When I first started reading Black Panther and the Crew: We
are the Streets by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Writer), Yona Harvey (Writer), Butch Guice
(Illustrator) I thought is was going to be a great superhero comic book series
but it turned out to be a good superhero graphic novel story. It was good book and I urge everyone to read
it but it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be let me explain.
The first thing that caused me to
raise an eyebrow was how they drew Misty
Knight. She looked like a man on the
cover of the first issue. That is
inexcusable. Misty Knight is the hottest
chick in superheroes stories. How did
they mess up Misty Knight? Aren’t comics
are for young men to fantasize about hot women in tight clothes? How do they have the actress who plays Misty
Knight look better than the comic book version?
That was unnecessary.
Now, I don’t mind stories that
start slow to build up a real world connection and that is what Black Panther
and the Crew had. The background setting
of Harlem and subject of gentrification was a good element but I found that it
came at the sacrifice of superhero fighting and action. Most superhero stories the superheroes use
both their brains and their powers to solve their challenges. In BP and the Crew the powers the heroes had
seemed like background elements. There
were fight scenes don’t get me wrong but there was no concerted effort to
strategize around the use of them. BP
and The Crew was a beautiful mixture of popular Black superheroes there was
Luke Cage, Storm, Black Panther, Misty Knight and Manifold but there use of
powers was a side issue. A good example
of superhero powers strategy is with the Fantastic Four. When the Fantastic Four fight a villain or
fight a battle there is a division of heroes based on what hero’s powers can
address what area of the threat or which villain they will fight. BP and The Crew also lacked a super villain. This superhero team up fought a regular
person which is sort of corny to me.
I hope
this review was helpful. I wrote this to
help provide some feedback for Marvel editors. I am a new to comic book reader, I started
reading around 2008. I was inspired to
start reading comics again by the success and portrayal of more realistic
superheroes in the movies. That said my
tastes reside with a superhero that are more like real people with regular
human problems. So,
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