Aaron at Uppity-Negro missed a dinner date declares himself the suckiest suckass in the history of sucking. Having known some suckers that truly excel in sucking, some whose suckage skill are an inspiration to the fine engineers at Hoover Vacuums and make high-class hookers green with envy, I can't say I agree.

Besides, he linked to an interesting email panel discussion on why "Black Books" (being comic books) don't sell.Some very interesting answers. Bloggers should appreciate the snark factor in Kyle J. Baker's answer:

And I found Alan Grant's answer rather disappointing:

The first paragraph is just bullshit, end of story. And as for "editorial profligacy," well, if that means folks didn't care for the most powerful team in the Milestone universe being gang-bangers I'd agree. That's the reason I guessed at myself. Grant has been around long enough to just ask the creators, or even the editorial board at DC Comics, if he were interested.

Many of the other folks referred to racism as being involved in one way or another…Craig Lemon made an excellent observation:

And as Professor William H. Foster III noted:

But I remember the Milestone line. Every Black kid on Staten Island was after them. I have the entire run, including the DC crossover, in storage. Truth, though, there is a problem in that the image of an extraordinarily powerful Alpha Black person is not something many non-Black folks are interested in reading about. That has to be said.

And the panel noted the lack of Black creators as well. The best example of the problem this creates is the last Power Man series I read. I'm pulling this from memory, so I don't remember the writers involved (something I tended not to pay that much attention to, actually) but I do remember the impact it had on me. I bought the first issue with low expectations. I realized the writer was Black by the dialog…Power Man was pounding on a series of flunkies and said something like, "Step on up, I got something for ya, boyee…" and that "boyee" was like, proper ebonics. They changed the writer a couple of issues in, and at one point Power Man said "All you boyees sumpinsumpinsumpin" and he referred to everyone as "boyee" like it was the only piece of Black slang the writer knew.

Aw, shit. Went straight downhill from there.

And then there was Icon, who in is secret identity was slightly to the right of Rush Limbaugh. In one issue, after finding out his sidekick (who was the person the book was really about) was pregnant, pulled baby-daddy aside for a heart to heart.

Any really righteous person of any race could have written Icon's dialog…but few non-Black people would know that.

This is the real problem with Black characters. The way the industry moves writers from book to book it's just not possible to have a consistently Black character (Christopher Priest's Black Panther being a real exception).