Sunday, August 24, 2008

Black, Animated, and Not Quite Human

Growing up on comics and TV, most of all the Black Superheroes had the word "Black" in their name. There was Black Panther, Black Lightning, Black Vulcan, Black Goliath, and the original Black Power Ranger to name a few. They made sure you knew who the Black ones were. Then there were these other Superheroes that everybody knew were black but that fact wasn't played up so much, maybe because they weren't exactly human. Remember Panthro from the Thundercats? Yet another Black Panther. He was the technical one. His weapons were the Nunchucks and he never seemed to get angry, preferring to kick your butt politely. No one seemed to be in a hurry to upset him though.
My personal favorite is Hong Kong Phooey. He was voiced by the irreplaceble Scatman Crothers all those years ago and Hong Kong Phooey hasn't spoken another animated word since which is a damn shame. The character wasn't too bright but he always won in the end and the people worshiped him. Even getting run over by him was an honor. Scatman also did the voice of one of the original Transforming Autobots, Jazz. He was among the first to die in the original Transformers animated movie. The character has since been redone over and over again but has always portrayed to be the essence of style and cool. Can you think of any others?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Jazz did not die in the the original movie. It was Prowl.

Anonymous said...

right.. and ironhide and gears.. jazz and spike get saved inside unicron but spikes son daniel.. jazz being killed by megatron in the new movie really stunk.. he was my favorite.. in the late 80's early 90's they had an actual transforming vewrsion of jazz at the millwaukee auto show..

Trueman said...

Rickety Rocket. I hated that damn rocket. It was like blackface in outer space.