Where are the square/nerdy black males in genre entertainment?

[PatrickG]

Off the top of my head, there's Bulletproof from the C.O.P.S. cartoon and Dulee Hill on "Psych". Static kinda counts but he's only square in the Peter Parker sense.... ie. not really that square but inexplicably regarded as square by his peers.

I've thought before how strange it is that all the John Carter, Buck Rogers, Green Lantern and Adam Strange types are white except for John Stewart.

Overall, black male characters seem to have a marked propensity for hot tempers, large families, rage in defense of their families, afros or shaved heads (bot nothing inbetween), street smarts and hipness.

Rhodey from Iron Man may break the mold somewhat but he's only square compared to Tony Stark, a lush, tortured-genius, womanizing political flip flopper with ego-mania and daddy issues. I mean, anybody would seem square in contrast with that.

But if you try to think of even-tempered smart guys with poor social skills who don't dance, who use exceedingly proper English and who drink milk and eat apple pie and are "lawful good", by-the-book types, it's not only primarily the domain of white guys but dark haired white guys. Blonds and redheads tend to be hot-tempered or showboat-y or inept or wacky although a handful of blond guys manage to be Corn Flakes/Whitebread.

But off the top of my head, there's Bulletproof, Dulee Hill on Psych and Static.

Whereas the Superman/Captain America "grinning boyscout" types are always white guys.

This has me reconsidering the "look" of a character from an old creator-owned pitch that has taken a turn in my head recently. I realized that my default "casting" for the character had been a white guy and, oddly, as I started making him more square, I also started thinking how underrepresented the straight-laced, unhip, "helps-old-ladies-across-the-street" African American male is, particularly in genre fiction but pretty much everywhere.

[Cam63]

*Scratches chin and lights beer in ponder*

Dunno.

[Spiffy]

[dupont2005]

the days of superman and captain america had the comics code preventing black characters from seeing print, not to mention a bunch of other things like distributors and vendors refusing to carry books about black heroes, and of course the readers. even today they never fail to enlighten us on how many disapprove of black heroes in the jla, just think of how bad it was pre-civil rights.

late silver age and on there were not as many geek super hero origins. was spider man the last one? anyways, in the 70's i think black heroes were based on blaxploitation movies. so they were all super hip jive talkers with gold headbands, leopard print tank tops, and white bell bottoms.

after that, when a normal black guy could actually be a hero, i think the geek transformed by exposure to radiation ship had long sailed. i think any super hero origin story these days is going to fit much better with the x-men than any golden age iconic hero, regardless of the characters race

[PatrickG]

Originally Posted by dupont2005

late silver age and on there were not as many geek super hero origins. was spider man the last one? anyways, in the 70's i think black heroes were based on blaxploitation movies. so they were all super hip jive talkers with gold headbands, leopard print tank tops, and white bell bottoms.

Which, come to think of it, sounds hideously dorky if worn by the wrong person.

I don't count Urkel because he's more obnoxious than he is nerdy, despite supreme levels of nerdiness.

I agree, in general, about super-hero origins. But I think the traditional "radioactive spaceship" hero still has a place as a stock character in a story that, on the whole, is fundamentally more modern.

There are, after all, still new "man out of time" books like the one Neil Kleid did for Shadowline and I'm not sure the "retro hero" in a book like that has to be white. Likewise, there are Eureka-type shows which showcase a variety of genre elements, some stereotypical and some with a spin, while the heart of the show lies more in the character quirks/interactions than the sci-fi itself being stunningly modern or realistic.

In terms of my own idea, I think it started out as an idea to do a "Ray Bradbury"-type take on a Saturday Morning Cartoon universe of colorful paramilitary types, purple talking animals and super-heroes, infusing that with bittersweet coming of age and small town Americana. Y'Know, the kind of thing that would be full of Dinosaur-men buying weapons at an old time yard sale with a lemonade stand out front and a rusted old Ford truck in the yard. Or a young metahuman discovering the joys of their first glass of wine, their first trip outside the country and, y'know, the discovery that gravity doesn't apply to them. And it was all under the banner of a high concept meta-arc.

It's taken awhile but All-Star Superman has sunk in and transformed my thinking on that somewhat, particularly in terms of reworking the story into something MUCH more episodic without becoming an anthology either, but the core idea of a fantastic world that casually incorporates stock types from genre fiction is still there. And the square-jawed, calls-his-mom-every-Sunday hero is there although he's an established fixture, not somebody we really follow through on an origin story. And in thinking how I didn't want this guy to just be a visual Superman clone (the old design was a bit too close to Sentry), the idea popped up, "Why does he have to be anglo? I think people will get the idea of what 'type' of super-hero he is as soon as he starts speaking so why not make him a little less assembly-line?"

[Pink Bat Maxine]

If I recall, there was a nerdy black boy in several issues of Power of Shazam.... Billy's rival at WHIZ perhaps?

[PatrickG]

BTW, just to expand the thought:

The old take was probably a BIT inaccessible. The idea was, in part, you would be shown lots of things and asked to accept them totally for eye candy's sake.

As-in, "Why, yes. That is a space cowboy and, yes, his son is a werewolf. No, I'm not going to explain it here. They're at the grocery store. Deal with it." Or, "Didn't you know Abraham Lincoln is an evil intergalactic warlord now? No? Well, he is. Maybe I'll get to explaining it eventually. For now, just go with it."

And the idea was, in part, that at least once every four pages or so, you'd just get hammered with these arcane reveals or bits of world building, increasing in absurdity, as if you were picking up a sixty year old comic with sixty years of continuity that you (and everyone else) missed out on somehow.

Thing is, that may be a bit "David Lynch does sci-fi" for some people's tastes. And so the revised version is a bit more streamlined, with each issue offering a perspective on its own blend of oddity that builds into a more cohesive whole but wherein you're only asked to make a few specific leaps that are integral to each specific story as opposed to being asked to make leaps that don't relate to the plot, at least not any major ones.

[Eliseu Gouveia]

[Nick Soapdish]

Geordi LaForge?

And there's Marcus in Foxtrot.

[Reverend Smooth]

Originally Posted by Nick Soapdish

Geordi LaForge?

Rrrrrrrrrr.

[dupont2005]

Originally Posted by PatrickG

BTW, just to expand the thought:

The old take was probably a BIT inaccessible. The idea was, in part, you would be shown lots of things and asked to accept them totally for eye candy's sake.

As-in, "Why, yes. That is a space cowboy and, yes, his son is a werewolf. No, I'm not going to explain it here. They're at the grocery store. Deal with it." Or, "Didn't you know Abraham Lincoln is an evil intergalactic warlord now? No? Well, he is. Maybe I'll get to explaining it eventually. For now, just go with it."

And the idea was, in part, that at least once every four pages or so, you'd just get hammered with these arcane reveals or bits of world building, increasing in absurdity, as if you were picking up a sixty year old comic with sixty years of continuity that you (and everyone else) missed out on somehow.

Thing is, that may be a bit "David Lynch does sci-fi" for some people's tastes. And so the revised version is a bit more streamlined, with each issue offering a perspective on its own blend of oddity that builds into a more cohesive whole but wherein you're only asked to make a few specific leaps that are integral to each specific story as opposed to being asked to make leaps that don't relate to the plot, at least not any major ones.

i recently read man of rust which lampoons superman's mixed up and ridiculous history pretty well. i got a good kick out of it.

[lexid523]

Urkel totally counts, man.

As does Myra, who on top of being a black nerd, was also female and pretty. I clung to her character when I was a little girl and wanted to be a paleontologist. Her interest in science was a breath of fresh air when nearly every mildly attractive girl on TV was generally described as either a "good student" or an "airhead", with the former getting little to no delineation as to what her academic passions actually were.

Nowadays all I've got is Leslie Winkle. Though she is awesome in many ways, she's still the stereotypical frumpy female scientist.

Sorry, I know you were looking for male examples, but I loved Myra so damn much.

[Spiffy]

Originally Posted by lexid523

Urkel totally counts, man.

Dudes. He invented a cloning machine. And a recombinant DNA mixing thingie. And a time machine. And an evil robot.

Annoying or not... he's GOT to count.

[Hurricane]

[KevinTBrown]

Not sure if this counts or not, but Aldis Hodge (who plays Alec Hardison) in Leverage is definitely a geek.