Every morning, I run a pick through my hair. It’s important that I do this when it’s still spongy and damp from the shower. Wait too long and my hair gets drier and less cooperative, making it harder to pull the comb through my natural. (Pro tip: A natural is something black folks sometimes call hair that hasn’t been…
The Luke Cage TV show is undeniably black. But that alone isn’t enough to satisfy every black comics fan who’s watching the show.
After watching the first seven episodes of the Luke Cage Netflix series, I can confidently say that its lead character doesn’t always feel like the Power Man who’s shown up in decades of Marvel comics. But, as this spoiler-free review will show, I like him anyway. This Luke Cage is still an everyman superhero that…
The Crew #5 is a comic that gave me life. It’s a remix of history, a superhero genre work that seethes with spiritual energy. Reading it feels like, no lie, going to church.
Moon Knight, Night Thrasher, the Black Fox... Marvel’s got a few characters that incorporate elements from DC Comics’ Dark Knight. But the House of Ideas’ most on-the-nose nocturnal-avenger homage is probably Nighthawk, a character who originated as part of the Marvel’s Squadron Supreme concept.
“I’m here to tell you there’s something else...” Prince showed me the life I wanted to live. He was my black genius superhero.
By the time that Power Man and Iron Fist #125 came out in the late summer/early fall of 1986, I’d already learned not to trust comic-book covers.
It’s been a terrible few weeks for the black body.
Video games have a blackness problem. This has been a known thing for a while, and we do talk about it from time to time. But I'd like to keep talking about it.
I've had to be three people this week. They exist separately, in spaces that I'm better off keeping discrete for the sake of my own health. There's the guy who checks in at Kotaku and acts like nothing's wrong. There's the father who makes sure his kid is smiling and growing as much as possible. And there's the black…
Assassin's Creed games revel in meticulous recreations of historical eras. So let's see actual historians discuss the times two newer AC entries were set in. In this video, YouTube series History Respawned takes a look at Liberation and Freedom Cry as reflections of black life in the 18th Century slavery system.
Slavery in the Transatlantic of the 1700s was a complex, interconnected network of financial systems, social engineering and psychological repercussions. The Assassin's Creed video games that have dealt with it head-on made good use of that subject matter but also stumbled in particularly clumsy ways. "Collecting…
Thralled—the chilling indie game about a runaway slave who's also a mother—has found a home on Ouya. Lead developer Miguel Oliveira tells Kotaku that Thralled will be an exclusive in exchange for the console company's support and that he expects a release later this year.
I thought I was going to have to drop Mighty Avengers because Greg Land's art is so off-puttingly plastic. (That great art above is by Ronald Wimberly.) But the series is too damn good for me to abandon. I might even like it more than Daredevil or Hawkeye.
Starting this month, PS3 and PS4 owners won't need to own the full version of Assassin's Creed IV to play its excellent Freedom Cry DLC. Ubisoft's just announced that they're releasing the Adéwalé-focused add-on as its own standalone release on February 18th. Make fun of the Black History Month timing all you want,…
Boarding a slave ship and liberating its human cargo is probably the most satisfying thing you can do in the new Freedom Cry DLC for Assassin's Creed IV. It's also one of the toughest. Take a look at how this naval battle to free slaves almost ended in tears.
The newest chapter of the Assassin's Creed series gives me some of the things I've always wanted in a video game: a heroic fantasy that lets me control a warrior fighting against slavery. Part of it happens in Haiti, where my parents were born. Characters talk in Antillean Kreyol, the mosaic tongue made of French…
People like to rag on downloadable content. It's a boondoggle, detractors say. A crass way to get extra cash for a chunk of a game that should've just been included on the disk. That's true in many cases. But Assassin's Creed IV: Freedom Cry is the better brand of add-on, one where developers' experimentation with the…
All those islands in the Caribbean that are plush vacation spots now? They used to be colonies, outposts for imperial powers that were replete with inhumane slave labor. Some of these places exploded—sometimes into self-rule—with violent uprisings and rebellions. The new add-on—out tomorrow—for Assassin's Creed IV:…
The capes. The gadgets. The weird interpersonal relationships. The goats. Superheroes are straight-up absurd when you think about it. In 1997, a series called Quantum & Woody put that absurdity in the spotlight and won the hearts of, well, hundreds. Probably thousands. Definitely not millions, or else it wouldn't…
