Nebula Awards Showcase 54 Page 2
by Brandon O’Brien
Superhero origin films tend to have painfully similar beats. We catch their moments of everyday normalcy, watch them struggle with some personal ideal that tells us who they are and what they don’t know about themselves yet, we witness the personal tragedy that shapes how they view the value and fragility of life, we watch them gain their powers through pain or happenstance or birth or often all of the above. And then it’s time for the business, yeah? We’ve seen this formula so often that we can count the beads falling from Martha Wayne’s neck.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse takes that formula and makes it its theme.
Many of the reasons that Into the Spider-Verse is not just another superhero movie are tied to its visual commentary on that formula. Its lead, rebellious but conflicted Miles Morales, is in his own way just as genre-savvy as we are—after all, when the movie starts, New York City already has a friendly neighbourhood Spidey. While Miles has hang-ups about school, clashes with his father’s ideology, and struggles to figure out who he wants to be, there is already a hero in his world. Peter Parker is even the first voice we hear, literally telling the audience that his origin story has already happened, as if to reassure us that the business end of this story is already underway.
And it is already underway when Miles’ first defining tragedy is watching his neighbourhood’s most affable and resilient hero die at the hands of the villain—mere moments after being told to his face that he too has potential to be a hero, no less.
Into the Spider-Verse’s most interesting innovation is that, where other stories of its kind are about the lead having no path to discovering their own heroism, Miles already has a roadmap to it. In fact, he has several, from the hyper-intense and brooding Spider-Man Noir to the impossibly comical Spider-Pig, each of them with more history behind the mask than him. On the audience end, that sends a very interesting signal: we already know the core beats of this narrative, but this time we’re here to see it through the lens of a young Afro-Latino boy already struggling under the weight of the expectations of others.
The framing device of exposing the protagonist to so many other potential versions of his own heroism reveals a lot about the superhero genre, particularly the origin story’s apparent fascination with sorrow. When we meet the other universes’ Spider-People, they quickly move past their own tragedies just so they can get to the good stuff. Even when we do watch Miles suffer losses, the film positions it more as an opportunity to confront his decisions than just motivational suffering. Pain isn’t the thing that turns these people into heroes. Far more often, the ‘great responsibility’ that the well-known catchphrase doesn’t refer to the literal power they possess, but the responsibility of their own decisions—from what they do when their parents aren’t looking, to how they respond to minor setbacks, even to whether their shoes are tied.
The visual storytelling of Into the Spider-Verse also has a lot to say about its own medium and its origins. It’s a very visually arresting film, all the way down to what the distinct character designs imply about how each character’s world diverges. But it’s also a movie that cares a lot about Spider-Man’s comic book origins and the format of the animated movie, arguing with its style that these things are just as much powerful and moving visual art as they are delightful pulp fare. Often the film gives way entirely to the comic format, having important action take place across forced panels, evoking written sound effects to emphasise important sounds, and even adding Ben Day dots to the jarring effects of the film’s reality warping external conflict. All of these elements add another layer of observation to the medium itself, to the capacity of various tonally different styles of animation to convey dramatic meaning. In this one film, the heightened facial expressions of Japanese anime and the monochrome contrasts that evoke film noir are considered equally valid, no more or less powerful than any other counterpart.
What I find particularly striking is that Into the Spider-Verse is very good at internalising fandom’s relationship to the superhero genre, and to Spider-Man as a hero in particular. The best parts of the movie each have something to say about why we rely on superhero narratives as modern mythos. In particular, one of the reasons I think a lot of people found themselves relating so heavily to Miles Morales, even after mild pushback in the comics sphere about whether he would or could ever ‘replace’ Peter Parker, is because he has the same resource that we do for gaining perspective and encouragement in challenging times: the experience of looking up to a hero who stands for the best that we could become.
It matters even more because it’s Miles Morales in particular, an Afro-Latino teen from Brooklyn struggling to find his own place in the world on his own terms. Starting this superhero story from a Black perspective first and foremost offers so much to young fans of colour who not only get to see themselves as one of Marvel’s most iconic characters, but get to be seen as more complex than a monolith of urban blackness, and to be told that their own experiences and decisions matter.
When Miles says “You can wear the mask,” he isn’t just saying that you can strive for the power and responsibility of a hero. He’s saying that the ways in which we’ve learned these things as a fandom is valid. He’s saying using these stories as a roadmap to our own self-discovery is valid. He’s saying that we are not defined as a generation by the calamities we’ve suffered, but by the choices we make to overcome them, even and especially when those choices are shaped by the wisdom of those around us and before us. What could speak more deeply to an uncertain future full of infinite possibilities and heavy expectations than this?
I reckon this is why Into the Spider-Verse is the superhero origin story of our generation: because it promises us, in our own ways, that we have great power, and great responsibility, too.
The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington
by Phenderson Djèlí Clark
“By Cash pd Negroes for 9 Teeth on Acct of Dr. Lemoire” –Lund Washington, Mount Vernon plantation, Account Book dated 1784.
The first Negro tooth purchased for George Washington came from a blacksmith, who died that very year at Mount Vernon of the flux. The art of the blacksmith had been in his blood—passed down from ancestral spirits who had come seeking their descendants across the sea. Back in what the elder slaves called Africy, he had heard, blacksmiths were revered men who drew iron from the earth and worked it with fire and magic: crafting spears so wondrous they could pierce the sky and swords with beauty enough to rend mountains. Here, in this Colony of Virginia, he had been set to shape crueler things: collars to fasten about bowed necks, shackles to ensnare tired limbs, and muzzles to silence men like beasts. But blacksmiths know the secret language of iron, and he beseeched his creations to bind the spirits of their wielders—as surely as they bound flesh. For the blacksmith understood what masters had chosen to forget: when you make a man or woman a slave you enslave yourself in turn. And the souls of those who made thralls of others would never know rest—in this life, or the next.
When he wore that tooth, George Washington complained of hearing the heavy fall of a hammer on an anvil day and night. He ordered all iron making stopped at Mount Vernon. But the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer rang out in his head all the same.
• • •
The second Negro tooth belonging to George Washington came from a slave from the Kingdom of Ibani, what the English with their inarticulate tongues call Bonny Land, and (much to his annoyance) hence him, a Bonny man. The Bonny man journeyed from Africa on a ship called the Jesus, which, as he understood, was named for an ancient sorcerer who defied death. Unlike the other slaves bound on that ship who came from the hinterlands beyond his kingdom, he knew the fate that awaited him—though he would never know what law or sacred edict he had broken that sent him to this fate. He found himself in that fetid hull chained beside a merman, with scales that sparkled like green jewels and eyes as round as black coins. The Bonny man had seen mermen before out among the waves, and stories
said some of them swam into rivers to find wives among local fisher women. But he hadn’t known the whites made slaves of them too. As he would later learn, mermen were prized by thaumturgical inclined aristocrats who dressed them in fine livery to display to guests; most, however, were destined for Spanish holdings, where they were forced to dive for giant pearls off the shores of New Granada. The two survived the horrors of the passage by relying on each other. The Bonny man shared tales of his kingdom, of his wife and children and family, forever lost. The merman in turn told of his underwater home, of its queen and many curiosities. He also taught the Bonny man a song: a plea to old and terrible things that dwelled in the deep, dark, hidden parts of the sea—great beings with gaping mouths that opened up whirlpools or tentacles that could drag ships beneath the depths. They would one day rise to wreak vengeance, he promised, for all those who had been chained to suffer in these floating coffins. The Bonny man never saw the merman after they made land on the English isle of Barbados. But he carried the song with him, as far as the Colony of Virginia, and on the Mount Vernon plantation, he sang it as he looked across fields of wheat to an ocean he couldn’t see—and waited.
When George Washington wore the Bonny man’s tooth, he found himself humming an unknown song, that sounded (strange to his thinking) like the tongue of the savage mermen. And in the dark hidden parts of the sea, old and terrible things, stirred.
• • •
The third Negro tooth of George Washington was bought from a slave who later ran from Mount Vernon, of which an account was posted in the Virginia Gazette in 1785:
Advertiſement: Runaway from the plantation of the Subſcriber, in Fairfax County, fome Time in October laſt, on All-Hallows Eve, a Mulatto Fellow, 5 Feet 8 Inches high of Tawney Complexion named Tom, about 25 Years of Age, miſſing a front tooth. He is ſenſible for a Slave and ſelf-taught in foul necromancy. He lived for ſome Years previous as a ſervant at a ſchool of learned ſorcery near Williamsburg, and was removed on Account of inciting the dead ſlaves there to riſe up in inſurrection. It is ſuppoſed he returned to the ſchool to raiſe up a young Negro Wench, named Anne, a former ſervant who died of the pox and was buried on the campus grounds, his Siſter. He ſold away a tooth and with that ſmall money was able to purchase a ſpell used to call upon powers potent on All-Hallows Eve to ſpirit themſelves away to parts now unknown. Whoever will ſecure the ſaid Tom, living, and Anne, dead, ſo that they be delivered to the plantation of the Subſcriber in Fairfax County aforefaid, ſhall have Twenty Shillings Reward, besides what the Law allows.
To George Washington’s frustration, Tom’s tooth frequently fell out of his dentures, no matter how he tried to secure it. Most bizarre of all, he would find it often in the unlikeliest of places—as if the vexsome thing was deliberately concealing itself. Then one day the tooth was gone altogether, never to be seen again.
• • •
George Washington’s fourth Negro tooth was from a woman named Henrietta. (Contrary to widespread belief, there is no difference of significance between the dentition of men and women—as any trained dentist, odontomancer, or the Fay folk, who require human teeth as currency, will well attest.) Henrietta’s father had been John Indian, whose father had been a Yamassee warrior captured and sold into bondage in Virginia. Her mother’s mother had come to the mainland from Jamaica, sold away for taking part in Queen Nanny’s War. As slaves, both were reputed to be unruly and impossible to control. Henrietta inherited that defiant blood, and more than one owner learned the hard way she wasn’t to be trifled with. After holding down and whipping her last mistress soundly, she was sold to work fields at Mount Vernon—because, as her former master advertised, strong legs and a broad back weren’t to be wasted. Henrietta often dreamed of her grandparents. She often dreamed she was her grandparents. Sometimes she was a Yamassee warrior, charging a fort with flintlock musket drawn, eyes fixed on the soldier she intended to kill—as from the ramparts English mages hurled volleys of emerald fireballs that could melt through iron. Other times she was a young woman, barely fifteen, who chanted Asante war songs as she drove a long sabre, the blade blazing bright with obeah, into the belly of a slave master (this one had been a pallid blood drinker) and watched as he blackened and crumbled away to ash.
When George Washington wore Henrietta’s tooth he sometimes woke screaming from night terrors. He told Martha they were memories from the war, and would never speak of the faces he saw coming for him in those dreams: a fierce Indian man with long black hair and death in his eyes, and a laughing slave girl with a curiously innocent face, who plunged scorching steel into his belly.
• • •
The fifth Negro tooth belonging to George Washington came by unexplained means from a conjure man who was not listed among Mount Vernon’s slaves. He had been born before independence, in what was then the Province of New Jersey, and learned his trade from his mother—a root woman of some renown (among local slaves at any rate), having been brought to the region from the southern territories of New France. The conjure man used his magics mostly in the treatment of maladies affecting his fellow bondsmen, of the mundane or paranormal varieties. He had been one of the tens of thousands of slaves during the war who answered the call put out by the Earl of Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia in November 1775:
And I hereby declare all indentured servants, Negroes, hedge witches and wizards, occultists, lycanthropes, giants, non-cannibal ogres and any ſentient magical creatures or others (appertaining to Rebels) free and relieved of ſupernatural ſanction that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His MAJESTY’S Troops as ſoon as may be, for the more ſpeedily reducing this Colony to a proper Senſe of their Duty, to His MAJESTY’S Crown and Dignity. This edict excludes Daemonic beasts who ſhould not take ſaid proclamation as a ſummons who, in doing so, will be exorcized from His MAJESTY’S realm with all deliberate ſpeed.
The conjure man was first put in the service of Hessian mercenaries, to care for their frightening midnight black steeds that breathed flames and with hooves of fire. Following, he’d been set to performing menial domestic spells for Scottish warlocks, treated no better there than a servant. It was fortune (aided by some skillful stone casting) that placed him in Colonel Tye’s regiment. Like the conjure man, Tye had been a slave in New Jersey who fled to the British, working his way to becoming a respected guerilla commander. Tye led the infamous Black Brigade—a motley crew of fugitive slaves, outlaw juju men, and even a Spanish mulata werewolf—who worked alongside the elite Queen’s Rangers. Aided by the conjure man’s gris-gris, the Black Brigade carried out raids on militiamen: launching attacks on their homes, destroying their weapons, stealing supplies, burning spells and striking fear into the hearts of patriots. The conjure man’s brightest moment had come the day he captured his own master and bound him in the same shackles he’d once been forced to wear. The Brigade stirred such hysteria that the patriot governor of New Jersey declared martial law, putting up protective wards around the province—and General George Washington himself was forced to send his best mage hunters against them. In a running skirmish with those patriot huntsmen, Tye was fatally struck by a cursed ball from a long rifle—cutting through his gris-gris. The conjure man stood guard over his fallen commander, performing a final rite that would disallow their enemies from reanimating the man or binding his soul. Of the five mage hunters he killed three, but was felled in the attempt. With his final breath, he whispered his own curse on any that would desecrate his corpse.
One of the surviving mage hunters pulled the conjure man’s teeth as a souvenir of the battle, and a few days hence tumbled to land awkwardly from his horse and broke his neck. The tooth passed to a second man, who choked to death on an improbably lodged bit of turtle soup in his windpipe. And, so it went, bringing dire misfortune to each of its owners. The conjure man’s tooth has now, by some twist of fate, made its way to Mount Vernon and into George Washington’s collection. He has not worn it, yet.
• • •
The sixth Negro tooth of George Washington belonged to a slave who had tumbled here from another world. The startled English sorcerer who witnessed this remarkable event had been set to deliver a speech on conjurations at the Royal Society of London for Improving Supernatural Knowledge. Alas, before the sorcerer could tell the world of his discovery, he was quietly killed by agents of the Second Royal African Company, working in a rare alliance with their Dutch rivals. As they saw it, if Negroes could simply be pulled out of thin air the lucrative trade in human cargo that made such mercantilists wealthy could be irrevocably harmed. The conjured Negro, however, was allowed to live—bundled up and shipped from London to a Virginia slave market. Good property, after all, was not to be wasted. She ended up at Mount Vernon, and was given the name Esther. The other slaves, however, called her Solomon—on account of her wisdom.
Solomon claimed not to know anything about magic, which didn’t exist in her native home. But how could that be, the other slaves wondered, when she could mix together powders to cure their sicknesses better than any physician; when she could make predictions of the weather that always came true; when she could construct all manner of wondrous contraptions from the simplest of objects? Even the plantation manager claimed she was “a Negro of curious intellect,” and listened to her suggestions on crop rotations and field systems. The slaves well knew the many agricultural reforms at Mount Vernon, for which their master took credit, was actually Solomon’s genius. They often asked why she didn’t use her remarkable wit to get hired out and make money? Certainly, that’d be enough to buy her freedom.
Solomon always shook her head, saying that though she was from another land, she felt tied to them by “the consanguinity of bondage.” She would work to free them all, or, falling short of that, at the least bring some measure of ease to their lives. But at night, after she’d finished her mysterious “experiments” (which she kept secret from all) she could be found gazing up at the stars, and it was hard not to see the longing held deep in her eyes. When George Washington wore Solomon’s tooth, he dreamed of a place of golden spires and colorful glass domes, where Negroes flew through the sky on metal wings like birds and sprawling cities that glowed bright at night were run by machines who thought faster than men. It both awed and frightened him at once.