Black Panther HEARTS Storm

Luke is marrying a WHITE WOMAN!
-- David R. (quoteidio...), February 1st, 2006. (popshots75`) (later)

might stand out on a casual flick through the thread.

Matthew I was going to say that's nowhere near true about Storm, but then I realised that my exposure to the Xmen over the last five years has been X-Statix and the Morrison/Whedon cast, so I've not really seen her at all.

Mammomax.

Er.... (I'm being unfair, but still you see my point?)

http://www.comics.org/covers.lasso?SeriesID=2387

The post-Kirby issues look insanely dull. It must be quite a comedown after finding King Solomon's Frog and hanging with the Black Muskateers to end up back in boring old Manhattan fighting boring old Klaw with the boring old Avengers.

In fact, I don't even like the new direction everything is going in. At this rate I might even have to stop reading X-men at the comic book stores anymore.

As for those 3 post-Kirby Panther books - Jerry Bingham & Gene Day on the art can't be all bad, but ED HANNIGAN?

And if anything, wasn't the interaction between the many mutant comics of the 90s and the rest of the Marvel universe characterized not by segregation but by forced bussing?

But during the 80s heyday there would be plenty of MU cameos without it ever overwhelming the books - Cloak and Dagger in New Mutants being a good example, and the whole (excellent) Asgard storyline was of course steeped in Marvelism.

I have a lot of problems with the mutant persecution angst coexisting with the Avengers and Captain America (particularly the 80s/90s incarnations thereof, who weren't meant to be morally flawed), and with those non-mutant heroes paying nothing but lip service to mutant "tolerance." It's the kind of thing that seems like it would be explained forty years later by Henry Peter Gyrich having the Spear of Destiny.

But I don't like that aspect of the X-books to begin with, so nix or downplay that and I think the neighborhoods can get along just fine.

Fred Hembeck:

I will say that I created Black Lightning after convincing DC not to publish another "black" super-hero on which they had started work. The Black Bomber was a white bigot who, in times of stress, turned into a black super-hero. This was the result of chemical camouflage experiments he'd taken part in as a soldier in Vietnam. The object of these experiments was to allow our [white] troops to blend into the jungle.

In each of the two completed Black Bomber scripts, the white bigot risks his own life to save another person whom he can't see clearly (in one case, a baby in a stroller) and then reacts in racial slur disgust when he discovers that he risked his life to save a black person. He wasn't aware that he had two identities, but each identity had a girlfriend and the ladies were aware of the change. To add final insult, the Bomber's costume was little more than a glorified basketball uniform.