Disney’s Black Princess

4:48 am EST April 13th, 2007 | Movies | 17 Comments

Some kind of cultural milestone. I’m not sure what kind, just yet, but some kind of milestone.

Disney is about to break a new barrier with its first African-American princess, Maddy.

Parents and children are excited to see Maddy who will soon star in “The Frog Princess.”

“I know growing up we didn’t have many African-American cartoon characters that we could really relate to,” said James Drewery.

Well, we did have Black Vulcan from Superfriends. I like how he was “Black” Vulcan, you know, in case you didn’t notice.

UPDATE: Here is a picture of “Maddy”.

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17 Responses to “Disney’s Black Princess”

  1. Jay Tea says:
    April 13, 2007 at 8:16 am

    Of course, “Black Vulcan” was a ripoff of Black Lightning, the first black superhero to have his own title. DC was fighting with BL’s creator, Tony Isabella, at the time, and didn’t want to give him any more credit (read: money) by using his creation.

    J.

  2. C.S.Strowbridge says:
    April 13, 2007 at 10:08 am

    I’m pretty sure you are not allowed to mention Black Vulcan without working in a, “in his pants” joke.

  3. mdhawk says:
    April 13, 2007 at 10:40 am

    Actually, don’t forget the Black Panther, of Marvel Comics fame. He came a good decade before Black Lightning ever emerged.

  4. Oliver Willis says:
    April 13, 2007 at 11:14 am

    When I wrote this the first person that came to mind was actually Luke Cage, but then I had to think of someone who had been adapted to cartoon form.

  5. Thad says:
    April 13, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    The Daily Show had an AWESOME clip on the subject a couple weeks back.

    I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like, “Oh good, finally a black princess. All we had to wait through was an Indian princess, an Arab princess, a Chinese princess, and a half-fish princess.”

    On a related note, there was a great Harvey Birdman a few years back with Black Vulcan.

    “Yeah, BLACK Vulcan. Superman came up with that one. I asked him, ‘Why don’t we just call Aquaman “Whitefish”?’ But he didn’t go for it.”

    (Again, paraphrasing to the best of my memory.)

  6. C.S.Strowbridge says:
    April 13, 2007 at 1:47 pm

    When I think of early black superheroes, Luke Cage is also the one I think of first. Then again, I like Marvel and think D.C. sucks.

    (We need the occasional non-political flamewar here.)

  7. dnA says:
    April 13, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    I actually did a post on this on my blog a couple of weeks ago. The first black superhero was Black Panther, but (shock) he was African, not African American.

    And I believe that Aquaman came up with “Black Vulcan”, not Superman.

    For the record, he wanted to be called Super-Volt. The Super Friends were jerks, apparently.

  8. fd10801 says:
    April 13, 2007 at 4:07 pm

    Susie Carmichael‘s all grown up!

  9. Duros62 says:
    April 13, 2007 at 4:49 pm

    I was thinking more Josephine Baker.

  10. Iggy says:
    April 13, 2007 at 7:17 pm

    I think the first black superhero was actually T’Challa, The Black Panther. Cage came a bit later and TALKED black, with embarrassing euphemisms for profanities. (“Sheeee-ooot! You freakin’ son of a witch!”)

    There was also a character called “Black Goliath” – a black guy who took Henry Pym’s Giant-Man serum.

  11. Graham says:
    April 13, 2007 at 8:13 pm

    Well, they did have the “Frozone” character in “The Incredibles”.

    Overall, he was a relatively minor character in the animation, though.

  12. david says:
    April 13, 2007 at 11:11 pm

    I hope to god that Don Imus doesn’t refer to her as a nappy-haired ho.

  13. Jay Tea says:
    April 13, 2007 at 11:23 pm

    Actually, what I said was that I believe Black Lightning was the first black superhero WITH HIS OWN TITLE. However, a little more investigating shows that is incorrect; he was DC’s first black superhero with his own title, but Black Panther’s title beat him to the stands by a couple of months, and Luke Cage, Hero For Hire, by five years — both Marvel titles.

    Shoulda known Marvel would beat DC to the punch on something like that…

    J.

  14. fd10801 says:
    April 14, 2007 at 10:23 am

    In my comic book days, I was a DC fan, until some guys in College turned me on to Marvel.

    After the epic, multi – issued saga of the Wedding of Sue Storm and Reed Richards, I was hooked.

  15. kathi says:
    April 14, 2007 at 11:06 am

    I went to the link with Maddy’s picture. Why does she have blue eyes?

  16. Duros62 says:
    April 14, 2007 at 11:36 am

    There was also a character called “Black Goliath” – a black guy who took Henry Pym’s Giant-Man serum.

    Eeeww

  17. fd10801 says:
    April 15, 2007 at 9:23 pm

    The heroine, Maddy, becomes the first African American among the Disney princesses, who are collectively responsible for more than $3 billion in annual retail sales.

    Hello, Dolly!