Black Uncles' voice & Young Justice Season Three: Outsiders

I love watching DC Expanded Universe's (aka DCEU) Young Justice series. I remember when I first saw the commericals announcing the series first aired on Cartoon Network back in 2010, and I was a little perplexed when I saw the show. I had no idea who most of the characters were except for Robin the Boy Wonder, Kid Flash, and Speedy (Green Arrow's sidekick). I hadn't kept up with DC's comic book characters over the years since "The Death of Superman" was published in 1992. Before then, I read "Batman: A Death In The Family" in 1988 because I couldn't believe that the staff at DC comics had actually killed off Robin, who's real name (just in case you didn't know) Richard "Dick" John Grayson. And that was the only comic book I read until "Death of Superman"

What I didn't know about "Death In The Family" back then was Dick had been fired by Bruce Wayne, and the teenager who replaced him, Jason Todd, was the unfortunate Robin who was eventually killed by the Joker. I had to be filled in about the various plots and back stories of what had happened before the event by the various cashiers and managers of the comic book stores I frequented. They were great, and readily engaged in task of getting me up to date on what happen happening in the past two decades since I stopped reading comics.*

I was only slightly relieved that this was a different Robin. But I was stilled shocked by the content of the comic. Pretty alarming and gruesome stuff to see for a woman who had kept secret her passion for reading superhero comic books ever since she was a teenager back in the 70s. There was a Comics Code Authority process in place that censored any graphic content back then, like cussing, explicit depictions of violence, alcohol or drug consumption, and of course, any specific references to, or depictions of sex, no matter how modest it was. Dennis The Menace could be shown in daily comic strips getting a bare butt spanking from his father, but no graphically bloody fights appeared wthin the of the pages of the superhero comic books. Or even worse, a man and a woman couldn't be shown passionately getting ready to do the "wild thing"in the pages of any superhero comic book. Restrictions had become more relaxed since 1954, which was when the Comics Code Authority was established, but it's been mostly abandoned in favor of voluntary "in house" standards ever since.  And after the cultural shifts of the 60s and 70s, some of those standards have been tossed out completely, or relaxed enough to hint at, and lead the reader's imagination to visualize that sex is eventually going to take place like this: Nightwing and Kori'ander.

"Zoocat", "weirdo" "dufus"  were only some of the humiliating names many teenagers called others kids who were clueless enough to bring comic books to school and read them during lunch, or even in class. After seeing what happened to the "pocket protector/high water pants" group, I yielded to that desperate urge to be accepted by my peers. I stopped reading comics. However, I occasionally snuck a few peeks at some of them that were on the display racks in grocery stores. I thumbed through them quickly while glancing around to see if anyone I knew was looking at me. As far as I know, one from my high school ever saw me. If they did, they either wrote it off as something to do while grocery shopping with my parents, or I was passing time waiting for my turn at the cashier's to come up.

So there I was in 2010, placed on bed rest at home (for the most part) as I recovered from a tibilial ligament repair surgery. When I wasn't reading a book, or staring out of my bedroom window feeling jealous of the people who could get up and walk anywhere they wanted, I watched a LOT of television. Young Justice, along with Ghost In The Shell and Cowboy Bebop, were the shows I watched the most. Even though I wasn't up to date on what had been going on with the DC heroes' sidekicks since I stopped reading comic books, I was  drawn into those shows by the amazing work of the writers and artists did. I even set up cable t.v. reminders to let me know when rerun episodes was going to air, even if I'd seen before. I always saw other details that I had missed before. That's still the case right now with all three of those shows, whenever I watch them again. There's always something else that escaped my notice before, but ties into the progression of events taking place over the shows' seasons. It's like reading a very engrossing, detailed book, like a Toni Morrison novel. I get to experience yet another "first time" view.

There is one scene (of many) from Young Justice Season 3: The Outsiders that makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it, even though I don't think was intended to be funny. It involves Superboy (Conner Kent, not Clark) who is voiced by Nolan North, is walking with Black Lightning (voiced by the incredibly talented voice actor Khary Payton) through a strange looking laboratory filled with large, human sized glass pods hanging from ceiling. Superboy makes a deep, growling type of noise, and Black Lightning gives him a "What the..." look. He asks Conner, "Did you just GROWL?" and I crack up literally every single time! Why? Well, Black Lightning sounds like just a lot of Black uncles I've known. That takes a little bit of exlanation of some aspects of African American culture that relate to what I call, "The Black Aunties and Uncles Phenomenon".

Many African American families have "aunts" and "uncles" who aren't actually related to them. They are usually close friends with your parents who will snitch on you in hot instant if they see you out and about with your friends at the wrong place (like at a convenience store trying to buy a bottle of wine), or at the wrong time, which is anytime after 12 am. ("Girl, what you doin' out here so late? Do your parents know you're runnin' around out here? You betta take yo'self back home!" They mean well, but when you're a teenager driving around in your own car, in which you and your friends pitched in to put gas in the tank so you can drive around to find a house party, you don't appreciate that kind unsolicited commentary from those uncles.

The reason why it was intrusively annoying for me was that those "uncles" in particular, loved to come over to the family home on week nights after work, or on weekends during the day AND at night to watch whatever sport is on t.v. Football, basketball, baseball, boxing, track and field...it didn't matter. They all converged in the Shortt Family home, and made themselves irritatingly comfortable. They always announced  their presence VERY LOUDLY as soon as I answered the door, walking in while saying something like, "Hey, Angie, how's school? You betta be gettin' straight As so you can get on them scholarships!" Or something else that they may or may not have known would be exasperating to a teenager. Then my father usually came out of the den to greet whoever it was. "Hey, man, I thought I heard your loud ass country voice! Come on back to the den; let me fix you a drink!" 

At that point, I usually retreated to my bedroom, or got in my car to go anywhere else but there. It's not that I hated the "uncles". They were loud, drank too much, ate too much ("Who ate all the crab and shrimp out of the gumbo?!!!"), passed out from drinking too much, and worst of all, "blew up" the bathroom with the most obnoxiously NASTY smells that even spraying Lysol deordorizing spray and turning on the ceiling fan couldn't handle that much stench. But what bothered us the most of all was that my siblings and I felt like they were ALWAYS at OUR house! They had wives, families...why couldn't they spend time with them and give us a break?  There were probably reasons for that, but our parents weren't going to tell us anything like that. Besides, that was grown folks stuff. We had no business asking about grown folks and their personal business.

Luckily, the uncles didn't eat up all of our food because that was impossible. Our parents, who grew up during the Great Depression, were determined that their children would never feel hunger the way they did. They escaped poverty and segregation by enlisting in the United States Air, which is where they met each other. One of lasting effects of growing up in that kind of environment was that they felt they had to provide a lot of the basics for their three children FIRST, and whatever they had leftover was available to share with their friends. I didn't realize that, and my sister and brother   They shopped for groceries at either McClellan or Mather Air Force Base commissary every two weeks, whether we ate the food from the previous weeks or not.  They had a large refrigerator and numerous cabinets that were always filled with all kinds of canned soup, cereal, and large quantities of snack food, along with two freezers full of frozen food that were out in the garage. I don't know what was going on in those uncles' homes, but they seemed to think the Shortt family house was a better place to eat and drink hard alcohol than there, or even Denny's or Hometown Buffett.

So, what does all of this have to do with season 3 of Young Justice? Well, I really believe that Khary Payton has captured the voice of some of those uncles. Not the annoying uncles, but the ones who did look out for us kids. Even if they did eat most of the shrimp and crab out of the gumbo!

*I feel a bit of sorrow/nostalgia for the large numbers of comic book shops that have close over the years due to online sales of comic books. I still visit a couple of them every now and then, but I've found that a few of the store clerks weren't so eager to answer my questions about storylines and characters as others were in the past. Oh, well, that's the way life is in this technology based economy. I'm not disparaging online comic book sales because they're pretty convenient. But I do miss those conversations!