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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
BLACKJACK #1 COMIC BOOK!
RARE AND OUT OF PRINT.
Detailing the saga of the African American Hero introduced in the nineties!
Published by Dark Angel Productions in 1996!
Blackjack is Aaron Day, the son of a mercenary who died in 1923 at the hands of the Cobra, a charismatic Middle Eastern cult leader and rebel warrior. Sworn to avenge the deaths of his parents and his uncle, Blackjack makes the pursuit of the Cobra his life’s work in this well-written and gorgeously illustrated series from Alex Simmons and Joe Bennett (The Amazing Spider-Man). A nice mix of elements that bring to mind such high-adventure concepts as 1930s movie serials, Milton Caniff’s “Terry and the Pirates,” Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and even Randy Reynaldo’s Rob Hanes. Blackjack is also notable for its focus on an African-American hero in a genre dominated by white protagonists.
Excerpt of an interview with creator Alex Simmons...
"So how about a black adventurer, ‘cause then you can see the 30’s and 40’s from that perspective, and it would make the stories more interesting for me to write. And then the more I worked on the character of Aaron Day, the history and his origin and all of that, the more I would do some research to make sure I wasn’t going too far afield of reality. I mean, it was certainly going to be a fictional character, but what would support this?
By the time I finished the character, I’d discovered that there had been, for lack of a better word, an adventurer, known as a Black Sparrow. His real name was Eugene Bullard. As a matter of fact, it’s in the back of this. [Reaches for my copy of Blackjack: Blood & Honor and turns to the back.] I discovered him after I had created the character and I went, my god. So not only did I believe it was possible, but now I’m seeing that somebody had some adventures like this. He flew in World War One for the French, and he’s an American. He escaped from the United States because he got tired of the KKK visiting his house. And he was a young lad, not even 14 when he took off from Mississippi, and he worked his way to the coastline, he stowed away on a German freighter and he dropped in Europe. He worked his way across Europe, doing all kinds of odd jobs including boxing and things like that, until he wound up in France during the first World War, and got himself in the first Air Force. And it goes on from there, the different things he was involved in and the people he knew [like] Josephine Baker and a number of the people of that Renaissance period. But I thought, this is reality, and I did my fictional character, and now I feel even better about having created Aaron Day, because now I am gonna be able to bring people’s attention to folks that really did those things."
THIS ITEM WAS NEVER SOLD IN ANY MASS MARKET RETAIL OUTLET AS WAS ONLY AVAILABLE IN COMIC BOOK SPECIALTY STORES.
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