{"id":3263,"date":"2013-07-01T18:12:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T23:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/?p=3263"},"modified":"2013-11-02T15:05:08","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T20:05:08","slug":"straight-out-of-a-comic-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamesrichardson.net\/jtalk\/2013\/07\/01\/straight-out-of-a-comic-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Straight out of a comic book!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When I was a young child growing up in Harlem there were very few people that looked like me in the media. And when they were people that looked like me presented in the movies, or on the small screen, they were almost always portrayed as unintelligent or docile. This is the rare exceptions to these rules made a seismic impact on me and many other impressionable black children. Yesterday I saw that one of my earliest heroes as a child, James Milton Kelly, had passed away at the age of 67. He was better known to the world as Jim \u201cThe Dragon” Kelly and was one of the prominent stars of the 1970s martials arts and Blaxploitation film era.<\/p>\n

Jim Kelly was a martial arts legend to many of the brothers that I grew up around. He inspired many of us to start training in the martial arts just as much as Bruce Lee, and maybe more in certain ways. Being a young black male in the 1970s, it was wonderful to see a black man on the big screen as the hero. From his portrayal of Williams in the classic \u2018Enter the Drago<\/a>n\u201d to his lesser known role as Mister Keyes in “Three the Hard Way<\/a>“, he was brash and outspoken and stole almost every scene that he was in with his bravado and unrepentant black pride. Jim Kelly was larger than life with a perfectly sculpted larger than life afro to boot. Now keep in mind that this was the seventies, when large afros and bell bottom pants were all the rage. And even in those overly dramatic times Jim Kelly managed to stand above the rest. He has been imitated and parodied<\/a> to the point where many younger people don’t even realise that he was part of the inspiration for popular movie and animated characters like “Bushido Brown<\/a>“, Black Dynamite<\/a>, Undercover Brother<\/a>, and “Afro Samurai<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Sleep in peace my brother. You were one of the original cinematic black superheroes and you will be missed.<\/p>\n