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Saladin Ahmed Wants You To Pick The Nits Of Black Bolt

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Last week saw the release of new Marvel comic book Black Bolt by Saladin Ahmed and Christian Ward. In the back, Saladin talked about what he's going through with the book.

Welcome to BLACK BOLT #1, the first solo series to star one of the Marvel Universe's most powerful and enigmatic characters, his (former) highness Blackagar Boltagon. I couldn't be more thrilled to be penning this new chapter in the life of the Midnight King, though it's been a strange road here. I've been a professional writer for a decade, publishing everything from fiction to essays to poems. Newspapers have printed my words on their op-ed pages. Smart people in magazines have said nice things about my novel. But decades before any of that, I was a wheezy, scared kid in a factory town where the schools sucked. And I learned how to read—and yes, how to write—by reading stacks of Marvel comics over and over again. Those comics not only provided me with a precocious vocabulary, they taught me to ask questions about injustice and alienation, power and position. Nowadays, nearly all my work is preoccupied with those questions. Coming to Marvel to ask them as a writer feels like coming home.

Some of the questions we will ask in BLACK BOLT in the coming months:

Who is a criminal? What happens when we put people in cages? How do you tell your story? What does it mean to be a parent?
And most importantly What happens when extremely powerful beings hit each other with very large objects and zap each other with energy beams? Now comes your part: We need YOUR questions. And comments! As a kid, I read the letters pages of my favorite comics obsessively. Before the Internet as we know it today existed, that's how I knew there were others out there reading the stories I was reading. Thinking about what they meant. Nitpicking their details. Letters pages let me know I wasn't alone. We live in a different age now, one where comics readers are hyper-connected. I think that's a wonderful thing. But I hope this letters page can be a place that harkens back to those forums of yore. A place to geek out and to pick nits. A place to hear each other's voices.

While artist Christian Ward is pushing the aftermarket.

 


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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