Freedom Fighters #8: “Men of Color, To Arms!”

In 1863, the great Frederick Douglas gave a speech titled “Men of Color, To Arms!”:

A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it […] When the war is over, the country is saved, peace is established, and the black man’s rights are secured, as they will be, history with an impartial hand will dispose of that and sundry other questions. Action! Action! not criticism is the plain duty of this hour.

Imagine a world in which the United States lost WWII and those brave men and women who rose up and took arms were relegated back to slave status. Imagine a world in which one of those slaves escaped and became a superhero, only to later return to the place of his enslavement, where all those who could not escape were still toiling for their enemy masters.

Venditti and company deliver such a tale in Freedom Fighters #8, with Black Condor in the position of Frederick Douglas, using the powerful tool of legacy to inspire his fellow men and women in the Detroit area and take back power from the slavers.

Even for those who might have read this iteration of Freedom Fighters and thought that it was slightly over the top in notions of US nationalism or patriotism, it is difficult to the deny the power of this issue, particularly given real world events playing across America today. Stripped of color or race, this still represents a tale of the power of community against oppression. It is an emboldening tale of how the few, banded together, become more than the sum of their parts. Hats off to the creative for this one.