Those Crazy Crime Fighting Defiant Ones
Comics Team-Ups of Yore, part 2
by
Gary Phillips
Now we come to the first such interracial costumed do-gooder
team-up in mainstream comics. Marvel, earlier in the ’70s, gave us
Captain
America and
The Falcon on the masthead. For somewhere in the midst of these
two battling the likes of the Secret Empire and the Madbomb, they knew how to
take it to the streets.
Take for instance in 1971 Cap & Falcon #138, “It Happens in
Harlem” written by Stan “The Man” Lee and illo’ed by John Romita. The two, with
an assist from Spider-Man, take out the local jive turkey mobster Stone Face
and his crew.
In issue 143, “Power to the People,” again drawn by Romita but
written by Gary Friedrich, a masked firebrand has arrived on the scene and is
getting the brothers and sisters riled up. In chapter two in the book, “Burn,
Whitey, Burn,” the Falcon in his civilian identity of social worker Sam Wilson
has to prevent a riot. Sam is outnumbered and only the intervention of militant
Leila Taylor of the People’s Militia saves him from a ass whuppin’.
Mind you,
she called him an Uncle Tom and a male chauvinist when she first met him. Anyway,
before the cops and the community really go at it, Cap and Falc unmask the
hatemonger who turns out to be the biggest nazi of them all, Cap’s long-time
nemesis, the Red Skull out to cause a race war and political destabilization. Once
the Skull is taken care of, Leila and Sam share a kiss.
The following issue is quite the trip. Remember in our last
episode Leila and Sam kiss in his office? When that happened peeping in on them
from a nearby handy rooftop was Cap. One of his thought balloons read: “Sam –
with the militant girl! I can see this is no time to try and square things with
him!”
We’ll get back to that. This outing starts with the tale “Hydra Over All”
by Romita and Friedrich, and has Cap working with Colonel Nick Fury, head of the
spy organization SHIELD and… wait for it, the Femme Force, a special attack
squad led by Agent Sharon Carter, Cap’s girlfriend and the grand-niece of Cap’s
WWII-era old lady, Peggy Carter. It gets weirder. The good guys mop up the
Hydra goons with ease. It turns out the attack is being televised live to the
White House, viewed by President Nixon, Vice President Agnew and what seems to
be the Chiefs of Staff. Turns out this whole deal was an elaborately staged
demonstration. The Hydra hoods are LMDs, Life Model Decoys, and Fury wanted to
show the effectiveness of his projects.
As Fury says to the prez, “… do we or don’t we get the bread…?”
The other story in the book is “The Falcon Fights Alone!” written
by Friedrich and illo’ed by Gray Morrow. This starts with Cap in his Steve
Rogers identity having a dream in bed about Sam and Leila and him in his Cap
outfit standing between some angry brothers and a white cop. In his sleep he’s
mumbling, “I see them! He’s with her again!”
Oh jealousy, thy name is… anywho, on the following page we again
see Cap peeping in on Sam and Leila only this time he’s talking to himself and his
dialogue starts with, “If he’s that close to her… then he couldn’t be with me!” After
Leila splits, Cap and Sam have a showdown which leads to:
“But I’m gonna change all of that!” Sam said. “I’m gonna be
proud, baby… proud to be black… and proud to be me! And it’s all gonna start
right now! Then, “
… the Falcon Fights alone!”
To underscore his point, Sam
steps back into his office from the restroom where he’d been changing into his
costume. Only it’s not his original green and orange get-up, but some new
threads that are red and white. The two may be going their separate ways,
temporarily as it worked out, but still buddies as they slap five just before a
cat busted in to tell the Falcon two pushers have his friend tied up in an
abandoned tenement.
The Falcon leaps out the window, a handy rope nearby to swing on
– as this is before he got his mechanical wings. His sidekick falcon Redwing,
who he has a telepathic link with as well as other birds, flies with him. He
effortlessly shoulders in a door and deals with the two pushers, who happen to
be white though this is Harlem. And even though people don’t recognize him in
his new costume, they embrace him for his bravery and making an effort to clean
up the neighborhood. As he’s hoisted on the shoulders of well-wishers, Steve
wakes up.
“Maybe I’m only dreaming, but I know it all really happened.”
2008 saw the publication of
76, a retro comic book
miniseries set in that year and ably taking up the Wu Tangness of it all. It
was planned as an 8-part effort with two separate stories playing out each
issue, one in New York and the other in Los Angeles B. Clay Moore and Ed Tadem,
writer and artist respectively, gave us kung fu street fighters Jackie Karma
and Marcus King, looking into who was backing the dangerous Gil Gunn and his super-heroin on the East Coast. As things developed, swordswoman Holly Gold, PI
Samantha Jones and the Soul Brigade all lent a hand.
Out west, in “Cool” writer Seth Peck and artist Tigh Walker told
the adventure of Vietnam vet pals Pete Walker and Leon Campbell. In an
interview with Peck posted on Comic Book Resources he noted, “[this] is
the story of two bounty hunters, a stripper, a suitcase full of money, a
sadistic midget, a porn star hit man, crooked cops, geriatric mobsters and L.A.
lowlifes spending 48 hours trying to kill each other.”
Sadly, the groove thing that was
76 only saw five issues
produced. As the real time seventies closed out, Don McGregor and the
aforementioned Marshall Rogers produced
Detectives, Inc.: A Remembrance of
Threatening Green published in 1980 featuring Bob Rainer and Ted Denning. No
kung fu’ing chumps through windows but both men carried a lot of emotional
baggage we learn in the course of their case. The PI duo had an interesting
genesis as the white McGregor (a writer on Black Panther and editor at Marvel
in his career) related creating the pair for him and black artist-writer Alex
Simmons (Blackjack) to play in Super 8 movies McGregor was making. Check out
the trailer here.
To borrow from the 1975 Isley Brothers’ song, these defiant ones
sure knew how to
fight the power.
. He is story editor on
,
a show on FX about crack and the CIA set in 1980s South Central.