It hit me when I was in KB Toys in a nearby mall shopping for kites for my great-nephews and great-nieces. I promised them that BMNB and I would hold a kite-flying picnic for them in a park near our home that they’ve become quite fond of. I saw Transformer kites, Finding Nemo kites, Buzz Lightyear kites, and then when I looked for something a bit girl-friendly, all I found were . . . you guessed it: Barbie kites.
Although many of my great-nieces are bi-racial or multi-racial, none of them are blond with blue eyes. I refuse to buy them Barbie kites.
Which lead me to think: Why aren’t there any black female super heroines? I started asking around, and the only one anyone could think of was Storm from the X-Men. And as my niece pointed out, “She was only black in the movies. In the comic book, she’s mostly gray.”
That’s it. We need our own Black Female Super Heroine. I’ve already put my friend and artist Sheila in Denver to work on drawing her. She will be unequivocally black – with dreads, twists, or locs – and she will be a crime fighter. I won’t give away too much, but she’ll be an everyday thirty-something sister: someone who is single, trying to do the right thing and avoid the wrong men; someone who attends church with her mother and deals with the challenges of aging parents, dysfunctional family members (don’t we all have at least one cousin on lockdown?), and dwindling hopes of having a child in a marital relationship. That is, when she’s not fighting crime with her super heroine powers. Or shopping for shoes. She’s the kind of super heroine who would lay an evildoing woman out and then, standing over her, ask, “Girl, where did you get those shoes? They’re slammin’!” Hey, she’s superhuman, but she’s human, too.
Her name is . . . well, I won’t tell you just yet. But she’ll be coming to a KB Toys near you. You’ll find her in the kite section.
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