BET Joins the Black Panther Party
Although I’m white and wasn’t allowed to read the Black Panther comics, I always liked him as a superhero?I mean, he was an African king who was smart and a badass and took care of Africa and supervillains and joined the Avengers and stuff, unlike The Phantom, who just kind of patronizingly wandered around Africa with no real powers other than being in charge of the continent because of his sense of manifest destiny. Anyways, I think it’s super cool that BET has announced that it’s going to have a Black Panther cartoon premiering in early 2009. One can only hope he tussles with racist superheroes like the Supremacists (why don’t white superheroes ever fight white racist superheroes? Weird).
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.