Disney+ Voices Celebrates Black Authorship in Superhero Narratives

The latest installment of “Disney+ Voices” features Marvel Entertainment comic book writers Evan Narcisse and Tochi Onyebuchi, who discuss the expansion of Black narratives in the Marvel Super Hero universe.

  • Narcisse is best known for his “Rise of the Black Panther” series, which began in 2018, while Tochi Onyebuchi is currently writing “Captain America: Symbol of Truth.”
  • Onyebuchi discusses Sam Wilson taking on a much bigger role in the Marvel Universe in recent years:
    • “There’s an incredible richness that you get in having a Black man, having a Black superhero assume the role of Captain America, particularly given the state of America. There’s this temptation to do this sort of throat clearing in the beginning, right? And we’ve seen this in previous instances of Sam holding the shield, which is to address the question of racism that he’ll face domestically, the #NotMyCaptain America folks. And I wanted to ski right past that, because in my mind, Sam Wilson’s not going to put down the shield because some edgelord’s like, don’t think that a Black man, like, he’s Captain America.”
  • Narcisse talks a bit about what drew him to Black Panther as a fan long before writing his story:
    • “One of the reasons I loved him was because he gave me such strong immigrant vibes. Even as a member of a superhero team, yo know, you’re the ruler of a country, you come to another country and all of a sudden you’re like ‘wait, I don’t how things work here exactly, kind of wishing  I was back home.’ As a child of immigrants myself, I knew what that was like.”
  • Check out the full conversation in the video above.

  • You can check out Narcisse’s “Rise of the Black Panther” here and Onyebuchi’s “Captain America: Symbol of Truth” here.
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