Amos ‘n’ Andy ‘n’ Independents (sic), by Michael H. Price
An earlier installment of this column had examined a 1931 gorillas-at-large movie called Ingagi as an unlikely long-term influence upon the popular culture as a class. Ingagi, a chump-change production built largely around misappropriated African-safari footage and staged mock-jungle sequences, tapped a popular fascination with apes as a class even as it fostered a generalized anti-enlightenment toward natural history and racial politics.
Strange, then, that the film should have inspired a sequel (unofficial, of course, and certainly in-name-only) from a resolutely Afrocentric sector of the motion-picture industry. The production resources behind 1940’s Son of Ingagi stem from white-capitalist niche-market corporate interests – but the screenwriter and star player, and his supporting ensemble cast, all represent a trailblazing movement in black independent cinema.
From momentum that he had developed beginning with Son of Ingagi at Alfred Sack’s Texas-based Sack Amusement Enterprises, Spencer Williams, Jr., attained recognition that would lead him to a role-of-a-lifetime breakthrough in 1950, with his casting as Andrew Brown on a CBS-Television adaptation of a long-running radio serial called Amos ’n’ Andy. Though created by white-guy talents Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, Amos ’n’ Andy needed black artists for its on-screen representation. (Gosden and Correll had gotten away with blackface portrayals in 1930’s Check and Double Check – the tactic would not have borne repeating by 1950.) The partners hired a pioneering showman of the pre-Depression Harlem Renaissance period, Flournoy E. Miller, as casting director for the CBS-teevee project, and Miller came through with such memorable presences as Williams, Tim Moore as George “Kingfish” Stevens and Alvin Childress as Amos Jones, Andy Brown’s business partner.
Donna Hinckley Stacey Troy has had as many different origins as any other DC hero, but unlike the rest she currently remembers all of them. 
Thomas Edison did it, Stephen Spielberg did, too. And following in those traditions is filmmaker Shane Felux, who turned a maxed-out credit card into an Internet film phenomenon. Now, he is producing an ABC-backed, sci-fi thriller just for the web, and we have the story , plus:
or 
With New York Comic-Con receding into the fogs of memory, I’m girding my loins to face another season of conventions. Last year, as part of the ComicMix
Earlier today, YouTube user 
— possibly the next Christmas Special for the hit BBC science-fiction series.
It started out so innocently. Michael Agrusso made a silly video for his girlfriend. He thought it was too funny not to share, so he created a YouTube account with the username 
Born in Milton, Massachusetts in 1952, Peter John Sanderson, Jr. is proof that an obsession for comic books and consistency can be made into a viable career. 
This week, Manga Friday applies its lazer-like eye to one and only one book – luckily, this one is weird and confusing enough for any five regular volumes…
