Black Female Superheroes

My name is Shamika Sandler Brown and I'm a six-foot-tall, busty and kind of curvy, big-bottomed black woman living in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts. By day, I work as a computer science teacher at the Nicholson Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts. By night, I'm a part-time member of the Boston Police Department and the world-famous superhero known as the Black Avenger. I can do amazing things, folks. I can fly. I've got superhuman strength. And I am invulnerable. How did I get my abilities? That's a long story, folks. Fortunately, I've got time.

In 2003, I was a senior at Nicholson Tech. I was having a lousy time in the dating game. The whole social scene wasn't my thing. In a campus that was fifty six percent male, I couldn't get a boyfriend. Basically, I felt like a loser. Oh, I was smart. I was one of the top students in the computer science program. It's just that I wasn't exactly a big hit with the guys on campus. They preferred skinny white chicks with names like Amber and Kelly to big black women like myself. And since I was a die-hard jock, many of them thought I was also a lesbian. Lots of heterosexual women play NCAA Women's Rugby, thank you very much. It's not just for lesbians!

My only friend on campus was an old black man named Aaron Thomas. He was the athletic director of Nicholson Tech. The man directly responsible for putting the school on the map. Even though we only had about fifteen thousand students, he turned the institution into an athletic powerhouse. How? By adding varsity teams in men's and women's basketball, men's and women's soccer, men's football, men's rifle, men's fencing, men's and women's wrestling, men's baseball and women's softball, men's and women's golf, men's and women's rugby, men's and women's swimming, men's and women's cross country and men's and women's ice hockey. And just like that, we became the envy of all the schools competing in the NCAA Division Three.

When Mr. Thomas looked at me, he saw more than just a big and tall black female nerd. He saw someone with potential. I guess that's why he bestowed such important responsibilities on me. You see, one day I found out that the man who had become a father figure to me wasn't a man at all. Aaron Thomas was a god. One of the last remaining members of the ancient gods of Africa. He was once worshiped as Akizu the Traveler by primitive tribes in Central Africa. One day, he summoned me into his office and told me the truth about himself. And about me.

I can't tell you how surprised I was when Mr. Thomas sat me down and told me the truth. I thought he was losing it, until a bolt of lightning shot out of his finger and onto the table. That's when I knew he was telling the truth. Aaron Thomas was really Akizu the Traveler. One of the ancient gods of Central Africa. And he had chosen me to be his heir. I couldn't believe it. Why me? Mr. Thomas smiled, and took my hand in his. Then he showed me the truth. And just like that, I went on a vision quest with a god. I saw what he had seen. Where he had been. Akizu had been alive for countless thousands of years. Like all of the ancient gods and goddesses, he was immortal unless someone or something with enough power managed to slay him. The gods of ancient Africa had been slaughtered along with the Pagan deities of countless regions and religions during a conflict known as the Twilight of the Gods. That's when the gods joined forces against an ancient enemy known as the Primordials. Ageless beings of awesome power who existed right outside of the universe in which we lived. The pagan gods and goddesses were betrayed by one of their own and wiped out. Only a handful of them survived. Akizu was one of those survivors.

Akizu the Traveler had been living among humans for thousands of years. Masquerading as an ordinary mortal. He had been a Pharaoh in ancient Egypt, a prince in the ancient African kingdom of Axoum and a pirate of the high seas in the time of ancient Rome. He'd always been a friend to mankind. Throughout time, he intervened when he saw the innocent suffering, discretely using his godly powers to help the good guys in the endless battle against the forces of evil. He had known the greatest men and women in history. From Julius Caesar and Cleopatra to Moctod, Queen of the legendary warrior women known as the Amazons. He had also befriended Hercules, the legendary hero of ancient Greece. He met the archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael along with Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. He also knew Lucifer Morningstar, the Crown Prince of Hell himself. The man had been places. And he had lived. When the vision quest ended and I was snapped back to reality, I looked at him with new respect. The man had seen and done some amazing things. Wow.

I still wasn't sure why he wanted me to become his heir, though. Akizu laughed, and told me that in the perilous world of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean circa 1721, he had once loved a mortal woman whom he was unable to marry. A tall black female slave named Henriette Corbleau. He wanted to save her from her captors and make her his bride. But he couldn't. Gods and mortals were never meant to interbreed. Akizu was a powerful deity but he was still bound by the rules that gods and goddesses operated by while living on Earth, the abode of man. So for thousands of years he dedicated himself to looking after the descendants of Henriette Corbleau, many of whom still exist on the island of Haiti today. And according to him, I was an offshoot of one of the men and women descended from the slave woman whom a powerful African god loved enough to risk the wrath of the Powers That Be. Wow. I wasn't expecting that, folks. What a touching, yet so deeply sad story. The god who could have anything except she whom he loved the most. Is there justice in the universe? Akizu smiled sadly, and asked me if I was ready to claim my inheritance. I took a deep breath and said yes. Akizu took both my hands in his, and I felt energy rushing from him into me. I screamed as I experienced a sensation that was simply unimaginable. It got so intense that I passed out. When I came to, I was in a hospital bed. Apparently, I'd gotten struck by lightning. As for Aaron Thomas/Akizu the Traveler, he was simply gone. I couldn't believe it.

When I got discharged from the hospital, I thought it was all a dream. It felt unreal. I returned to the campus, and looked for Athletic Director Aaron Thomas. No one knew where he was. That's when it dawned on me that what I experienced wasn't a dream. I still didn't notice any changes in myself, until I went to the grocery store one night and the place got held up by a dude and a chick wearing ski masks and carrying automatics. I should have been scared but I wasn't. Somehow, I felt braver than ever. I walked up to the dude with the gun, and decked him. His girlfriend turned her gun on me and fired. Twice. Point blank in the face and the chest. The bullets bounced right off me. I grabbed her, and threw her out of the store window. Then I ran out of the store.

I couldn't believe what I had done. Luckily, I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt so no one saw my face. However, I was freaked out. Where had my newfound strength and apparent invulnerability come from? I didn't know. That night as I slept, I thought about Akizu and I remembered his words to me. He wanted to make me his heir, and grant me powers the likes of which ordinary men and women could only dream of. Apparently, he wasn't lying. Over the next few weeks, I tested myself and discovered my abilities. I was much stronger than I ever thought that I could be. And I don't mean this as a pop-culture psychological mantra. I mean that I've got superhuman strength. And nothing could hurt me. I tried cutting myself with a knife, and I held my hand over a hot stove for half an hour. I didn't even have a blister to show for it. Wow. I was invincible.

I didn't know what to do with my newfound abilities, though. Then I put them to use on the rugby field. And just like that, I led the Nicholson Tech Women's Rugby team to NCAA Division Three glory. We took the championships in New England that year, folks. How about that? I can't tell you how great it felt. It was all unreal. I earned my bachelors in computer science from Nicholson Tech, then stuck around to get my master's degree in it. Wherever I went, I helped people. I rescued men and women from building fires. I also took on gangsters, and serial killers. I didn't get them all but I took them on without blinking. And little by little, a legend formed around me. A tall, large black woman who was super strong and simply couldn't get hurt who went around beating the bad people in the city. I was an urban legend. Discussed in chat rooms and classrooms. I didn't focus too much on it. I just wanted to lead a normal life. I didn't decide to become a superhero until the good people of Boston decided to make me one. And I came face to face with someone who was just like me.

A group of skinheads, college-age white guys and white chicks with way too much time on their hands, decided to kill that handsome black gentleman who became the Governor of Massachusetts. I was in Boston at the time. At a festival celebrating African-American culture and multicultural relations. The new governor was scheduled to speak at the festival on Boston Common. That's when the skinheads decided to strike. But they never got a chance to. Because someone struck them first. Folks, it wasn't me. I saw the white guys and white chicks with the guns when they started blasting the city cops and the crowd went nuts. I went after them. Someone who moved faster than anything human went to them. I had never seen anyone move like that. The guy simply moved like he was on fast-forward while everybody else was on slow motion. Even weirder, I seemed to be the only person who saw him.

I caught a skinhead, a burly red-haired white dude, and tossed him ten feet away. He crashed into another one of his ilk, a skinny blonde chick with a shotgun. I couldn't get them all, no matter how hard I tried. But the super-fast guy got to those I didn't get. Especially the tall, ravishing blonde female reporter who pulled a gun on the governor. She was about to shoot him when the speedster disarmed her and sent her sprawling. Then he sped away. All in the blink of an eye. Wow. When things settled down, I learned that nobody had seen the super-fast guy as he did his thing. But everybody saw me. That day, the entire world found out that Shamika Sandler Brown was the Black Avenger. The super-powered black woman who fought against the bad guys in Massachusetts.

What followed was a media frenzy. To say that the world focused on me would an understatement. For the next year or so, everything I did was front page news. Everybody was curious about me. Where did I come from? I told them the truth. I didn't come from another planet. I was born at Mass General on February 5, 1983. I didn't tell them where I got my powers, though. I told them I was born with them. Scientists examined me. Books were written about me. TV movies were made about me. I had fan clubs on Facebook and MySpace. I went on the Tonight Show, I did interviews with Letterman and Larry King Live. I even appeared on The View. The U.S. government wanted to book me and take me away but the Governor of Massachusetts wouldn't allow it. His friends in Washington backed him up. And so did the people of the state. I became a hero to many. A role model for young women and young men in the inner city. The pride of the black community. Folks, I was bigger than Oprah. I was also quite lonely. You see, I wasn't just a freak. I was the only one of my kind. No one else out there had super powers. I was all alone in the world.

Until the speedster approached me. Eventually, my life went back to normal. I was made an honorary member of the Boston Police Department. The Chief of Police had me on duty whenever something extremely dangerous was going on. Folks, I rescued people from volcanoes in Hawaii, I fought against terrorists in Eastern Europe, and battled gangs in Los Angeles. For five years I was America's favorite superhero. The Black Avenger. A symbol of justice around the world. There came a time when I was so popular, I could have run for President of the United States as both a democrat and a republican and no one would have opposed me. Yeah, life was good. Eventually, I got tired of it. So I quit being a superhero. At least not full-time. I went back to Nicholson Tech and got hired as a computer science instructor. Once again, life was okay.

One night, I was alone in the campus library, correcting papers while drinking coffee when a tall, good-looking young black man in a Patriots jersey and blue jeans approached me. He introduced himself as Luke Thomas, a graduate student at Boston College. I looked him up and down. He was really handsome but that wasn't it. He looked disturbingly familiar. Luke Thomas smiled at me, and told me his father sent his regards. I stared at him, stunned. I grabbed his shoulders and asked him who his father was. Laughing, the young man spun faster than my eyes could follow and I found myself holding nothing. He stood six feet away from me, a wry grin on his face. That's when it hit me. This young man was the speedster from the skinhead attack on the governor a few years ago. And he was also the son of my benefactor, Akizu the Traveler.

Luke Thomas smiled at me and we sat down to talk. It was a long talk. He told me about myself. He was the son of Akizu the Traveler, begotten on a mortal woman the one time the ancient god broke the rules. Because of his birth, Akizu was forced to depart the planet Earth, abode of man, by the Powers That Be. Forces greater than even the gods. According to Luke, he and I were the heirs of Akizu. The ancient god intended for the two of us to become the protectors of humanity in the coming age of darkness that would soon engulf the world. When I asked Luke what he could do, he laughed and, taking my hand in his, leapt out of the open window of the Nicholson Tech library. We soared in the heavens. I don't fly too often anymore. I fly to catch the occasional suicidal jumper or falling construction worker. Or maybe to catch an airplane or two. But hardly ever for leisure. I've seen the world and I'd much rather be a teacher than a full-time crusading superhero.

Luke Thomas had some amazing powers. Like me, he had superhuman strength, invulnerability and the power of flight. He also had a few abilities I didn't have. He could move at super speed. He could also become intangible and walk through walls. I couldn't do those things. Luke shrugged, and said we all had different abilities. I asked him if there were others like us out there. He told me that the world was full of strange beings. Demons. Vampires. Monsters. Werewolves. Fallen Angels. Pagan Gods. Genetically enhanced super-humans. Post-human sentient species. Pre-human sentient species. Most of them looked exactly like normal people. And many of them lived right here in Boston. Most of these beings were peaceful. Just trying to lead normal lives. Some of them however meant humanity harm. And it was up to Luke and me to stand in their way. I took it all in. It was a lot to take in. when I asked Luke where he'd been for the past few years, he told me he had better things to do than playing superhero. Like getting into and graduating from college. I considered that a sensible thing to do. I wish more young men attended college these days. That's why I returned to Nicholson Tech. It's still full of smart young men, unlike most colleges and universities across America, which are increasingly female these days.

And that, folks, is how it started again for me. I thought I had left the game but Luke Thomas brought me back into it. Just between you and me, I kind of missed it. I don't know my new partner too well but from what I've seen so far, he's alright. He really does care about people and was excited about flying around the world helping those in need. He's kind of cute too, if a bit cocky. He's only twenty two so I guess that's his age. Let him do his thing. I know it can be overwhelming at times. I've been at this for a while. The next day, I called a press conference and introduced Luke Thomas to the world. Everything was going well, until he asked an old reporter whether or not he was wearing a hairpiece. The reporter said no, and Luke super-sped his toupee away. Everybody laughed, except maybe the poor reporter. I felt bad for the guy but I had to admit Luke was funny. The media dubbed him The Prankster, and I think he likes his new title. And that's the end of the story for now, folks. The world has its first true superheroes. And we're black.