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Longbox Diving – The Crew

By | December 22nd, 2011
Posted in Columns | % Comments

Throughout the 90s and the early 2000s, Christopher Priest (or simply Priest for a good while) was one of the most prolific and critically acclaimed writers in mainstream comics. His impact on books like Black Panther and Captain America & The Falcon is immense and the highly politicized, street level storytelling her infused his books during that time is some of the most influential work of the genre. However, around mid-2005 he disappeared from comics and to this day many have wondered whether a comeback was on the way for Priest or it the comics world has truly seen the last of him.

However, one of the most beloved gems of the later-period Priest work is a book called The Crew. This short lived ongoing (it lasted 7 issues before being uncerimoniously cancelled) was as thoughtful and challenging as any of Priest’s works, but was in a lot of ways doomed from the state due to the connotations that surrounded it’s particular group of characters and it’s immensely short lifespan probably didn’t help in the “people remembering it” department.

But I remember it, and you can click on down to find out why.

I remember stumbling upon the first three issues of The Crew at a comic shop in Montreal when I was 16 and given that it was a stunningly light week, I picked them up. I didn’t end up coming back to the book for Issue 4 until a few months later when it popped up in a 25 cent bin and it took until about a week ago for me to finally finish the book. Admittedly, once I actually completed the story I began to second guess why the book had remained so fondly in my memories all these years when, as far as I was concerned, the proceedings were kind of average and ended entirely too abruptly, before it really began to tell it’s story in earnest. It was after a few read throughs though that I began to realize what the book represented beyond simply the story it told.

Starring a somewhat scattershot group of veterans and newcomers, this book was in a lot of ways a direct sequel to two major stories taking place in the Marvel Universe that year. First was Priest’s own lengthy and critically acclaimed run on Black Panther, which brought the characters of Kasper “White Tiger” Kole and Junta into the book. The other was the similarly forgotten Truth: Red, White & Black mini-series, which retconned the origin of Captain America to include several pre-Operation Rebirth African American super soldiers, with the inclusion of new character Josiah X. Finally, the book also starred James “War Machine” Rhodes in his first major appearance in several years. Together they formed a “Marvel Knights-esque” street level crime fighting team that centralized in “Little Mogadishu” district of New York. A simple premise starring compelling characters with the added hook of all four characters having experienced deep personal loss that binds them together even as they try to go their seperate ways. As far as team books go, the premise here was perfectly on point.

Now, racial issues in comics have become a bit of a hot button topic over the last few years and I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of the arguments have been misguided. Killing Ryan Choi does not mean DC hates Asian people nor does Geoff Johns reestablishing the classic Legion mean he hates Black people. However, the sad story of The Crew may actually be the most valid argument I have heard for racial bias within the comic book community. Priest has gone on and on about how the book was not focused on racial issues even in the slightest, and instead intended to focus on inner-manhattan societal issues and the personal loss of the individual characters. That still didn’t stop people from classifying and pigeon-holing the book as “The Black Avengers” due to its all Black and Hispanic cast and for the entirety of it’s short existence that is the only thing it was known for.

Continued below

Not the immense character development of Rhodes (which has largely been retconned or forgotten at this point)or the backstory and expansion of newer characters like Kasper Cole and Junta. However the biggest loss of it all is the character of Josiah X, who had so much potential to create lasting social commentary within the Marvel Universe given that he was an Islamic religious leader and also (a) Captain America (trust me, this would have been a HUGE deal in 2003 if anyone had actually read this book). Even the career defining work of Joe Bennett and some fantastic JH Williams III covers were glossed over because this was just the “Black Avengers” book.

Now, I’m not going to come fully out and say the all non-white cast of the book is why people didn’t buy it. I think people didn’t buy it since at that point is because (much like today), without any immediately recognizable characters or titles on the cover, it got glossed over. I honestly think that if the book was published NOW that it would end up having a much bigger draw than it did eight years ago. However I think the constant assumptions and typecasting thrust upon in by the community certainly did not help its success. I think it says a lot about the comic book community when a book with so much potential to tell a terrific, thoughtful story is cut short due, at least in some part, to the collective non-white status of the characters it features.

While I’m not sure the story itself really needs to framed and put on anyone’s wall (it was, as I said, a pretty average 2003/4 comic), the lessons we can learn from it’s circumstances are one’s we should probably take to heart a little more than we do.


//TAGS | Longbox Diving

Joshua Mocle

Joshua Mocle is an educator, writer, audio spelunker and general enthusiast of things loud and fast. He is also a devout Canadian. He can often be found thinking about comics too much, pretending to know things about baseball and trying to convince the masses that pop-punk is still a legitimate genre. Stalk him out on twitter and thought grenade.

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