This is true, but it’s still nice to see it reflected in the larger media.
**Al Simmons ** aka **Spawn ** was black…and I’ve actually met the real Al Simmons, a regular guy that Todd McFarlane went to college with at Eastern Washington State who became the basis of the Spawn character.
Cool beans. Was the real Al Simmons black as well?
Michael Jai White, the actor who played Spawn, also did parts in Universal Soldier IV, and voiced the characters of Osebo in Static Shock, and Doomsday in Justice League Unlimited.
Static started as a comic in DC’s Milestone line, most of the creators, and characters from which were black. Milestone folded circa 1994, but I think that’s close enough to the OP’s cutoff point to be worth mentioning. The aforementioned Dwayne McDuffie was part of the Milestone staff. (IIRC, Static was his baby.)
Other black superheroes that I don’t see mentioned yet:
Victor Stone, Cyborg of the Teen Titans. Mal Duncan, formerly Herald of the Teen Titans, now Vox of the Doom Patrol. Mal’s wife, Karen Beecher, AKA, Bumblebee, also formerly of the Titans, now with the Doom Patrol. (Random Titans trivia…apparently when all he had for her was a name, Marv Wolfman considered making Raven black, then decided against it as too stereotypical. He made Cyborg the new team’s black character instead.)
The current holder of the name Mr Terriffic, Michael Holt, is black.
As is the current Guardian. (I can’t remember his name.)
And the current Firestorm - or, at least half of him. (The other half is currently a white woman.) (I also can’t remember his name. >_< )
One of the two Mister Miracles, Shilo Norman.
John Henry Irons, AKA Steel, one of the replacement Supermen after his death, and the only one still active, right now.
Black Lightning (Jefferson Pierce), and his daughter Thunder (Anissa) have both been active within the time period - he, mostly, in a role in Luthor’s government. I don’t know if he’s still in government.
Monica Rambeau, formerly Captain Marvel, then Photon, now simply Monica of Nextwave.
The Ultimate versions of Falcon and Misty Knight play largish roles in Ultimate Extinction. (I don’t read many 616 Marvel books, so I don’t know if their main-continuity versions are even still alive.) And, of course, Ultimate Nick Fury is modeled on Samuel L Jackson.
There are plenty of white superheroes with black partners. Mantis was the first case I know of a black hero with a white sidekick.
Re Anansi
He appeared twice- once when Virgil and family visit Africa, and once when the golden spider that gives him his powers is part of a museum exhibit in Dakota city.
Btw
I think you’re being too specific. It would be more accurate to say
Stalker is ruled by his passions. J’onnz is otherworldly and feel emotions in a way humans wouldn’t understand. Anansi is a friendly everyday guy. That’s talent.
Tengu I mentioned Static because of the animated series. I did forget Cyborg. But, if we begin listing every black comic character active at present, the thread will devolve to nothing but that list.
Back To The OP
Teuk of Sg 1 is black. I don’t know whether his ancestors were from Africa or if he’s from a planet where human life evolved independently.
I think you’re absolutely right for correcting me in my conditional praise.
Of course, I’m more in awe of Phil LaMarr’s vocal virtuosity, too.
Tengu, thanks for updating the active black superheroes list.
Askia, can I go a little further into the past (1990), and nominate Michael F. Flynn’s heroine from In the Country of the Blind? Sarah Beaumont is a black female, and is really, really cool. I don’t want her missing out on the recognition.
More recently: Eric Flint’s 163X books have a black, former gang member, surgeon and his daughter as very important characters: James and Sharon Nichols.
Michael Dorn’s Worf, and Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan have appeared in Trek movies released after 1996, I think. Tim Russ played Tuvok on ST: Voyager. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had an appearance as a gladiator in Voyager.
But that’s a true minority character! I refer you to Kermit’s song regarding the sort of discrimination they face.
No love for Frozone? Then there’s Michael Clarke Duncan, who made an excellent Kingpin - and for whom they they changed the character from white to black - in the otherwise ordinary Daredevil.
–Aside – there was an interview with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles during the height of the movie craze. The foam rubber suited actors were being interviewed on the Today Show by Katie Couric when one of them – Donatello? Michaelangelo? – earnestly started going on about how their roles will lift the barriers of discrimination for reptillain and amphibious actors everywhere. Then the other Mutant Turtles started chiming in, “Yup.” “Uh-huh.” “That’s right.” “Godzilla never got an Oscar.” “That’s right! Godzilla never got an Oscar.” “GODZILLA NEVER GOT AN OSCAR!”
Laughed my ass off, man. Beautiful satire. 
We’ve talked mostly about sci-fi and superheroes, but what about fantasy and horror?
You can’t have a black character in a horror / slasher movie without them getting killed off. I even wrote a law about it. Who wants to start us off with some more *recent * examples?
Glad to do it…any excuse to stretch the ol’ geekmuscles.
Tough, I missed Steel IV - John Henry Iron’s neice, Natasha, who isn’t currently active, but was only very recently ‘grounded’ by her uncle. (I’m not really familiar with her, having only seen her a half dozen times.)
Steve Urkel–total dweeb and MAD SCIENTIST! “Family Matters” took a turn for the weird as Steve’s experiments got more and more unlikely. He eventually copied himself and turned the copy into his cool alter-ego, Stephon Urquel. Totally bizarre, but that was my absolute favorite show when I was younger.
Do you mean Teal’C from Stargate SG1? (Played by Christopher Judge.) I’ve never been sure about the status of the Jaffa myself, whether or not they are the descendants of abducted humans modified to serve both as hosts for Goa’u’ld larvae and as warriors, or if they are a seperate species which has evolved along human racial lines independantly. I lean toward the first hypothesis because the second is kind of silly, though it’s not much sillier than Aliens looking at all like humans in the first place.
Laurence Fishburne’s spaceship captain in Event Horizon, an interesting SF/horror idea that sadly turns into a mundane slasher-in-space flick: if I recall correctly, though, Fishburne’s character does make it through OK.
They are. Cite.
On the other hand, they’ve been genetically engineered so that they can’t survive past a certain age without a symbiote, so it’s moderately questionable whether they still count as human.
Still, I’d say Teal’c counts for this thread, whether Jaffa are human or otherwise, since he would be treated as a black man by non-SGC personel he encountered. He certainly counts if Tuvok, who’s definitely not human does.
From the ongoing Honor Harrington series, we have the Royal House of Manticore, who are by our standards more-or-less black. A scholar points out that the ancient ( modern for us ) concept of “race” is nonsense anyway. He also points out that their looks would’ve gotten them enslaved anyway.
There’s also Thandi Palane, descendent of Bantu racists, who has African features and is a near-albino.
In the movie Cube, a group of diverse Americans wake up and find themselves in a large scale cube-shaped death-trap of moveable rooms. Trapped in a horrible environ, the group slowly finds out it has a horror within, too – the treacherous cop Quentin, played by Maurice Dean Wint.
Looking up Maurice’s profile on IMDB.com, I’m astounded and pleased to see he has a long history of character roles in projects in science fiction, horror and fantasy in TV, animation and video games.
The late Octavia Bulter, whom I mentioned in the OP, had a long and honored history writing sci-fi and speculative fiction, winning numerous genre awards including the Nebula and was a regular teacher at Clarion Writer’s Workshop and Clarion West. Since 1996 she’d written *The Parable of the Talents * and The Parable of the Sower and was unsuccessful in completing a third book, The Parable of the Trickster, suffering writer’s block for many years. (I’d still love to read anything she wrote published posthumonously, a la Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth.) Butler shifted creative focus a couple years ago and wrote Fledgling, a vampire novel. (I haven’t read it yet.)