The next story in the Isis series will be a Fantasy Flashback
tale set in 1937. I’ve wanted to write an Isis story set during the golden age of
comics with her 1930s supporting cast members Alma Travis and Edna Flowers in
their primes. But after reading several golden age stories and seeing how hokey
they were I decided make this one a tale about race and identity.
Isis: Imitation of Life will be one of the darkest tales in
the Isis series. It’s a story about the goddess at one of the major crossroads
in her life.
In Isis: Imitation of Life I’ll be tackling the light-skin/dark-skin
issue and the intra-racism between Black people. The title is inspired by the
1934 classic film Imitation of Life about Peola, a light skinned Black woman
who makes numerous moral and ethical compromises to pass for White and what she
believes will be a better life.
The story itself in contrast will be about Isis pondering if
she should remain in America and if she should continue in her second crusade
to help Negro people. The goddess wonders if it’s ethically and morally right
for her as a New Heliopolitan to interfere in the affairs of the Negro. The
question she asks herself is: Is she the one living an imitation of Negro life
and if she’s mocking Negro people by living and working among them to help them
get a better life.
In the first Isis book, Isis said that when she immigrated to
America the people with skin her color and hair her texture were Negoes. In
this story readers will learn that her racial identity with the Negro race goes
further than skin deep.
I was inspired to write Isis: Imitation of Life after
receiving comments from family and some Pro-Blacks about the images of Isis on
the covers of Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess and Isis: Night of the Vampires not
being Black or being too so-called light-skinned. In the wake of all those
comments I wanted to make a defining statement about Isis’ views on race and
her racial identity.
The reason for setting the story in the Golden Age of Heroes
was to make a commentary about superheroes and race. In the late 1930s when
Jewish creators were creating White superheroes like Superman, Batman and
Captain America to save people in their brightly colored fantasy worlds, Black
people were going through one of the darkest periods in American history.
Lynchings of Black people were at record highs, and Black people lived in fear
due to the terrorism they faced with the Klan and Jim Crow laws in the south
and racism and discrimination in the north. While Superman and Batman and
Captain America faced brightly colored menaces out to take over the world, Isis
faced the darkest of evils: the intra-racism and self-hatred Negroes had
regarding themselves due to their perceptions of self. Negative Perceptions of the
Negro image perpetuated by Jim Crow policies and racist media like that shown
in books, Radio shows like Amos N’ Andy and movies like Imitation of Life.
In most media of the time, the image of the Negro was often caricaturized
and presented to perpetuate racist stereotypes like the coon, the brute, the
sapphire, and the Tragic Mulatto. In most of these stories from this era like
those published in the Pulps and the paperbacks the Negro was always a villain
and they always met a tragic end.
And in Golden Age comics Black characters were always
relegated to minstrel roles like Whitewash from the Young Allies or the
Whizzer’s Negro sidekick. In one Shazam! Comic Billy Batson even put on
Blackface to disguise himself. As for Black women in comics, we never saw a
single one in that era.
With this Isis story I wanted to tell a story about how the
goddess was a heroine during this dark period. The obstacles she overcomes
aren’t some villain’s master plan to take over the world, but the perceived
prejudices of Negro people and her own internal struggles with race and
identity.
For too long so-called dark-skinned people have believed the
lie that light-skinned and biracial Black people have some sort of privilege in
American society. Some Negroes even believe that they’re better than other
Black people. When this isn’t the case at all. Black will always be Black no
matter if your skintone is charcoal or chalk White, and light-skinned and
biracial people experience racism and prejudice just like dark-skinned Black
people do.
Moreover, what defines a person as Black isn’t just skintone.
What defines a person as Black is their actions and their deeds. It is the
content of a person’s character that defines their Blackness, not the color of
their skin. A light-skinned or biracial person who makes efforts to help
advance the race behind the scenes is more a support to Black people than a
dark-skinned Black person who claims Pro-Blackness but still sleeps with a
White woman and panders to White liberals.
I’m really excited for this project because I get to explore
a couple of concepts I really enjoy in a story: Pulp Fiction and Golden Age
superheroes. I’ve been a fan of Vintage Pulps like Doc Savage and underrated Golden
Age heroines like Harvey’s Black Cat and Fox’s Phantom Lady. The chance to tell
a story using those kinds of elements has me eager to put fingers to the
keyboard to tell this story.
I’m also excited to tell a story where I get to present a
different perspective on Black history to readers. Oftentimes when writers tell
stories about the Jim Crow period it’s usually about some racist White
southerners tormenting poor downtrodden Negroes. I wanted to break away from
that usual narrative to detail the intra-racial issues working class Negro men
and women faced and how these perceptions of self are used to divide and
conquer the race. Isis: Imitation of Life is set in a Oneonta County, a
fictional Negro and Iroquois town in Upstate new York with a main street filled
with mostly Black-owned businesses and a working class community of Negro
people. The stories of those middle-class Negro people like Pullman Porters and
Negro professionals are rarely ever told by writers and I thought I’d tackle
them.
I’ve just started writing the first draft of Isis: Imitation
of Life, and I’m waiting for my Imitation of Life DVD to come in the mail. So I
don’t have a release date for it yet. But with it being one of my summer
projects, I’m shooting for a January 2016 release or a June 2016 release. I
might do a Kickstarter to raise money to pay for the cover, but everything is
up in the air until I finish the initial draft.
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