Bleeding Cool reports that the USA’s foremost black intellectual, Ta-Nehisi Coates, will be writing Captain America for Marvel:
Last July, Bleeding Cool heard the word that Ta-Nehisi Coates would be the new writer on the Captain America ongoing comic book. Same with Nick Spencer on Amazing Spider-Man. Though we only learnt that Ryan Ottley would be joining him as an artist in January.
None of these stories have been confirmed. None of them were in the Marvel May solicits. And none were mentioned by Marvel at ComicsPRO today.
However, I get the nod that we might be hearing more about Coates writing Captain America next week…. An American author, journalist, comic book writer, and educator, Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic, where he writes about cultural, social and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans. It is likely this aspect that will inform much of the coverage when the news goes official.
For Coates, it might be just one more notch. He’s written for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, O, and other publications. In 2008 he published a memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and Unlikely Road to Manhood. His second book, Between the World and Me, was released in July 2015. It won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and was a nominee for the Phi Beta Kappa 2016 Book Awards. He was the recipient of a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2015. And he has been the writer of the Black Panther series for Marvel Comics drawn by Brian Stelfreeze for two years now.
But the man who wrote The Case for Reparations writing Captain America could make for a very interesting comic book indeed.
Very interesting is one way of putting it. Very converged is another. I, for one, very much look forward to learning more about Captain America’s self-flagellating voyage into the discovery of his own internalized racism and his eventual retirement in favor of a black man who, completely coincidentally, looks very much like an idealized Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I love the smell of my competitor’s convergence in the morning!