Black AF America’s Sweetheart Ain’t So Sweet

[Music] so this review was a year in making because I couldn't find the damn book nobody had this thing and I don't hear enough about it to order it hell I wasn't even gonna order it online and it was easy to find there I actually stumbled on to it I was looking through trades and I saw this tiny sliver of white tucked between some books so I pulled it out and it's only 80 pages and the usual this story is a [ __ ] mess Kwanzaa Kwanzaa Kwanzaa Kwanzaa I don't know what to do with you so black is [ __ ] America's Sweetheart is supposed to be a young adult coming but it's really three comics in one first let's deal with the name this is supposed to be a book for middle school and junior high kids so you put as [ __ ] in the title I know this is a brand new thing because you can't trademark or copyright the word black but you really should have thought it out more because using ass [ __ ] and the title looks immature and amateur technically those are accurate descriptions of Kwanzaa and his work but you could at least try to fool people it's just not clever and then we've got the book itself and like I said it's three books in one it starts out like a kids book like one of those with the gold binding on the side that's how it reads except with the heaping dose of Soviet style propaganda the art which is good really doesn't help though it really does look and read like communist posters then there's a sudden Township where it becomes a regular action comic it really does come out of nowhere one page Eli is saving people with the Stalinist music in the background the next literally the next page it's a Throwdown fight Eli ends up meeting up with Kareem the blank slate from the original series and we get this dialogue where he calls her a bougie [ __ ] but the last word kind of gets cut off then it falls back into propaganda style narrative complete with the obligatory white people be racist nonsense and then becomes [ __ ] Man of Steel I'm not joking Kwanzaa literally lifts the destruction porn from the end of Man of Steel and just plops it into a story so we go from rated G 2 PG to pg-13 then back to G straight to rated R where are your editors I don't know who the story is for it's not for kids even though the art style will totally make kids want to read it it's not for teens because they're not gonna like the baby-talk tone the book starts with it's now for adults because the shifting narrative two out of the story the whole time I was reading is I couldn't figure out who this was for what I did get is that Kwanzaa had a message several actually and he was gonna cram all the [ __ ] in this book then a third of the way into the book he remember they like Shana and battle manga so he threw that into but the locusts would not be stopped so it rolled up in a lavender Cadillac stepped out in that crushed velvet suit with the feather in the head strolled on over to the action scenes him slept the [ __ ] out of him and said dig deeper and it just exploded into a mess of black nationalism I don't know who's supposed to like the story which is probably why nobody talked about it that end no one could find a damn thing on the plus side the art is absolutely gorgeous Jennifer Johnson just brings it it's 80 pages so there are a couple of panels that look rushed or unfinished but when she's on goddamn is she on set inside that for most of the book Eli aka good girl looks like a boy like a very effeminate boy and is even Witter because supposedly straight Kareem kind of has the hots for him her I meant for her Johnson is really good at visual storytelling though and her story book style works well with this format it's a style that's pretty popular online and in animation circles there's really not a boring page in this book even when nothing's happening Johnson's color work just pulls you in even in places where the work looks unfinished or rushed it's done in a controlled way you know she knows what she's doing so even the colors just thrown on the page it's artistically done and she's got a fantastic use of color very expressive fitting in with the mood and telling the story at that point it's just solid work nothing to complain about I mean I would buy some of these pages as prints they're that good and honestly if you can find this book you should buy it for the art don't read it though because the story is a mess so Kwanzaa had this idea what if only black people had superpowers it's not a very clever idea especially since in the original story black people that had superpowers since the fifteen hundred's meaning non power white folks with sorts of muskets managed to enslave in knock off x-men it makes no [ __ ] sense no sense and somehow through 400 years of slavery Jim Crow modern police no one discovered [ __ ] had powers just enslaved my black ass yeah I can take my dick out and use it like bullwhip and I've got superpowers but [ __ ] just enslave me I won't fight back clench my black ass go and get my brother too I could turn my skin if the [ __ ] diamond just shake my body and get out of this but no your strangle my ass I'm gonna go and vote and you gonna ask me how many bubbles in a bar soap well let me show you nah [ __ ] it I just keep it to myself oh you're gonna tase my black ass for real well excuse me just one second Chidori deal with that [ __ ] no no not gonna do that this is the world Kwanza creates where people with super power somehow manage to never get found out and never use their powers to protect themselves totally improbable so then at the end of the original black miniseries the whole world finds out about super-powered black people and that's where this book picks up we find out that Elie Franklin whose parents claim is stork dropped off in a wheat field yes he is that lazy has all of Superman's powers she's raised by this white family in Montana where she peels along because she's got powers and is apparently the only black person in Montana which actually sounds probable her dad conveniently works for the government specifically the homeland agency for ulterior soldiers and he runs back to Washington to deal with the MM Negro mertay fallout because that's what you call it in the event where rich in Hope Black Series Black Death okay so then we get this ridiculous montage of all this white hatred against black people out of fear that those with powers will be dangerous which would be fine if there was anything presented in the story to explain the fear there isn't everything I just talked about is in the first three pages of the book so why are they afraid of super-powered black people why would they meet up a fourteen-year-old street magician because they thought he had powers what has scared them shitless he's at the Negro birthday I'm never gonna be able to say that without laughing it's just so stupid the thing where the black dude in charge who's basically Kwanzaa gives a totally racist speech about how he's gonna go full black Nazi on white people because if it's said their fear is totally rational if it's not you have to show us why why are these people acting this way I know it's because Kwanzaa things all white people hate black people but you have to explain in the context of the story never there there's no explanation why these people react so negatively to this news outside of the event where the black supremacists talked about taking over the world which is also not mentioned in this story so we find out that Eli has this metal ball that our adoptive parents say her birth parents left for and now the frustration for not being allowed to do anything she throws it into space and it comes back it comes to life fine there's really no explanation for this it just happens but whatever were barely six pages into the story and we know very little about Eli her personality her wants her desires we have no connection to her whatsoever but bucket turned her into a knockoff super boy I mean girl I mean this just happens the ball joins with her creates a super suit and she decides to go saving people just like that this is where the kids book style storytelling comes in because this works fine if your target audience is a bunch of five-year-olds but if your target audience is young adults which is how the story is build this [ __ ] makes no sense bonza breaks one of the main rules of storytelling show don't tell I mean you've got 80 pages man you can show us Eli's day to day life how she struggles to keep her powers a secret and maybe while at school she sees an equal mertay video hanoks runs home and has to cope with this she could get into an argument with her parents over it and run into the mountains and then play out the scene of her throwing the metal ball I literally just came up with a better idea off the top of my head the problem Kwanzaa is that we're not invested in the character you don't have to tell us everything about her but we need to see her doing things in order for us to get invested you can't just run down her backstory and then jump into her being a superhero it just doesn't work and neither does his [ __ ] name good girl just do you not realize what it sounds like they have a bunch of people saying to a teenage girl big girl thanks good girl you're so awesome good girl it's patronizing and it sounds racist there's no way she would call herself that she's more likely to call herself America's Sweetheart doing good girl it's like you're talking to a [ __ ] dog why would you pick that name and then have the character call herself that I could see if this was a white people that would fit your motif that they're all races but why have her call herself that it makes no sense and it's racist anyway she saves a bunch of people apparently over the course of the night in the morning so everything just happens in a couple of hours her yet get suspicious and calls her from somewhere Eli flies home from somewhere dad comes into her room she's in the bed he leaves and she's back outside and then gets attacked by the house [ __ ] that's literally what they are the homeland agency for ulterior soldiers or house for short of course Eli is so ultra powerful none of them are threat to her at all she walks through all of them and when her dad shows up Corrine comes out of nowhere to rescue her for some reason they have this talk where they clown each other over their stupid code names good girl and X and then Eli says that she's on America's side I wants to show the world there's nothing to be afraid of with super-powered black people and Kareem just can't handle being turned down by a femme boy what really threw me off here is that up to this point Eli's personality has been that of a six-year-old when she gets her costume and she's talking to the metal ball everything that she says makes her out to be a big kid then she meets Kareem and suddenly develops a vocabulary and then it quickly becomes a whiny six-year-old when her dad checks her for disobeying his rules no teenage girl is going to react like this what bothered me though was this line where she says it's what grandpa would have done this is twice now that she's mentioned her grandfather but we've never seen him we've got no flashbacks with him and we don't know why he's so important to her she's only mentioned him two times this time and when she put on the baseball cap that was apparently his that's it so grandpa's supposed to be her Jonathan Kent he's dead but she learned all her morals from him well why don't you show us that here's an idea what if grandpa wanted to see her use her powers to help people and her dad was against it what if that's why she calls herself a good girl because it was something grandpa used to call her when she was a kid what if throughout this entire thing she's been thinking what would grandpa want me to do even better what if he just recently died and this was something he really wanted to see her do to show her powers and help people again off the top of my [ __ ] head better story you can't throw information like this at people and think is just gonna work think about big hero six we have to see Tadashi's relationship with hero in order to a hair that he dies be here that affects hero and see understand why he created baymax we never get anything about their parents because that's not hero's motivation but if it were his motivation or Tadashi's it would be in the film because we have to know to care Jesus Christ why don't you know how to tell stories why are you this bad at it why how have you been around in this mini storage house and not picked up the basics four year olds understand this point they will do this without you ever explaining it to them they will tell you about their character or whoever and then explain why they do stuff but grown-ass Kwanza thinks he can just throw out a line on my panel in an 80 page book and just magically you'll [ __ ] care so then we find out that someone's destroyed a Higgs field development facility and it's never explained why it's important I mean never the only way you know why this is important is if you read the original series the Higgs field is something why people can use to just rub black people's powers and possibly even copy them onto themselves you probably want to tell that to the reader but instead it just shifts back to storybook propaganda Eli goes on Helen she works with the house [ __ ] she ends up becoming the first sanctioned superhero and continues to save people then Katrina happens I'm not kidding a storm hits New Orleans Eli goes to help and then the why people hate her because she saved black people for some reason they all forgot that New Orleans is mostly black so most of the people she would save would probably be black and you have to understand this happens over six pages she saves people for three and then everyone hates her for the next three she only saves black people supposedly and stopped a white celebrity from drunk driving because this is exactly how that happens white folks just beginning cars chugging our whole 40 ounces and dry look at that face I'm white I'm a woman my name is Heather I can do whatever I want it is nice so that you gave Miss Ann's house a cameo in your book and apparently this is why people suddenly hate Eli she saved too many black people in dominantly black city and stop the white celebrity from killing people I know you think white people are petty Kwanzaa but never in the history of crack Adam have they ever been this petty never and by the way the tone just flips he goes from full-on propaganda to explaining why the crack ass crackers don't like her literally one page after the other like you combine two separate stories so then there's another attack on the Hicks facility and the government sends house but Eli's debt makes her go home she decides to tap into the video feet using her a little middle ball and watches what's going down and notices that the mask woman has the same symbol that appears whenever Eli uses the metal ball she flies over to confront the woman literally in seconds and demands to know what the symbol means why they have the same powers and who she is and of course the woman says I think you already know the answer my name is redness I mean Zion little sister wait for it so Zion grabs her and we find out as aya and Eli are from the future where black people have been enslaved again rapper their powers ain't kept captive by jujitsu curse seal I mean technology that can kill them in an instant Zion was about to be sent to war and Eli was birthmarc whatever the [ __ ] that means when her parents decided to rebel the father worked in the facility that had a device of hitmen time and he took his daughter there and threw the man because he and his wife bought anywhere in space-time was safer than being with them the girls arrived in the past years apart and after the Negro birthday Zion whose war armor that apparently got tossed in with her and still works decides to destroy the Higgs field facilities to prevent their people from ever being enslaved again so let me get this straight somehow in the far-flung future black people are not only still oppressed by evil white men but enslaved again and use for war Toriyama called he like his Dragon Ball story back how does this work I'm asking because the white folks don't have superpowers with the Saiyans Frieza was stronger than them that's how he could control them thus if Negroes they're the ones with the powers so how were they enslaved better yet how are they still enslaved Zion and Eli damn near wrecked our planet in their fight this is [ __ ] dragon ball battle on Namek level destruction they literally fight in the Earth's core and come out basically fine so how do you enslave these people yeah I know you ripped off the Hyuga clan curse sealed thing for Naruto but you never explained how it works these people are powerful in the destroy planets but folks with no powers can control them with some device or ultimate kill button if that's true how come their parents could use the time travel device no problem you think that they would be trapped otherwise there'd be no point in having [ __ ] he'll button so somehow horse of Negroes could go somewhere they weren't supposed to be use the device are not supposed to use and no one notices this or tries to stop you I mean if you're gonna rip off man and still at least do it right David Goyer had the sense to add drama to kal-el being sent off by having Zod attack the house where Laura and jor-el trying to launch the ship hell and the Terminator we at least told by Corey says the terminators try to stop him from going back in time you Kwanza just have it happen like it's no problem they just waltz in there turn the machine on and toss the kids in couldn't the white folks just use the kill switch and stop them and if these folks were able to block out that signal how come no one else figured out how to do it if there's no signal to block how come they don't just turn on the white people I mean the submit grows are ridiculously fast they should be able to move faster than the non powered white people they could kill them before the white people could react and why do they have families I mean these people appear to be engineered why are they placed in groups where they could form bonds with each other or are they apparently free enough to have families why who in their right mind will allow these super power beings to make babies none of this makes any sense and get it you think it's clever to ripoff dragon ball in Naruto and still the indie from all-star Superman and have this half-assed Man of Steel fight that has no impact because a Little Miss Perfect has even less of a reason to give a [ __ ] about our black family than Superman did with the Kryptonians but if you're gonna do it you need to do it well what you gave us is this convoluted backstory that makes zero sense and you didn't need it the story is already complex enough you don't need to add in time travel in your second store for no reason other than telling us that these two Negroes are so powerful because their dumb ass is getting slave again by the pink skins are you sure these are black people I know my people we can be a net but not this Annette are you sure these is real [ __ ] I don't think these is real [ __ ] these are pretending pretending is that's PR e te n de GE RS that's where white folks who want to use it but if you say it fast sounds right pretending is it'd be a shame if someone took one of your covers and put that as a title I'm not saying anyone should do that do it but it'd be a shame if they did it so pretend Iike sisters white all over the world and Kareem shows up only to get him slapped halfway across the world which he survives because like the girls he's all-powerful but apparently can't fly he just conveniently forgets that he has super speed so he's not stuck on the island and he can develop powers at random so he really should be able to flop but no he just screams why can't I fly it's because you don't have the vagina only those with the vagina get to be all-powerful Little Miss Perfect who can't be hurt by anything sucking all the drama out of the fight I mean the fight looks nice the art is fantastic there's really a problem there even Zayas motivations seem fine she's been enslaved and she's pissed about it and doesn't want it to happen again and she wants to protect her little sister the problem is what happens whenever you have these kind of overpowered characters there's no risk they can't be hurt physically they're pummeling each other knocking each other hundreds of miles with each hit and is not doing [ __ ] to him they're in the air in space under the sea in the core of the earth still fine so what's at stake here what's the cost a sister Eli knows nothing about a future she knows nothing about at least women's Steel Court would lose the last connection to Krypton something he's wanted to know about his entire life that doesn't exist for Eli she has no mystery no knowledge that she comes from somewhere else other than a general idea of being adopted he can't hurt her she has no connection to Zion so she really has nothing to lose but one thing he like could lose the public's appeal she's already lost the only other option is to go after a family which Kwanza didn't do he doesn't have Zion physically attack Eli's family in cities are called him Eli's handlers and talks about how they lie to her there's no drama in that because Eli completely rejects it right from the start so there's literally nothing worth fighting for making the fight pointless outside of the art what makes it even worse is that the book just ends Eli in Zion fight toy draw they end up in the Earth's core by thier flyout die on I don't know burns up or passes out eli falls from space and ends up in the hospital and then kareem teleports him and his size he's gonna get his Naruto on with reverse Haku that's it that's the ending I don't know why they just read I have no idea the tone shifts are insane the story is poorly handled there are actually good ideas there that are wasted and the things Kwanza copies he copies poorly stripping away all the things that make the concepts work that using here's an idea dude steal don't borrow don't just copy the concept because you think it's cool that's no different than borrowing someone's jacket you're gonna have to give it back steal it make it your own wear it the way you'd wear it as if you'd actually bought the damn thing that's what you should have done here instead you gave us yet another story where we know next to nothing about the main character we don't really know our motivations present it every white person is shady or evil even Eli's father is basically a liar or a good reason but still a liar and made the premise of this story look even dumber than before if you let go of trying to preach about race and actually focus on getting your audience to care about the characters you might be able to make this work it just seems like you don't really want to do that you're so message driven that you've lost the concept of storytelling you need to sit down and ask yourself why these characters are doing what they're doing and then you need to show that in the book go and read hero of a thousand faces then read the children of whoring then go watch the matrix just the first one watch The Incredibles watch Batman Begins read the first volume of Naruto and my hero eye candy Mia pay attention to the hero's journey and how all these characters are presented if you want the audience to care about something you have to establish it you have to show us what this person's life is like then show us a call to adventure and then move on if you want to have an important figure in that character's life we're gonna need to see scenes with them either in linear storytelling or in flashback you don't need a lot look the amazing spider-man just a couple of scenes at the beginning of the film with Peter and his father and boom you've established his connection with his dad how he thinks about Uncle Ben and why it hurts him so much when Ben is killed he's lost two dads now and he was very mean to the last one before he died that and basic storytelling skills is what's missing from everything you've written it's probably because you don't have anyone around you willing to be critical in the way I've just done and if you think I'm being mean to you know this is how I talk to my friends about their stories if it's silly I won't clown you about it if it doesn't work I'm gonna let you know and I expect them to do the same make me a better writer by either only telling me what works so if you don't have much to say it means it's [ __ ] or telling me what doesn't work and be honest clearly you don't have anyone doing that for you unless Mark Waid is going to set aside his white guilt and actually school your ass on how to write a story but this universe you've built is not impressive it's sad just from the mind of a guy who's ashamed of his race and yet let go of that silly need to prove his blackness is from someone who sees a real problem but is so indoctrinated he isn't willing to explore all sides of that problem but what do I know I'm just some guy

Channel: Just Some Guy

Views: 193,748

Keywords: comics, black mask, black mask studios, black comic, black af, black af america's sweetheart, kwanza osajyefo, black kwanza osajyefo, jennifer johnson, jennifer johnson black af, kwanza black af, america's sweetheart, diversity in comics, inclusivity, representation in comics, representation, sjw cringe, sjw comics, social justice warrior, social justice, sjw, just some guy

Id: anDXVsUhxH8

Length: 23min 34sec (1414 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 04 2019