In the “wow it must be a slow news day” column, in a link on the website thegrio.com is an article, of all things, about the lack of African-American (and this is an important distinction!) in the latest X-Men movie in specific and in comic books in general. Yes, a writer took the time to write a piece about how there aren't African American characters in an X-Men movie and in comics, and this was published on a fairly mainstream website (NewsOne out of New York.)

OK, where to begin?

Oh, let me take the low road. Casey Gane-McCalla, you are stupid! Oh, and since you dis reference a NY Times article on a similar subject, I have to put Ta-Nehesi Coates, the writer of that article, on my list of stupidity. First of all, let me give you a small bit of my credentials. I've been going consistently to the San Diego Comic Con since 1980 and I have been collecting comics since 1977. When I say consistent, I mean I haven't missed once since 1980. I have written a few comic books. I was at Comic Con when I could count the black fans on one hand and still had enough fingers to snap. I was there when creators like Denys Cowan actually had a REAL beef about the number of black creators in comics, when they walked around the convention floor with the NWA hats on and most of the non-black people in attendance, which by that point was close to fifty, laughed at the people that thought they worked for NorthWest Airlines. That was also the same year they talked about forming Milestone Comics.

One of the tenants of the creation of Milestone was not to make it just a black comic but to make it a diverse comic company. I bring this history up because I want to make sure you understand I'm not someone who came into this subject within the past few years. I was reading comics when they weren't $100 million dollar movies, when the San Diego Comic Con was lucky to have 20,000 in attendance not 150,000, when a comic book creator was nobody, meaning you had no idea if the creator was white, black, Asian or Hispanic.

I get where you're coming from, but when you distinctly say you want the characters to be African American, and you dismiss Storm from the X-Men because she's African, well I have to say wrong. I distinctly remember a scene in an early X-Men comic, which I believe was X-Men 102 if Wikipedia is correct, where Storm visits her home, which is a tenement building in New York! Thankfully I didn't have to dig through my extensive collection of comics to find the actual issue, because Wikipedia clearly clarified that Ororo father was American David Munroe and her mother was African N'Dare. They moved to Harlem where her mother becomes pregnant and bears Storm. Yes, she returned to Africa but Storm is more African American than many African Americans since she her parentage is truly both parts and, just to clarify, she was born in America. As we all know from the immigration laws on the books right now, that makes her American.

Now, you might be saying that is a minor quibble and doesn't distract from the major work of the argument, but you have set upon a path that, if you were a true historian of the comic book industry, you would have realized was a bad road to take. You threw up a lot of comics, Batman – The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, New Frontier and others to illustrate how comics ignore the struggles of the time period in the 60s and 70s. You say because there are no black characters how can they address the conflict of the times accurate. Not exactly true.

Do you know who Kyle Barker is? He's a black artist who has done a number of projects for Marvel over the years. He, along with writer Robert Morales, did something logical with the Captain America story. You do remember Isaiah Bradley, the first Captain America? Wait, you thought Steve Rogers was the first. Who do you think they experimented on to make sure the Super Soldier serum was correct? Yeah, Robert Morales thought about that also, so he did a mini series where the Tuskegee experiments were a backdrop into looking into the creation of the serum. I would suggest getting a hand on the issue if you can. It was a powerful series.

What I'm trying to illustrate, and believe me I could go on for a bit on this, is to say that blacks haven't been portrayed in comics is like saying blacks aren't represented well in other media. No, it's true the numbers aren't great and I can pop off (and have done so in many articles) where I can point to lack of blacks or token blacks in the media. What can't be done is to take the few that are there and dismiss them as not being important. Sure, Black Panther is African, but in talking about the lack of African American characters you failed to mention Luke Cage, Falcon or a number of other characters that, while being secondary, are important. Not every comic book character has their own series, not every character will be made into a film or movie. What has to be done is pointing out, of making aware of the characters and stories that are out there.

Just as a side note, I loved how when the Green Lantern movie was announced and Ryan Reynolds was picks, I saw on message boards where some complained that Green Lantern wasn't black like he was in the animated series? Just something to think about.