impressedI first found out about it here:
Comics -- Vote for Genius!
So Top Cow Comics is having their pilot season where they release 6 one-shot comics and people vote. The top two vote-getters get picked up as series. I’m really hoping Genius is one of the two. The story…well -</p>Alexander, Hannibal, Napoleon, Patton. What if the greatest military mind of OUR generation was born in strife, surrounded by violence and combat since birth? When the gauntlet is dropped, the question isn’t “How did 17-year-old Destiny Ajaye unite the gangs of South Central into a killer army and declare war on the LAPD?” No, the question is, “Can anyone stop her?”
Imagine a comic about a black girl who is a military genius. Imagine her kicking butt and taking names. Now add that the dialect is spot on -- I haven't seen anything this apt since Brown Girl in the Ring. Squee, squee! Shove over, Buffy.
View samples and vote for it here. Buy it here.
I note with bemusement the remarks that white people don't understand police corruption. Um ... reckon they must know different people than I do. Or else this is the kind of thing my friend Aaron meant when he said I could pass for white, till I open my mouth.
September 7 2008, 06:51:42 UTC 12 years ago
September 7 2008, 06:56:19 UTC 12 years ago
It looks like you can vote once a day. I'm hoping to net them some extra votes here -- I know I've got some readers who're likely to pounce on this as fast as I did.
September 7 2008, 06:58:03 UTC 12 years ago
I do hope it wins - though I do suspect it'll be controversial and get a lot of whining from a lot of white folks about it.
September 7 2008, 07:04:12 UTC 12 years ago
September 7 2008, 11:28:18 UTC 12 years ago
Half that (it's nice to see a comment on the comic from someone who understands the premise) and half people letting their anger take them too far. Just because the people saying stupid things may be White doesn't mean it's fair to tar all White people with that stupidity, and it certainly doesn't help the conversation proceed.
Good point!
September 7 2008, 15:46:31 UTC 12 years ago
I am, however, pleased that so far I haven't seen anyone throwing a fit over the greatest military genius being black or being a girl. Someone probably is, somewhere, but it's not the heart of the ruckus. They're not squalling over "could she" but over "should she." It's outrage, not disbelief. They seem to accept the validity of the character, they just hate her.
*teeth* I love it when science fiction lays out signs that say, "Danger! Do not pass this way!" Because this future is plausible to me. The comic instantly made me ask, "How could someone growing up in a ghetto, starting with genius potential, develop it into a solid grasp of strategy and tactics?" She may or may not have access to external resources, such as veteran relatives, somebody's discarded field manual, etc. Ghetto life can be very isolating and deprived. But you know what? It's a lot like the context of small-tribe warfare that spawned some of history's greatest military minds, and they managed to bootstrap themselves up from nothing. So it can be done. What's been done before could be done again. And because I can see how that might happen, I'm aware of the risk, and I'd really rather not see it manifest.
That's another chunk of weight behind my pre-existing tendency to work on dismantling ghetto space. Cramming people together with minimal resources is going to cause problems. I've been telling people for years that it's a criminal waste of human resources, because everybody comes into this life with stuff to do -- what if the person who's supposed to discover the real cure for cancer gets shot dead in a ghetto at age 13? Some of the big stuff is so hard, it's in the hands of only one or two people, so it can go astray if they're killed or knocked off course. What I hadn't thought of is the category of tasks that wouldn't necessarily be knocked off course by ghetto life. Military genius probably tops that list. Yeek.