Why Do So Many Black Superheroes Have Electricity Powers? Growing up as a kid who loved comic books, I spent many an afternoon running around the park pretending to be a superhero fighting all manners of evil.

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Fun as it was, the process of picking out which superhero I wanted to be always stressed me out for one particular reason that still bothers me to this day. Back then, it felt odd flipping through my mental Rolodex of characters and realizing that, if I wanted to play as a black hero, it was almost guaranteed that I’d be doing jazz hands to simulate zapping people with lightning.

See, there are a lot of black comic book characters with electricity- based superpowers. A lot. Certainly, there are a number of differences between Storm, Black Lightning, (Black Lightning’s daughter) Lightning, Black Vulcan, Juice, Static, and Shango the Thunderer. But there’s also something about them all that feels derivative at best and stereotypical at worst, considering that the vast majority of the most popular black superhero characters were created by white men. It’s worth pointing out that Black Vulcan was created by Hanna- Barbera for the Superfriends cartoon, which producers felt needed a black character even though Black Lightning already existed. It’s also worth pointing out Black Vulcan was created after Black Lightning’s creator Tony Isabella left DC over creative differences.)The earliest black superheroes like Black Panther and Luke Cage crossed the comic book color line with their technology and super strength, but over the years, electrokinesis has seemingly become to go- to power black characters are most often assigned.

But why? In the fifth issue of Mark Waid and Peter Krause’s Irredeemable, Volt, a member of the book’s answer to the Justice League, apprehends a kidnapper while sheepishly admitting to the people around him that yes, he’s a black hero with electricity powers and yes, he knows that it’s a Thing™, and he’s kind of embarrassed about it. While Volt’s powers are a playful jab at superhero comics as a whole, they do raise a number of questions about what it means exactly when creators choose to turn black characters into walking, talking batteries.

Taken purely at face value, it’s not difficult to understand what makes electrokinesis popular with creators. For one thing, it can make for some of the most visually arresting art you can imagine, and with the right sort of creativity, electrokinesis can be used in a variety of novel, clever ways beyond simply discharging energy. Writer Matt Wayne has helped give Milestone Media and DC Comics’ character Static his signature voice on a number of projects like the Static Shock animated series and various comics like Static and The Brave and the Bold: Milestone. When I spoke with Wayne recently, he assured me that, when creating a new character and deciding which powers they should have, every comics writer sits down and considers how similar their creation will end up to others that came before them. Static’s powers, Wayne told me, were meant to be an extension of his geeky personality and the kinds of science fair projects he enjoyed working on. In other cases, though, Wayne reasoned that electrokinetic powers were the perfect way of having a black hero around who could participate in a fight, but not necessarily be the one to win the fight.“I think maybe some of it is that these kinds of heroes are usually physically vulnerable. So they get their hits in and get taken out.

There’s definitely an unconscious undercutting of black heroes, keeping them just shy of being a heroic ideal, that used to be more pronounced,” Wayne said. In that vein, maybe electricity can be an unconscious expression of the hero’s ‘tamable’ nature?”While it’s heartening to hear directly from a writer about how much thought they personally put into crafting a character’s identity, the point still stands that black heroes with electrical powers are an established trope. Personally, the thing that’s always stuck with me about most black heroes with nature- based power sets is the very thin line writers and artists have to walk to make sure the character isn’t being depicted as a “savage.” The idea that black people are inherently closer to nature is one of the larger undertones to the problematic magical negro trope that many black characters are often hamstrung by. The Black Electricity Trope reads like a distant cousin to the Magical Negro, in that they’re both established formulations of a character whose most defining qualities are a preternatural understanding and command of natural force. It goes without saying that Storm is perhaps the most iconic example of a the Black Electricity Trope, but she’s also a character who’s transcended much of its limitations as a result of being written and depicted thoughtfully across a variety of different mediums. Storm isn’t just a black hero who throws lightning bolts, she’s one of the most complicated and nuanced comic book characters created in the past 4. We’ve seen Storm as both a lethal weather goddess and a vulnerable human.

She’s incredibly strong, but you always get the sense that at the center of whatever devastating weather phenomena she’s manifested, there’s a human who’s just as powerful even when she doesn’t have her powers. It’s that sort of solid characterization and fleshing out of a personality, Wayne told me, that’s the key making sure that a character doesn’t become reduced to a two- dimensional stereotype.“Know who your character is. Black Lightning wouldn’t defeat a villain the same way that Static would,” Wayne said.

Although, Black Vulcan’s approach would probably be indistinguishable from Black Lightning’s. Watch My Name Is Khan Streaming there. The only difference would be who gets paid.”.

New York City Crime Movies: 2. Movies You Need To Watch. There are any number of reasons to be excited for “A Most Violent Year” which bows at the AFI Fest today prior to opening on New Year’s Eve.

It’s Jessica Chastain’s next film after “Interstellar,” it’s Oscar Isaac’s most high- profile, meaty lead since “Inside Llewyn Davis,” and it’s director J. C. Chandor’s third film after the terrific, eclectic one- two punch of “Margin Call” and “All is Lost.” And there’s the absolutely fantastic- looking trailer (plus it’s great; read our review). But there’s one final factor that has us anticipating it so hotly —the film is the latest addition to the canon of New York Crime movies, a genre that is so distinctive and so deeply knotted into the very fabric of modern American cinema that it has given us maybe ten or twenty of its irrefutably anointed classics. New York City is a place that more than most is built on a self- created image, and that image has been exported far and wide via the movies, which is to say that there is probably no more cinematic city in the whole wide world.

The city has been ceaselessly chronicled through the ages, from borough to borough, from skyscraper to curbside gutter, in all its grit, glory and glamorous anti- glamor. And crime is an indelible part of that image —we may be living in a post- Giuliani era in which it’s safe to use the subway at night and the most frightening thing that can happen to you in Brooklyn is an incorrectly spiced chai latte, but only the most unromantic cinephile can fail to have a faint tinge of nostalgia for the New York of vice and graft and grime, where lives might have been more brutal and shorter, but they played out against an immense backdrop of neon sleaze and broken dreams with jagged edges. But who among us hasn’t seen the touchpoints in this genre? And what more is there to say about “The Godfather” trilogy, “Goodfellas,” “Taxi Driver,” “Mean Streets,” “Once Upon a Time in America,” “Serpico,” “Gangs of New York,” “The Taking of Pelham 1. Death Wish,” “Leon,” “The French Connection,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “On the Waterfront,” “Midnight Cowboy” etc? It’s such a populous category that we decided to take a look instead at a few films you might not have seen or that don’t necessarily spring immediately to mind. Here then are just 2.

New York City crime movies to get you in the mood for “A Most Violent Year” (a couple of them were even released in 1. King of New York” (1. Martin Scorsese would be the undisputed Godfather of this list were we including the biggest films in the genre, but Abel Ferrara may well be the reigning feudal lord for this incarnation —his films are just as mired in the monumental grime of New York’s underworld but are just a bit  more under the radar. Here, we have confined ourselves to just two consecutive titles, ”King of New York” and “Bad Lieutenant” (see below). The earlier film was in fact the first to get a free pass onto this list, as it’s something of a neglected classic featuring a towering, haunted Christopher Walken lead performance and a terrific supporting cast including Laurence Fishburne, Wesley Snipes, Steve Buscemi, Giancarlo Esposito and David Caruso. And it’s set against the backdrop of a perfectly corrupt and venal city, above whose sins and temptations Walken’s drug- kingpin- trying- to- do- right may try to rise, (physically, in his penthouse suite at the Plaza Hotel, as well as metaphorically) but which will always pull him back down. In fact, Walken’s Frank White is motivated by a love for the city and a despair at what’s become of his childhood Lower East Side neighborhood, prompting him to turn would- be Robin Hood, albeit a peculiarly ruthless one.

It’s gloriously grim, gritty stuff, as doom- laden as the best noir and as hard- boiled as any gangster classic, and in its depiction of White’s contradictory, protective but also predatory relationship toward the city that will devour even him in the end, it’s pretty much indispensable. The Naked City” (1. Before Paris (“Rififi”), before London (“Night and The City”), there was New York City, “The Naked City.” Jules Dassin’s name often gets lost in the shuffle when dealing with the most influential film noir and crime directors, but he’s truly one of the pioneers of the genre. Especially when it comes to inextricably intertwining the picture’s story with its setting, as is perhaps most literally obvious with “The Naked City.” An unnamed narrator, who would at times comically adopt the role of tour guide (producer Mark Helligner), tells us right away that this is, among other things, a “story of a city.” Filmed entirely on location, the film takes on a unique and supremely effective semi- documented style to show us a few samples of the eight million New Yorkers going about their business. Then it zeroes in on a murder of a girl, and we follow Lieutenant Muldoon (scene- stealing Barry Fitzgerald) and his unit as they investigate and search for her killer, ending with a thrilling chase sequence. In order to get the most authentic New York vibe possible, Dassin went as far as to film in public with hidden cameras.

But it’s the birds- eye- view aerial shots, a sunset under the Brooklyn Bridge and a lit- up Manhattan at night that truly gives the city (indeed, the picture itself) its pulse “that never stops beating.” It went on to inspire the super popular TV show of the same name that ran from 1. The Pope Of Greenwich Village” (1.

This one seriously gets a bum rap. The Pope of Greenwich Village” is a nostalgic trip in the time machine to ’8. New York through the perspective of petty thugs in Little Italy. Mickey Rourke in the prime of his career plays Charlie, a guy “one inch away from being a good person” as his ballerina girlfriend Diane (Daryl Hannah) tells him. He’s your typically hot- tempered Italian who loves to blurt out a “capisce?” at the end of his sentences and doesn’t mind giving the wall a what- for every time his girlfriend or his no- good idiotic cousin Paulie (Eric Roberts in a ‘fro) put him in a bind. Charlie and Paulie lose their jobs as waiters and get in deep with the local mafia boss Bed Bug Eddie (the inestimable Burt Young) who was about to pay off a corrupt cop until the two get in his way. Director Stuart Rosenberg’s legacy (apart from directing 1.

The Naked City” TV series, see above) shines brightest with “Cool Hand Luke” and “Brubaker,” but there’s something warm and fond sustained in ‘Pope’ even after all these years. By no means a perfect film (it has an especially imperfect ending), it’s full of charm, surprising romance, a fantastic Sinatra- inspired soundtrack, and features a cameo appearance by Geraldine Page that is so superb it nabbed her an Oscar nomination for about two minutes of screen time. Cry of the City” (1. A cracking film noir from noir master Robert Siodmak, who also gave us the classic Burt Lancaster/Ava Gardner noir “The Killers,” “Cry of the City” may be a notch down from that high watermark, but only a very small notch. Pacy, seamy and stupendously well- shot (with the kind of framing and chiaruscuro shading that noir lends itself to so well), the film follows a small- time hood called Rome (Richard Conte, here a ringer for Brit character actor Danny Webb) pursued doggedly by Candella (Victor Mature), a detective who grew up in the same rough neighborhood. It really has it all: murderous, emasculating masseuses; adoring younger brothers who need to be turned away from the lure of crime; back street abortionists; moral ambiguity (Rome is this time being pursued for a crime of which he is innocent and the parallels between good guy and bad guy are writ large, “Heat”- style). And it also has some deliciously seedy texture, courtesy of its on- location New York scenes, all rain- slicked sidewalks, classic cars, pillbox hats and reflective neon signage, culminating in a poetic finale that plays out on the stoop of, what else, the downtown church where the men have their final, doomy encounter.