How Long Must We Wait?

It's been 13 years since the release of the original Blade movie. You know...the one that blew your mind and taught superhero movies how to swagger? Wesley Snipes and Stephen Norrington along with Kris Kristofferson set the tone for X-MEN, Spider-Man and well...every movie involving superheroes that has been made in the past ten years. The first Blade was plain and simple...bad ass. I can remember buying tickets with my oldest son (at the time he was eight...shame on me!!!) and my younger brother...we all thought we were about to witness another pile of cow dung. Wesley Snipes, at the time, was good for some action/popcorn/bullshit...but Blade was note perfect. Blade was the catalyst for the modern superhero movie. So why in the hell have we not seen any new black superheroes on the silver screen since? The current wave of superhero flicks have been mildly satisfying to me as a lifelong comic book fan; I never thought I would live to see Thor, Spider Man or Green Lantern on the big screen so I should be sufficiently satisfied but I'm not. I am now waiting for Hollywood to scrape the bottom of the intellectual property barrel and begin filming the black superhero movies. Black Panther, Luke Cage...Black Lightning or The Falcon. It is going to be interesting to see what the excuse is for not making these movies...I mean if we can have a Ghost Rider, Scott Pilgrim and Sin City movie...then we can certainly have a Black Panther or Luke Cage movie...right? This subject continues to haunt me because of the obvious fact that I'm pushing my own intellectual property right now...Lucius Hammer...and I'm hoping for big things namely an animated series, perhaps a live action motion picture and of course a video game. But those notions get kind of hazy when I stop to consider there have been no American made Blade cartoons, platform based video games or even action figures. I have maintained several times in discussions with other fanboy radicals that Blade could be every bit the sensation that Wolverine is for Marvel... but

what keeps Marvel from giving Blade the all star treatment? It blows my mind. This is not going to be an incredibly long and rabid rant that you are used to getting from me...but merely a record of the fact that enough folks out here love and demand a Blade product...a Black Panther product...Luke Cage...even The Falcon. Some very excellent films might be crafted from these historic black characters that Marvel created. And as far as DC Comics is concerned...I could even pose the argument that Static Shock might make a good Spider-Man Blaxploitation super-hero knock off flick. Hardware would be interesting as well. But....that damn word...but...the bean counters probably will insist on telling you that a movie with a black superhero as the main draw is not an economically viable product. I say...bullshit. Wesley Snipes proved that theory wrong back in 1998. So can we please get a dope, Black superhero movie Hollywood? One with a big budget...a good director, a good script and great actors. Is it really that hard?