With Great Knowledge comes Great Responsibility..

in #comics3 years ago

With Great Knowledge comes Great Responsibility.. Samuel Thomas Wilson, known as the Falcon, was the first African-American superhero in mainstream comic books.The character first appeared in Captain America #117.
Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Gene Colan,he came about, Colan recalled in 2008,
...in the late 1960s [when news of the] Vietnam War and civil rights protests were regular occurrences, and Stan, always wanting to be at the forefront of things, started bringing these headlines into the comics. ... One of the biggest steps we took in this direction came in Captain America. I enjoyed drawing people of every kind. I drew as many different types of people as I could into the scenes I illustrated, and I loved drawing black people. I always found their features interesting and so much of their strength, spirit and wisdom written on their faces. I approached Stan, as I remember, with the idea of introducing an African-American hero and he took to it right away. ... I looked at several African-American magazines, and used them as the basis of inspiration for bringing The Falcon to life.
He was introduced as an unnamed former resident of New York City's Harlem neighborhood, who had adopted a wild falcon he trained and named Redwing (His own name, Sam Wilson, was not given until page five of the following issue). When a group of men on an island "in the tropics" wanted a hunting falcon, Wilson answered the ad, only to discover that the self-dubbed "Exiles" were former Nazis in league with the supervillain the Red Skull. He escaped, but remained on the island to organize the natives to confront the Exiles, who had turned them into serfs. At the urging of Steve Rogers, whom he later learned was Captain America, Wilson took on the costumed identity of the Falcon and underwent training with Rogers in order to better inspire the villagers and lead the fight.
image.png

Sort:  

I hadn't seen that origin story. Cool that he started so early. I've seen some old Captain America featuring black characters, so they were ahead of other parts of society.

Yeah it was interesting because I feel like Marvel was always trying to be somewhat ahead of the curve. I think the original falcon was a weird character but I love the team up with Cap, my personal favorite and the new falcon is great.