(Captain America Comics 009, 1941)
The Black Talon is honestly such a disappointing character. Two-thirds of him is composed of concepts that I love, but that remaining third is very rough. A hard character to endorse.
First good Part: The Black Talon, aka Pascal Horta, is a mad artist who kills both as a way of eliminating his rivals and as a means of deriving inspiration for his series of horror-themed portraits. I always love seeing the mad arts represented in a field that traditionally favours the mad sciences, plus we must applaud the efficiency.
Second Good Part: Horta's origin involves the classic trope of the evil transplant that brings some part of its original owner's mentality to its new host. Specifically, his right hand is crushed in a car accident and is replaced with that of condemned murderer Strangler Burns. A terrific trope, particularly as it so easily dovetails with a Jekyll/ Hyde concept where you can introduce the idea that the transplant recipient isn't posessed but it just using the idea of a murderer's body part to enact their own inmost desires. In this specific instance, this idea is offset somewhat by the fact that the hand itself is portrayed as super-human: incredibly strong, equipped with clawlike fingernails (the eponymous Black Talons) and even fireproof as of its second appearance, but the point still stands.
(I've never asked a transplant surgeon but I reckon that they must hate this trope)
If you read through all of the panels up to this point you might have noticed the third, unfun thing about the Black Talon: that at least as much weight is given to the fact that the hand comes from an African American man as from a murderer. Could a thoughtful writer do something interesting with the concept of a man who is horrified by the race of his own hand? Certainly! Do they do this here? Certainly not. It really says something when Marvel's other Black Talons being chicken-themed Voodoo priests is the less racist option.
After a couple of encounters with Captain America and Bucky, the Black Talon is killed when Cap punches him out a window to his death. Or so Captain America believes, because he never bothers to go check. In reality, Horta is scuttling off to get ready to return in an upcoming issue of Young Allies. Stay tuned!
Categorized in: Body (Nonhuman Parts, Hands), Colours (Black), Origin (Evil Transplant)
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