of his sons eventually becoming entangled in his antimatter legacy. And he kept choosing to do right by a homeland that spent years handing him reasons not to. Hand Adam a serious writer with a serious budget and honest commitment, and suddenly you have a franchise anchor, a mentor who could guide the Riri Williams and Kamala Khan generation with the heft of lived history behind every syllable. The raw material sits right there, fully assembled, waiting on somebody brave enough to believe.

So the ask stays simple. Quit treating Blue Marvel like a trivia answer buried at the bottom of a wiki. Stop wheeling him out for one clever cameo and shoving him back into the closet. Put some genuine respect on the name you made part of Marvel history. A figure this deep deserves better than a footnote, and the fans who kept his flame burning through all those silent years deserve to finally watch him stand in the open with the mask off and nobody left to tell him to sit down.

Staff Writer; Carl Davis

This bro has always been into gaming, anime, manga, old-school sitcoms, and just about anything connected to nerd culture. A proud Black blerd for life, CD enjoys writing about the shows, games, and characters that have stayed with him over the years.

Feel free to drop him a message at CarlD@AfroGamers.com.

Let me back up for the folks who missed it. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II played Simon Williams, a struggling Black actor sitting on ionic powers he had to hide while chasing the same Hollywood dreams the rest of us root for. The meta of it was delicious. A superpowered brother auditioning to portray a hero in a movie about the very character he already secretly is. Destin Daniel Cretton, the same dude who directed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, built the thing alongside Andrew Guest. Ben Kingsley slid back in as Trevor Slattery and the two of them cooked. Critics loved it. 91% on the Tomatometer. Yahya even snagged an Emmy nod for lead actor in a comedy. That nomination followed his Emmy winning turn in Watchmen, giving him major television awards recognition for performances connected to both the Marvel and DC sides of the aisle. Man played Doctor Manhattan and Simon in the same career. Come on now.

So here is where my blood pressure honestly starts to climb.

Back in March, Disney did the unthinkable. They renewed a live action Marvel property for a sophomore round. That almost never happens over there. WandaVision, one and done. Hawkeye never received another season. Moon Knight, finished after six chapters. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, same fate. Only Loki and Daredevil: Born Again ever got to breathe past a single go. So when the House of Ideas told everybody he was coming back, it felt like a promise. It felt like somebody upstairs finally understood that not every good idea needs a cape and a billion dollar box office to matter.

Then July hit and they yanked it all back.

A formal writers’ room apparently never opened. The scribes attached to the project got released to chase other gigs. Barely more than a week before the axe fell, Cretton was out here telling Collider he hoped filming would start this year. Barely more than a week. Let that settle. The captain was still describing the voyage while somebody quietly drilled holes in the hull.

Here is what eats at me as a Blerd who has watched this pattern repeat over and over. These companies build something strange and specific, something that does not resemble the last forty comic adaptations, then they get spooked the second the numbers dip. Simon’s story pulled 618 million minutes of viewing on American television screens during its opening week. Landed at number eight on Nielsen’s originals chart. Solid debut for a weird little character piece nobody outside the fandom was even begging for. But then it slipped off the list the following week, and not long afterward, the suits reversed a call they had already made public.

That timeline is the whole problem with modern streaming, and it stretches way past one title.

Think about the programs we grew up loving. Half of them stumbled early. Communities gathered slow. Word spread through group chats and forums and that one friend who would not shut up about a thing until you finally pressed play. Loyalty was never instant. It got built. Seinfeld nearly died in its first year. The Wire never posted big numbers and still became scripture. People need runway, especially for anything that dares to be odd. A brother playing a vulnerable, funny, deeply human champion who happens to shoot energy blasts is exactly the kind of odd worth protecting.

But the platform model does not reward patience anymore. Everything gets judged inside a two week window. Did it trend. Did it dominate the chart. Did it juice the subscriber count this quarter. If not, cut bait and feed the algorithm something shinier. There is no room left for the slow burn, no space for a story to locate its people the way genuine cult favorites always have. And the cruel irony sits right there in the reviews. Folks who actually pressed play adored what they saw. An Emmy nomination. Fans online mourning for real. None of that saved it, because the metric that mattered was a spreadsheet, not a heartbeat.

I keep circling back to what this signals for Black talent specifically. Yahya carried a leading role in a genre that rarely hands us the front seat without a chip on its shoulder. He was hilarious and layered and completely magnetic. Simon could have grown into a fixture, the type of hero a whole generation of young Blerds points to and says that is my guy. Instead he becomes another cautionary footnote, one more example of us getting the spotlight for exactly a lap before the lights cut off. We have seen this before. We know how it plays.

And the maddening part is that the ceiling was so obviously higher. This was no limp attempt phoned in for content quotas. Cretton is a serious filmmaker. The scripts had teeth. The performances were awards worthy by the industry’s own admission. Everything about the production screamed potential. What it lacked was time, and time is the one resource these executives refuse to spend on anything that does not print money by Tuesday morning.

So what do we do with it now. We remember, I guess. We tell people to go watch those eight episodes while they still live on the service. We keep making noise so the next weird, wonderful, melanated swing does not get strangled in the crib. Because Simon deserved a real arc. Yahya deserved a real shot. And we deserved more than a single glorious year followed by a corporate shrug.

Disney had lightning in a bottle. Rare, strange, critically blessed lightning. They looked at it, called it good, promised us more, then smothered the whole thing before its second act could breathe. That is not a scheduling choice. That is a failure of nerve. And until these companies learn that greatness takes patience, we are going to keep losing gems like this one to a clock that was never built to be fair.

Staff Writer; Carl Davis

This bro has always been into gaming, anime, manga, old-school sitcoms, and just about anything connected to nerd culture. A proud Black blerd for life, CD enjoys writing about the shows, games, and characters that have stayed with him over the years.

Feel free to drop him a message at CarlD@AfroGamers.com.

Here’s the part folks kept dancing around. The man stepping into those boots is not replacing a hero. He’s replacing a memory. Chadwick gave us a T’Challa so complete, so still, so full of grace under pressure, that a lot of us have already decided in advance what the next one has to sound like. We want the low measured cadence. That regal spine. The way he could say “Wakanda Forever” and make a whole theater feel like church. And I understand the instinct. I felt it too when the news dropped. But if we love what the late star built, then the worst thing we could do is ask this young brother to xerox it.

Let me back up for the folks who tuned out after the sequel.

The kid Jonsson is playing isn’t some random recast. He’s Toussaint, the Haitian name he used while growing up away from Wakanda. His Wakandan name is Prince T’Challa, son of the fallen king and Nakia. Remember that quiet gut punch at the very end of the second film? Shuri burning the funeral robes, then meeting a little boy on a beach who casually mentions that his real name is his father’s name. That boy. Grown now, apparently, since they aged him way up for this thing coming December 15, 2028. Coogler’s back in the director’s chair too, and he’s bringing a heavyweight through the door with him. Denzel is finally stepping into this universe, in a role the director carved out for him personally. Whatever weathered elder Washington winds up playing, a mentor, a rival, some voice out of the father’s buried past, you put a titan like that across from a newcomer for a reason. The scenes between those two could establish the young heir more powerfully than any nostalgic callback ever would. So the table is set for something big.

Now sit with the details of how this prince began life, because they change everything.

He wasn’t born inside the palace. Nakia and T’Challa agreed to raise him in Haiti, away from the pressure of the throne, so he would not feel the weight of a crown pressing down on his little shoulders. His grandmother Ramonda knew and had met him. How many others knew has never been made clear. He began life immersed in Haiti’s language, history and culture, named in apparent tribute to Toussaint Louverture, the revolutionary leader whose struggle helped clear the road to Haitian independence and the creation of the modern world’s first independent Black republic. Read that again. A Wakandan heir, hidden in the one real place on Earth that Wakanda is always compared to. That’s not an accident of plot. It’s the whole thesis of the character, sitting right there in his passport.

So why on God’s green would we want that man to move like Chad’s T’Challa moved?

Boseman’s king was forged in a specific fire. Groomed from birth. Trained to defend Wakanda, tested by ritual combat, buried under the expectation of a thousand years of ancestors watching. His restraint came from a lifetime of being told he was the future. He carried himself like a man who had never once been allowed to be ordinary. All that stillness was earned inside those palace walls.

At least during his earliest years, the son didn’t get any of that.

He got a schoolhouse in Haiti where his mother worked as headmistress. Anonymity too. Then a childhood, which happens to be the one luxury his father was never handed. A person shaped like that walks different. Talks different. Doubt sits where the old man carried certainty. He might resent the crown long before he ever craves it. Give him one look at Wakanda’s vibranium hoard and its centuries of hiding from the world, and he starts asking questions his daddy never had the freedom to ask, because his daddy was the institution. This one could show up as an outsider with royal blood, which is a whole different animal.

Picture it. A young man who learned about power watching a poor nation survive on defiance and memory, now told he owns the richest, most advanced kingdom on the planet. You think he sounds serene? Nah. Conflicted, more like. He argues. Probably distrusts half the council too, figures the isolationism his father spent a lifetime defending was a scam that let the rest of the diaspora bleed. Killmonger wanted to arm the oppressed and torch the old order down. The father wanted to guard home first, then crack the doors open slow and careful. A boy shaped by Haiti, who saw a real place scrape for dignity while a hidden empire possessed technology and resources that could have relieved suffering far beyond its borders, might hold both men’s convictions in the same chest, at war with himself every time he zips up the suit. Comic movie royalty rarely gets to be that tangled.

Now that is a story worth telling. You don’t get to it by doing an impression.

I keep seeing takes online demanding that Jonsson “capture the essence” or “honor the voice,” and I get where the heart is, but that’s a trap dressed up as respect. Chadwick’s performance was his. The specific timbre, the posture, the economy of motion, all of it flowed out of who that man was as an artist and a soul. Nobody can inherit that. Asking a stranger to reproduce a dead legend’s mannerisms doesn’t preserve the legend. It just turns him into a costume. And it sets the new guy up to fail before he speaks a single line, because we’ll be sitting in the dark measuring every syllable against a ghost we’ve sanctified.

Think about the actors who inherited iconic roles and won us over. None of them did karaoke. When somebody new picks up a Bond, a Batman, a Doctor Who, the ones who land bring something the last guy couldn’t. Their own weight. A wound that belongs to nobody else. We fell for them precisely because they refused to cosplay the previous run.

And look at who they actually hired. Jonsson isn’t some pretty face they pulled off a billboard. Brother trained at RADA, came up through East London, carries Nigerian, Sierra Leonean and Caribbean roots in his blood. You watch him quietly detonate as Gus in that finance show, or hold the screen in that death march adaptation from last year, and you see a performer with his own gravity. Coiled. Watchful. A little strange in the best way. Why would you sign a talent like that and then chain him to somebody else’s rhythm?

Let the man cook.

Here’s what honoring the fallen actually looks like, in my book. It means building a hero the late star would’ve been proud to see carry his name into a new decade. Trusting Coogler, who has never made a lazy choice with this material, to write a prince who reads like a real person instead of a tribute act. And for the rest of us, it means showing up in 2028 ready to meet somebody new, rather than grieving all over again because he didn’t do the voice.

Boseman gave us a gift and then he was gone, far too soon, colon cancer taking him at forty three while he was still quietly shooting films and visiting sick children in hospitals while keeping his illness private from the public and all but a small circle of loved ones and trusted associates. The most fitting monument to a man like that isn’t a wax figure. It’s freedom. Room for the next kid to make bold, messy, unexpected choices, to stumble and grow and become a king on his own terms.

That’s the whole point of a legacy, right? You don’t hand somebody your face. What you hand them is a country, plus the trust to lead it their own way.

So I’m rooting for this prince from Haiti with everything I’ve got. I want him angry sometimes. Unsure, other times. Let him say something about the diaspora sharp enough to make the elders on the council flinch. Give me a version of the mantle that argues with its own history, a hero who earns the name by wrestling with it, not by whispering it the way we remember.

We already had our king. Got to keep him forever, in amber, exactly as he was. Now let his boy be somebody else. That’s not a betrayal of the throne. Where I’m sitting, it’s the only way anybody ever truly keeps it alive.

Staff Writer; Greg Tucker

GT is an old-school blerd who loves anime, comics, manga, video games, and collecting indie Black comic books.

Contact him at: GregT@AfroGamers.com.

Think about the rest of the Marvel roster for a second. Tony Stark wakes up in a mansion, sad about his choices, then builds a new suit worth more than my whole neighborhood. Thor is a literal god. T’Challa, and I say this with all the love in my Wakanda loving heart, is a king with a nation of geniuses behind him. Steve Rogers has the government cutting him checks and the moral clarity of a man who has never once had to choose between groceries and gas. These are aspirational figures. We look up at them.

Peter Parker? We look across at him. Sometimes we look down at him, because the man is usually on the ground, exhausted, mask half off, wondering how he’s going to explain to his boss why he missed another shift.

And right there sits the whole secret. It explains why he keeps working, generation after generation, while other characters cycle in and out of relevance. Spider-Man is the hero who saves the city and then still has to figure out his own life, because the universe has never once said thank you.

Peter stops a runaway train and Aunt May’s medical bills don’t disappear. Webbing up the Rhino in the middle of Midtown earns him a menace headline from Jonah the next morning. Losing sleep on patrol costs him the day job, since he kept showing up late. Every win comes with an invoice. Every triumph gets taxed. If you’ve ever worked a double, come home to bad news, and still had to be somebody’s rock the next morning, you already understand this character on a cellular level.

And here’s the part folks who only know the movies sometimes miss. The comics have been running this play since 1962, and the play never gets old because life never gets old. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko made a teenager who got powers and immediately used them to chase money, because his family needed money. Simple as that. Money was the origin before the origin. Before the guilt, before the great responsibility speech, Peter Parker was a broke kid trying to get paid. Ditko drew him hunched and wiry, not sculpted. Stan Lee later said the full-face costume helped any kid imagine themselves inside it. Any kid. That detail hit different in Black households, and it’s not an accident that decades later Miles Morales slid into that suit like it was tailored for him. The mask was always an open invitation.

Then Uncle Ben dies, and it’s Peter’s fault in the way that so much grief feels like our fault. He didn’t pull the trigger. All he did was stand aside when he could have acted, and that might be the most human kind of guilt there is, the kind built on a small selfish moment that snowballed into something you can never take back. Marvel could have let that wound heal. Instead they made it the engine. Peter doesn’t fight crime because it’s noble. He fights crime because he’s trying to outrun a debt that can’t be paid, and every one of us carrying some version of that debt sees ourselves swinging right beside him.

Now stack the losses. Gwen Stacy falls off that bridge and the snap of that webline is still one of the most brutal panels in comics history, because Peter’s desperate attempt to save her is implied to play a role in the tragedy. Captain Stacy dies telling Peter to take care of his daughter. Harry spirals. May gets shot. The marriage gets erased by a literal deal with the devil, and say what you want about One More Day as a story, but the message underneath it was loud and clear: this man cannot be allowed to be happy. The editorial mandate and the cosmic law of his universe are the same law. Parker luck is not a running gag. It’s the thesis.

Compare that to how the industry usually handles pain. Bruce Wayne turned his trauma into a fortune fueled war machine. Peter turned his into a part time gig that barely covers rent. Batman broods in a cave full of supercomputers. Spider-Man broods on a fire escape because his apartment is too hot and the AC unit died in July. One of these men I admire. The other one I am, and so is my cousin, and so was my uncle, and so is every twenty something in Brooklyn or Bronzeville or Baldwin Hills juggling three responsibilities with two hands.

The genius of the character is that his powers never solve the actual problem. He can lift a car but not the rent. Bullets get dodged with ease while the landlord finds him every single time. Spider sense warns him about the Green Goblin but stays silent when MJ is about to walk out the door because he missed another dinner. Marvel figured out early that the fantasy of power is only interesting when it crashes into the reality of powerlessness, and nobody crashes harder than Peter Parker.

This is also why he translates across generations without needing a reboot of his soul. The details update, the core stays put. In the sixties he was a bullied science kid. In the Raimi era he was delivering pizzas in a gig economy before we had a name for it. Miles came along in 2011 and suddenly the story was also about code switching, about carrying your community’s expectations on your back while hiding half of who you are, and it fit perfectly, because Spider-Man was always a story about wearing a mask to survive. Into the Spider-Verse said the quiet part loud: anyone can wear the mask. But the fine print matters. Anyone can wear it because everyone already knows what it costs. The price of admission is struggle, and struggle is the one universal language.

Tom Holland’s version gets clowned sometimes for being Iron Man’s intern, and fine, fair. But look what the MCU did the second it wanted him taken seriously. No Way Home strips him of everything. May dies with the responsibility speech on her lips. The world forgets he exists. The movie ends with Peter alone in a tiny apartment, sewing his own suit, broke, anonymous, starting over. The biggest superhero franchise on the planet understood that the only way to make Spider-Man feel like Spider-Man was to take it all away. His authenticity lives at rock bottom.

And let’s be honest about why that lands so hard for us specifically. Blerd culture gravitates to Peter because he embodies a rhythm we know in our bones: excellence without reward. He is brilliant, genuinely one of the smartest people in the Marvel universe, and the world treats him like a menace anyway. Doing everything right earns him a smear campaign. Still he shows up, over and over, for a city that would sell him out for a headline. If that’s not a familiar tune, I don’t know what is. There’s a reason the Davis and Morales household felt so lived in from page one. The blueprint was already there. All Bendis and Pichelli had to do was change the address.

Even his enemies underline the point. Norman Osborn is a billionaire. Kingpin owns half the city. Otto Octavius had institutional backing Peter could only dream about. Spider-Man’s rogues gallery is basically a lineup of men with resources fighting a kid with none, and the kid keeps winning on heart, wit, and the sheer refusal to stay down. Every knockdown gets answered with a jump back up and a joke, because the jokes are armor too. Anybody raised on laughing to keep from crying recognizes that defense mechanism from across the street.

So no, Peter Parker will never catch a break, and honestly, he shouldn’t. The day he does, the character dies. Marvel can give him a new suit, a new love interest, a new borough, even a new person under the mask entirely. What it can never give him is ease. The mask works because the face under it is tired, and the webs work because the hands shooting them just clocked out of a shift. He saves the city, goes home, checks his account balance, exhales, and gets up the next day to do it again.

None of that is superhero fantasy. It’s Tuesday. And it’s exactly why, sixty plus years deep, when a new kid in a new decade picks up that book, they don’t see an icon. They see a mirror. With great power comes great responsibility, sure. But with great responsibility comes an unpaid electric bill, and Peter Parker is the only hero in the game honest enough to show us both.

Staff Writer; Greg Tucker

GT is an old-school blerd who loves anime, comics, manga, video games, and collecting indie Black comic books.

Contact him at: GregT@AfroGamers.com.

Freakazoid: The Odd Hero

It makes sense, that cartoon is something of an acquired taste. It was like a superhero version of Animaniacs with all of the Warner brothers—and Warner sister—in one person. On top of that, Freakazoid never really did much you’d associate with superheroes.

Sure, he had the powers, the super speed, and ran around in his underwear, but his confrontations with villains often ended with them being annoyed to insanity or bumbling their way into an arrest. Plus, his villains never really required that much effort to begin with.

Obviously, Freakazoid was a parody of superhero comics and cartoons. There were several super toons out at the time: Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, the really fun Swamp Thing show, and the really mediocre Fantastic 4/Iron Man series over on UPN. But what if Freakazoid was introduced into the DC comic book universe?

No One Wants A Freakazoid Comic

Just hear me out! Freakazoid came out in 1995 and ran until 1997. In that time, the series didn’t get a comic book. It was a show owned by Warner Brothers which owns DC Comics. Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, and The Simpsons are all cartoons that got their own comic book runs. So, why not Freakazoid?

One reason is that it didn’t have a long run or anything. Still, there have been cartoons that got action figures off of few seasons. As a matter of fact, those cartoons were made purely to advertise the action figures! Freakazoid didn’t get any merchandise. Biker Mice from Mars got action figures, a video game, and a reboot.

Now, I’m not one to throw Biker Mice from Mars under the bus (Bucky O’Hare was better) but if they could get merch, surely Freakazoid could’ve gotten a standalone comic at least. No, he should’ve been a hero in the DC comic book universe. It would’ve been like if DC’s Captain Marvel swapped brains with Deadpool if it ran today.

In the 1990s, it would’ve been pretty much in line with the rest of DC animation’s comic book series. Endless wackiness and storylines that didn’t really go anywhere but what if he was introduced in this decade—well, it’s a wrap now—through one of the several universe shake-ups the publisher has had since its start?

If an intentionally annoying character like Deadpool can have dedicated comic, spin-offs, and a fanbase, I believe Freakazoid could pull it off. That is, if he’s introduced right and isn’t made into someone like…Sentry. Just all of the power and little of the “Wow, I’d read a full series on just this character”-factor.

I’m Serious

Put my man Freakazoid in DC Comics. He doesn’t need a whole comic; I’d settle for anything more than a cameo. Put in the Justice League. Yes, the Justice League, an organization—like the Avengers—with more members than there are Wu-Tang affiliates.

I want him mixed in so well with the comic book universe that we’ll have to get an edgelord grimdark version of him by Frank Miller with Rob Liefeld doing the art. Then everyone will be slack jawed once they get an Eisner Award for the mini-series Freakazoid Offline.

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

Tongari Boushi no Atelier, or Witch Hat Atelier, is a Japanese animated series (an anime) that started airing in April 2026. Produced by BUG FILMS, it took approximately 3 and a half years for the adaptation process of the manga, of the same name, to be completed before its premier. The hype following the announcement and release of the series was to be expected considering how the manga received critical acclaim after winning the Best Manga Award of 2025 at the 37^th Harvey Awards – outshining even One Piece.

Because of this, it felt only right to watch and review whether the anime lives up to the standards of the manga it is based on. It has already been a couple of weeks since Witch Hat Atelier came out, but it is never too late to express your thoughts on something that directly captures your attention when it does. This review only looks at the first episode of the anime because first impressions always matter.

Summary and Analysis

Overall, the plot of Witch Hat Atelier features a little girl named Coco who aspires to become a witch due to her immense love and admiration for the art of magic. Unfortunately, in the world she lives in, only those born and blessed with magical powers can be witches. All of this comes to head when Coco, after seeing a witch named Mr. Qifrey use magic, discovers all she needs to wield the mysterious and alluring power is a pen and a casting seal. From then onwards, adventure and intrigue ensues.

The series opens with our main character, Coco, questioning in a neutral tone whether the identities every person adopts is inherently known – thereafter she answers herself by stating how “These things aren’t decided at birth”. This opening scene already speaks to what kind of person Coco is. It insinuates that she is perceptive about the world and realistic about what she can be and cannot be even though she has an intense desire to become something she admires. Her optimism, however, almost attempts to blindside the viewers and have her appear as ignorant and naïve about how the world worked – even though that is not the case. We can see this in a flashback when her mother explains why and how she could not be a witch, leaving her disheartened, only for the next scene to be Coco enthusiastically trying to cast a spell whilst role-playing a witch. These scenes of the episode did well in revealing the duality of her character.

The overall mood of the episode is relatively down-to-earth. It is calming in a sense whereby we as the viewers are getting to know the characters, especially our main character. We can feel this mood shift when Coco tells the story of the time she met a “witch in a mask”. The change is not drastic, but there is something about the way Mr. Qifrey contemplates Coco’s story that gives it a sense of foreboding. Another scene in the episode that gave off this feeling is when Coco began experimenting with the pen and casting spells from the book. Just watching this scene would put any adult with a child on high alert because Coco, a 10 or so year old child, is evidently ignorant on how magic worked and the potential scale of its destructive power. The episode did well is setting up these shifts in tone and mood as the viewers can now anticipate how the upcoming episodes can make them feel and whether or not they are willing to go through that.

Another noteworthy aspect is the recurring image of the book. Not just the book Coco got from the masked witch but throughout the episode – from the start with Coco’s monologue to the end where the episode ends with a shot of a book’s page flipping to the next. This recurrence obviously points to the masked witch and how them giving Coco the book of spells started the whole story, but it can also symbolise a newfound knowledge and experience. In the series’ case, that is the recurring image of the book symbolises Coco’s new enlightenment into the world she had always dreamed of experiencing. That is why the episode ending with a page turning signifies a new set of ideas and understanding that Coco is about to acquire about the “mysterious and sparkly, valuable and pretty” world of magic.

Animation and Voice Acting

The animation style is nothing short of breath-taking. It is smooth in the way the characters move in the settings they are in and how natural and realistic these movements are. The scene where Coco cuts a piece of fabric for Mr. Qifrey directly captures how delicate and precise the animators of the episode (and perhaps series) were in every frame they animated.

The only downside – but not too much of a downside – is the voice-acting in the series. This judgement is specific to the Japanese voice-acting. There is nothing bad about it, but there is nothing special either. It almost felt as though it was done to serve a purpose; the script said Coco needs to be happy, so the voice actor spoke in a happy voice; the script said Mr. Qifrey needs to be carefree, so the voice actor used a light-hearted tone in their speech. Not to diminish the work put into bringing the characters personalities to life, however the voice acting can be praised in the same light as some other anime already out there.

Closing Words

In closing, the series is a definite watch, especially if you are interested in fantasy, magic and adventure. The medieval fantasy aesthetic makes it even more appealing to watch, and it really gives off the vibe that the anime takes place in an alternate world where magic is part of people’s everyday lives though strictly observed by the witches who can use it. Which makes it even more exciting for what’s to come in the following episodes regarding the worldbuilding and magical systems put in place.

So, if you are a blatant fan of the Harry Potter franchise, The Lord of the Rings trilogy or literally any isekai anime with magic and overpowered characters, then Tongari Boushi no Atelier is without doubt made for you.

Staff Writer; Fadzai Nyamande

A South African who brings her love for fiction, manga, and storytelling into every piece she creates. Her writing is shaped by imagination, curiosity, and a true appreciation for the worlds stories can build.

Feel free to drop a note at; FadzaiN@AfroGamers.com.

Knowing this, going back and reading the series would beg the question “Why?” At least for some. Between the character’s creation in August 1962 and the publishing of Ultimate Spider-Man in October 2000, we would see multiple comics, cartoons, and films focusing on a teenage Peter Parker coming into his powers and facing off against familiar villains.

In short, the concept was tired and ran down. That’s why Miles Morales was received so well. It was something new and half of the original team—Bendis—returned and deliver on the execution. That’s where the original Ultimate Spider-Man gets a chance. Execution.

Bendis could’ve given us the exact same tale but Marvel would’ve gone for it. Plus, the rest of the Ultimate Marvel universe was focused on a modern spin on classic heroes. So, is Ultimate Spider-Man worth a read? Let’s find out.

Ultimate Spider-Man (2000-2009)

This series was basically the flagship for the Ultimate Marvel lineup. Sure, there was a whole Ultimates comic there but this was Spidey’s show. Hell, Ultimates wasn’t even the longest running in the lineup since it was completed in under a year following thirteen issues. Sure, it came back in 2005 and once more in 2008, but again it was out after thirteen and six issues respectively.

Ultimate Spider-Man went 133 issues over eight years. That’s nothing to sneeze at. The only other series in that line to come close were Ultimate X-Men which got a hundred issues across eight years and Ultimate Fantastic Four, which was given sixty issues across five years. Of course, the Fantastic Four should’ve gotten that many since it was the Marvel Universe’s top team for decades and the X-Men are the X-Men. Everyone loves the X-Men because everyone has at least one favorite mutant and stories are often timeless.

That Sliding Timeline

First thing’s first, Ultimate Spider-Man as well as the entire Ultimate Marvel line still worked within Marvel’s janky “sliding timeline.” While the sliding timeline isn’t particularly confusing, it leaves a ton of things unanswered. Namely, the fact Captain America fought in World War II which is depicted in the Marvel Universe, referenced frequently but never establishes a concrete timeline.

There’s a good reason for this. Business-wise, Marvel wrote itself into a box where it has a number of popular, established characters that it doesn’t want to phase out entirely. As a result, most characters don’t age, they get numerous stories.

Marvel explains that these stories happened in just a few decades and don’t go by real time. Okay…I guess. To bolster this, the numerous incidents of time traveling and time tampering affected Marvel’s time to some odd degree. Alright, we’re getting to something that makes some canonical sense. As far as the Ultimate Marvel universe is concerned, it shouldn’t be impacted by anything of this until the Secret Wars storyline in 2015.

Honestly, its why I’m more of an Astro City/Valiant Comics reader. The timeline is what it is and the timeline goes straight forward—even with instances of time travel being an important part of Astro City.

Content

In regards to the artwork and writing, both were extremely good. The execution in a modern retelling of Peter Parker’s life as Spider-Man worked here. Some people didn’t care for it but that’s often the case with comics, right? But I felt they really hit it out the park. I got back into comics in 2007 because of Ultimate Spider-Man.

The main line of comics in both Marvel and DC can be hard to get into. This isn’t because the stories aren’t any good, its that so much happens across multiple series in the period of a year that it can be hard to jump in. And if you manage to jump in, you have to keep up. American comics often aren’t linear, they weave in with other series in a shared universe and a significant event of a larger story arc might be referenced.

This is also the case with Ultimate Marvel but since it started with a handful of series and didn’t run for decades and decades, its pretty easy to get into and read through all the series. Of the series, Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men were the most appealing. Bendis’ Spider-Man isn’t much different from the teenage Spidey we’re familiar with but the series entire eight year focus was just on teen Spidey.

This was something I loved because Spidey in college simply didn’t appeal to me too much and adult Spidey didn’t either. The stories were great, mind you but I just could be bothered with his adult drama. I wanted superpowered fights and Parker’s wittiness. Ultimate Spider-Man gave you both with the risk of being a teen and having to keep up his identity.

To a degree, it was something you probably missed out on if you got into Spider-Man at a certain time and didn’t go back read the early stuff.

Pull or Pass

I’ll say that Ultimate Spider-Man gets a pull. There’s great artwork, great writing, and I have to add—the covers are dope. They’ve been out for over a decade now—almost twenty years which is wild—so you’ll do better picking them up in graphic novel format. If you’re not up for buying all 27 books—although the first 22 is the main run—chances are your public library has them or can hold them. That’s how I went through them anyway. The Marvel Unlimited service is also a good way to read them.

RATING: 8.5 out of 10 (Recommended)

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

It’s worth noting that in American comics, there is a reason for why it’s not unusual to have corrupt cops, lazy police chiefs, mayors on the take, evil presidents, or cities where the heroes do the job of the police—sans the pay. Then again, if they were paid they would be government superheroes and that’s always proven to be a problem.

No, the reason for this lies in the Comics Code. The short of it was that in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S was in the throes of one its many moral panics/witch hunts. Some stuffy lobbyists, busy-bodies, and politicians came to the conclusion that comics were part of thing ruining the youth—along with devil’s music, devil’s lettuce, and whatever other “subversive elements.”

The Comics Code Wasn’t Having It

Actually, this was just part of a larger witch hunt but that gets into politics and history. One of the terms of the Comics Code involved how law enforcement and government officials are depicted. This particular rule from the 1954 code:

Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.

This meant for years, police weren’t to be depicted as corrupt or patsies—even if Batman is doing all their heavy lifting or they’re in a standoff with a bank robber and need Superman to walk them down. You would see both situations in those early comics—before the writing got better—and it’s just vigilantes helping the cops.

Actually, the cops were more accepting of adults in underwear solving their problems back them. The pre-hatred of paperwork days.

That rule was also tied into other rules that made it hard for layered, poignant stories to be written without taking some risk as was the case with EC Comics and the stories they often published. Hell, an iconic franchise like The X-Men had to work around these restrictions. At the time, Marvel Comics set out to produce a superhero group that reflected times while also tackling issues of the times while going on adventures and facing down threats.

Mutants were considered different from humans but you had these other Marvel titles where superhumans were lauded for saving the world or stopping the criminals. The X-Men would do the same but faced prejudice. It’s not like the difference between mutants/mutates/gods/disguised aliens were known to 1960s 616 dwellers.

However, that rule meant that the U.S government couldn’t be depicted as a force of oppression. Another rule tied to this meant that Magneto couldn’t be sympathized with nor could Senator Kelly be punished for targeting mutants:

Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.

Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.

If you present bigotry and racism as an evil, Kelly should be punished but you can’t depict the government unfavorably—even if it’s just the one guy pushing for mutant killing robots. And you certainly can’t have people warming up to Magneto and feeling “Well, Robert Kelly is such a d**k maybe Magneto ain’t wrong.”

Again, rules for comics written during a time when the country was involved in war and social issues—and there was a distrust of the government by people who got shafted and soldiers left out to dry.

By 1970s, those themes were explored and the writing became less “Aquaman saved some sailors” and more “What is Superman even fighting for if you’re all treating each other like this?”

A Dreddful Use of Power

My favorite depiction of the ineffective/incompetent authority in western comics has to be President Robert Booth from the Judge Dredd franchise. This guy was the prime example of “Don’t let him have the launch codes.”

I’ve said a lot about Judge Dredd, Booth, and the world of Dredd over the years but someone who could cause a global nuclear apocalypse as well as a civil war off of big d**king—incompetent. The 22^nd century is a mess and the only effective authority happens to be the Judges. Sure, there’s issues among the Judges and with each decade of publication their power seems to weaken but it’s better than being under Booth.

I suppose you could say that Booth was effective at destroying the world or rather d**king the world, especially with all the mayhem that followed as the U.S and other countries got back “normal”.

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

For instance, one trope I hate is the naming of characters and places in most fantasy anime. Normally, the names are European in nature—nothing unique but expected. However, it gets ridiculous when the names are lengthy. When this happens, the name is announced by some haughty noble with an obnoxious amount of self-importance.

It annoys me because it tends to happen more than once in the series because this character is part of a larger family, so them and their siblings all have four or five names, a title, an heir ranking, and so on. I don’t know, many one of the snooty nobles becomes a friend of the main character. You know how it goes.

On that note, the fantasy series Bastard!! can be disgusting with this particular trope as Kazushi Hagiwara uses heavy metal references. I mean, some of the band names and musicians would make for cool character, attack, and location names…I just can’t stand by a spell called “Stryper” blocking a spell named after Slayer.

Sure, 80s Stryper was very good with releases like Soldiers Under Command and To Hell with the Devil, but those albums aren’t Hell Awaits or Reign in Blood.

Incompetent Authority in Anime and Comics

But this is AfroGamers, not The Black Rock and Heavy Metal but Bastard does present us with our featured trope—and a favorite of mine: incompetent authority and government. In the first few episodes of Bastard, the kingdom of Metallicana comes under attack by several powerful foes.

Well, they’re powerful for season one, first half of the season enemies. They’re definitely above the knights’ skill level and paygrade as far as threats are concerned. The kingdom’s council/king’s advisors all elect to summon a sealed away evil wizard—Dark Schneider—to defend them. Summon an old, easily agitated, lecherous magical wild card who tried to turn your kingdom into a parking lot a decade and a half go…to defend said kingdom.

Things have gotten to a state where the kingdom is just down horrendous when you’re asking opps for help. To say the kingdom is weak would be inaccurate, they just can’t deal with the threat of magic and mayhem. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, that’s why characters like Doctor Strange, Brother Voodoo, The Sandman, and Spawn are around: magic and the paranormal have a tendency of messing things up differently from alien agendas and super science.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the nature of the threat is, whatever authority is in charge is typically ineffective at what they do. In the case of Bastard, the council repeatedly requests Tia Noto Yoko to unseal Dark with her virgin’s kiss whenever a threat arrives. You could say that the kingdom had 15 years of peace and didn’t need to bolster its defenses for similar foes but I don’t know maybe…build your forces up anyway. Just as a precaution.

I don’t what the case in the Super Mario Bros franchise is but the Mushroom Kingdom is ridiculously poorly defended. Bowser might as well just walked in each time and snatched the Princess. He never needed his airships, Clown Car, or Koopa Troopas. Now depending on what you think Mario and Luigi’s origins in this other world are—whether they were born in the Mushroom Kingdom or fell in there—entrusting the rescue of a head of state to plumbers just seems irresponsible.

Seriously, where does the confidence come from in that decision? It’s probably the same brilliant minds who figure bringing randoms from another world/dimension to solve their world’s problems is a great idea.

It’s not. There are always additional problems in isekai summoning such as a religious powerhouse or a cult/conspirators working behind the scenes. They’re the wrench in the works. Sure, there’s a world-destroying threat and we’re on a schedule but that doesn’t stop nobles, royals, and clergy from complicating the whole situation.

At the moment, isekai is my favorite manga/anime/manhua genre and this trope always stretches out the story just enough to provide lore and a constant, looming threat to the world and the MC’s quest. If authority just worked as it should, the MC might not be needed half of the time. In these series, the MC is basically a heroic janitor—who might have a blessing or cheat—here to clean up these otherworlders’ issues.

You know, so they can eventually go home.

We can’t get into ineffective authority without touching on Western comics but that’s a-whole-nother piece because there are too many examples to list! Share your favorite or least favorite instances of bumbling or ineffective authority in a series!

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.