WELCOME TO THE REVAMPING
Given the length and popularity of these pieces, I’ve decided to spin “Welcome to the Revamping” off into its own semi-regularly occurring feature. I hope you enjoy this first installment of the all-new, all-different, all separate Revamping.
AMAZING MAN
Amazing Man is the moniker of two characters. Well, three actually, but for our purposes we’ll just focus on Amazing Man II and Amazing Man III. Amazing Man II was a retroactive part of DC continuity. And you know what that means, don’t you? That’s right, he was created by Roy Thomas and he appeared in All-Star Squadron. Ahh, Roy sure did love his World War II era stories, did he not?
Anyway, Amazing Man II was actually Will Everett, a US Olympian, who returned to the United States and found that, given his skin color, his opportunities for employment were quite limited, athletic hero or not. He eventually fell into the janitorial field where he had the strange luck of being assigned to the same building where Ultra Humanite was conducting experiments. One lab accident later and Everett was DC’s Absorbing Man”¦but, you know, good. He fought alongside the All-Star Squadron during the 40’s and years later died of cancer. Also, for a brief time, his powers changed. With one hand, he could magnetically attract objects and with the other, magnetically repel them.
Years later, his grandson, Will Everett III, proved that the apple does not fall far from the tree. He had grandpa’s powers and the additional ability to suck energy out of someone and into himself. Aptly Everett took up the moniker Amazing Man for himself. His career, one that included stints with the Justice League (YAY) and Extreme Justice (oh, sorry), came to an abrupt halt when he was slain by Mist (impersonating a possibly dead Icemaiden) in the infamous Starman #38 that also saw Crimson Fox and Blue Devil killed. Icemaiden was later revealed to simply be elsewhere, Crimson Fox has been converted to a legacy character in Green Lantern, and Blue Devil got better and is now seen monthly in Shadowpact. Amazing Man, however, remains unresurrected and without an heir to take up the mantel. This is an attempt to change all that.
Now, as you may or may not know, James Robinson did not initially set out to kill off all those characters. He really only wanted Crimson Fox (not sure why, but he did) and was told to take a few more along for the ride. However, he left easy escapes for any writer who wanted to circle back and bring back a slain hero. Amazing Man’s death had him shattered while in glass form. Apparently, he had come back from similar experiences in the past.
Be that as it may, I’m not taking that easy a way out. I do need to fill column inches, after all.
No, our Amazing Man is the fourth to bear the name and the third to bear this particular mantel of the name. When we first meet Russell Washington, he is a college student traveling abroad for a semester in France. On a dare, he and a few friends go out to explore the ruins of a museum. The museum in question is, of course, the place that Amazing Man, Crimson Fox, and Blue Devil made their final stands (well temporary final stand in Blue’s case). They stumble around the site, dodging a sentry, looking for memorabilia, generally being mischievous in a bored, unfocused way. On their way off the site, the sentry returns and catches them in his flashlight beam. The trio take off running and Washington stumbles. He lands on pile of glass shards which cut him. As he regains his footing and takes off after his friends, we are aware that he has a few pieces of glass still in him. He shouts something to that effect to his friends and they tell him it’ll get taken care on when they get back to the apartment.
Later, at the apartment, we see Washington looking for the glass and finding nothing. He comments on the weirdness of it to his friends, but they are both too focused on the computer to pay attention to him. One friend says something about hits on Washington’s website having tripled in the past three weeks. Washington rushes past to get a look at what they are talking about, his wounds forgotten.
Flash forward to a few years later (let’s say two, just for hahas). Russell Washington is on top of the world. His website has gone from a fun hobby to a multi-billion dollar industry. He has become one of the first black owners of a professional football franchise and he is certainly the youngest to have ever done so. Essentially, think a young Robert L. Johnson, one of the founders of Black Entertainment Television and current owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. He is a triumph of capitalism, a living example of the American Ideal of upward mobility. But his business accomplishments are not the half of what he can do.
Ever since that night two years ago in France, Washington has been aware of his body changing. At first, it would happen so quickly, he was sure he was imagining it. He’d touch a glass and his arm would briefly go translucent. He’d lean on a wall and he could swear his back felt like brick ever so briefly. Intrigued and confused, Washington looked deeper into the situation and quickly discovered what had happened in that destroyed museum and how closely one of the victims, Amazing Man’s, abilities resembled his own. Knowing this could be no mere coincidence, Washington studied everything he could get his hands on about the Amazing Man legacy and began to practice his own growing abilities. On a whim, he even had a new Amazing Man costume created for him (through a series of untraceable channels) which he has kept locked up in his penthouse, unworn, for months.
Then, one random day, Washington’s personal assistant Eric Callif, was slain in a gun battle between police and gang members. Overcome with grief and feelings of helplessness, Washington lashed out at the gang with his hidden abilities and his heretofore unworn costume.
The result is instant media celebrity. Washington is praised for doing what the police couldn’t and eliminating a dangerous gang from the city. On two fronts, Washington seems to be an unqualified success. But there are cracks.
On as an entrepreneur, he is consistently pointed at as a man who benefits from, but does little to help, the black community. As one of the most successful black businessmen ever, with the ability to reach untold numbers with his website, many feel that he has a responsibility to advocate for social justice and that responsibility should also extend to his recent sports endeavors.
Meanwhile, on the superhero side of things, people are questioning whether simply busting up one gang is any sort of solution. The youths that gravitated toward that group still have several other gangs to join. Adding to the problem is that the environment that produced that gang, and the rest, has gone unchanged. There is still poverty, injustice, prejudice, and poor education opportunities abounding. Others point to the excesses of the police in the situation, claiming that they antagonized the situation in public, leading to the shootout, when they could have exercised restraint and brought in the gang members without the bloodshed. Where, they ask, is Amazing Man’s “justice” for those “cowboys” of the law?
Thus the question becomes for Russell Washington how far do his responsibilities extend because of his race. Can he be just a capitalist, just a costumed do-gooder? Or as a rich, super powered black man in America, does he have a higher calling to answer to?
Please let me know what you think of this week’s revamping by either dropping me a line at parallax2@juno.com or visiting the message board thread (see “Comments” link below). Also, do yourself a favor and check out the two pieces that inspired me to write this revamping in the first place. First, check out Mathan’s “review” of John Stewart Adventures #1. Then, head on over to your library or Amazon and see if you can hunt up a copy of William C Rhoden’s Forty Million Dollar Slaves. It’s a great book and the chapter on Michael Jordan (or any knowledge you might have of the aforementioned Robert L. Johnson and BET) will put you into a pretty good state of mind for what I was going for with Amazing Man.
Thanks again and please do not hesitate to comment.
