Sometimes a fictional character leaves and impression on your life. These fictional characters can be bigger than factors in the real world around you. For a lot of people, it seems like Black Panther was that answer. Before a new generation fell in love with Black Panther and after an old generation fell in love with his comics was my generation. My generation fell in love with Virgil Ovid Hawkins, better known as Static.
With the rise of Black Panther, there have been a lot of people talking about what T'Challa means to them. It's not my intention to tear down T'Challa, but everyone doesn't feel that way. When I was growing up T'Challa was nothing but an afterthought who had not been relevant in decades. In my life the most important things T'Challa had done were replace Daredevil, marry Storm, kill Namor. In that time he'd lost his throne, his title, his wife, his country was drowned, doom destroyed it in a war. He was never cool to me. I'm not African and I don't have any need to connect to my "roots" in Africa. T'Challa always seemed arrogant to me no matter how smart he was. If Daredevil and Tony Stark had a black baby it would be T'Challa. He was just never cool to me and I related to nothing in his character.
There was John Stewart, and don't get me wrong, I love John. He's my favorite Lantern. I was introduced to John during the Justice League cartoon's run. I liked John, I didn't relate to him, not at all. John reminded me of my father. A military man, a strict man and a middle aged man. Again, there was nothing I could relate to other than being black. Mr. Terrific was in that show, I love Mr. Terrific but he was nothing more than a stern figure.
That's why Static mattered so much to me. Comic Static was before my time, but I've grown to love him. I'm talking about the television version, he'll put a shock to your system. More than any other character I related to him. Later it was Cyborg, but that wouldn't be for a long time. I related to Static because of what he wasn't.
Yeah, he went to Africa, but that wasn't his whole meaning for life. Virgil was a nerd to his core, but he wasn't some tragic "woe is me," nerd getting shoved into a locker. He wasn't the most popular guy around, but he still had friends. He wasn't rich or naturally gifted, even with super powers he worked hard for everything he got. He wasn't a representative for every black person, he was just Virgil. He knew racism existed and acknowledged it, but it wasn't keeping him awake at night. He wasn't perfect he had flaws.
That's the thing about Virgil that meant so much to me and others. He didn't do anything other than be Virgil. It was refreshing to see a character that looked like me deal with real issues that didn't just go away in the next episode. Yeah, Static was cocky, but Virgil was always second guessing himself. But, at the end of it, he was still Virgil and didn't change for anyone. It was just cool to see that, because growing up, there weren't any other black characters like that.
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