America 1982-Chapter 361 - 34: Please, Spare Tommy
Wolfe Tuck, President of SBG’s Black channel, didn’t need a doctor to measure his blood pressure; he knew it was definitely at an extremely high level at that moment.
His wife and daughter were currently sitting on the couch, watching BT Television’s sitcom "How to Marry a Millionaire" on the TV and occasionally letting out giggles.
He knew that this sitcom starring three young Black girls was funny, but he just couldn’t bring himself to join his wife and daughter in laughter.
After Tommy had left with his team, the temporary team assembled by BT Television destroyed Tommy’s and his hard work, creating vulgar programs filled with Black stereotypes and relying on racial opposition to pander to the lower class Black audience.
He believed that this was definitely not Tommy’s idea because that young man had discussed with him countless times into the late night how BT Television could better demonstrate their humanitarian concern for the lower class Black community, and they had together designed many great program ideas.
But now, everything had changed.
Without needing to look at the data, Wolfe vividly remembered, BT Television’s 6:30 pm news program was once named "Every Day", and he and Tommy had envisioned an anchor brimming with energy and a refreshing smile, a Black woman designed to stand out from the other networks’ uniformly serious male anchors. She was to sharply comment on the news in the studio and casually conduct street interviews in Los Angeles, interacting with viewers.
This image was meant to reflect the passionate, optimistic racial traits of Black people and to make the anchor seem more authentic and vivid than the sharp but rigidly arrogant white anchors, making her more relatable.
This was the original vision for BT Television’s news program as Tommy had told him.
But what was it now? "Today’s Black News," a news show with a fat Black anchor who could drop dead at any moment, spouting profanity and incessantly feeding the Black viewers in front of the TV with conspiracy theories about how whites are trying to persecute Black people, how they are trying to re-enslave them, claiming that all whites in the United States Government are Ku Klux Klan members. Listening to this Kevin Cedric spout such nonsense, pandering for attention and thinking he’s being funny, he even said on TV that his boss Tommy could very well be a hidden Ku Klux Klan member...
BT Television’s initial hope to attract Black viewers was true, but the issue was that, eventually, BT Television would need to expand its audience. With such crappy news programs on display, how could they possibly expect white viewers to want to watch BT Television?
What should those white viewers watch? A Black man on TV mysteriously saying, "Hey, fellas, I’ve got a top-secret message—whites are preparing a large-scale secret assassination of Black people?"
Wolfe didn’t know what kind of damn expression the whites would have, but at that moment, if it were possible, he wished someone would assassinate that moron Black anchor, Kevin Cedric.
Following this was the cartoon "Black Panther: Jungle Action." Adapting this superhero comic into a cartoon was something Wolfe and Tommy completely agreed on in one of their seamless discussions, both thinking of adapting superhero comics at the same time.
Wolfe hoped that Black children could have a well-known superhero of the same skin color to bolster their racial confidence, while Tommy’s idea was more direct—he thought that Black children would enjoy cosplaying as a well-known superhero that shared their skin color, instead of having to make do with cosplaying as white heroes like Superman or Spider-Man and then receiving snide remarks from their white peers.
"Gangster: Jungle Action," this comic was personally selected by Wolfe. The comic was a sales flop when it was released in the seventies, but it was far superior to other white superhero comics of the time because Marvel, wanting to show support for the Black civil rights movement, had three of its top editors specially created it.
Poor sales were because many Black children couldn’t afford to buy comics, and whites simply ignored stories about Black superheroes.
Although the comic won awards and had great acclaim within the industry, it didn’t last long, ending early. In Wolfe’s view, this comic, produced with the dedication of three top white Marvel editors, could even be read like a serious novel, with rich content trying to explore the roots of racial conflicts, telling both sides that they are the same humans, there’s no need for bloody violence, and that coexistence is entirely possible.
Black Panther, the Black superhero, although as cool as those white superheroes, didn’t resort to simple violence and killing to solve problems. In designing Black Panther for the comic, Marvel referenced the images of several Black social activists, headed by Martin Luther King, making Black Panther’s dialogue more profound.
Wolfe once joked with Tommy that if it were adapted into a cartoon, it would be fully qualified to compete for that year’s Emmy Award for Best Cartoon Series.
But now, he had just watched the first episode of the premiere. This beloved comic of his, this profound visual novel, was successfully turned into crap by BT Television. Watching the first episode, Wolfe knew that the cartoon had lost its depth, instead focusing on scenes that were only briefly mentioned in the comics.
