Born of Wilmington comedy scene, Black Power Rangers tour spreads laughs around South

When he was a kid in the 1990s, Wilmington comic Wills Maxwell Jr. grew up watching the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" on TV. A millennial touchstone of sorts, the show featured a multi-racial group of superhero teens in brightly colored costumes battling bad guys.

"Before I could tell time, I knew when it was Morphin time," Maxwell said.

So when Maxwell, who's been a regular on the Wilmington comedy scene for about a decade, decided to put together a tour with some other comics he started thinking of ways to brand it.

"I knew I wanted it be an all-Black lineup," Maxwell said, and he started playing around with words. "Black power" eventually morphed, as it were, into Black Power Rangers.

Somehow, the name perfectly captured the mix of racially driven humor, pop culture references and general goofiness shared by Maxwell and his tour mates, who include former Wilmington comics Cordero Wilson and Jarrod Fortune (both now living in New York) and Raleigh-based comic Brandi Roberts.

The first iteration of the Black Power Rangers Comedy Tour hit four cities (Charlotte, Savannah, Greenville, S.C. and Graham, N.C.) in three Southern states earlier this month. "It succeed beyond my wildest dreams," Maxwell said, with sold-out performances, some press coverage and a palpable excitement from comedy fans online. For 2023, Maxwell said, he's looking to both expand the tour and bring it to Wilmington.

It didn't work out for the tour to play the Port City the first time around, but "I was touched," Maxwell said, "by how many people were like" − he slips into a sad voice − "'You're not doing your tour here?'"

Initially, Maxwell said, doing the tour this year "was on my bucket list for 2022." But life got in the way, and he thought he might push it back to 2023. That was before Maxwell said his wife, Alexis, convinced him to go for it this year.

Over the past couple of decades, tours both big and small of like-minded yet distinct comics have proved successful, including the Original Kings of Comedy Tour (famous Black comics) and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour (Southern white comics), just to name two widely divergent examples.

And while their styles are different, Maxwell said all of the comics on the Black Power Ranger tour are "Black millennials growing up in a time when some people think we're living in a post-racial society," Maxwell said. "When you're Black and in the South, you don't get the luxury of having that perspective. Being Black affects where you go to school, it affects everything. You don't get to brush that history aside."

It's also about representation, Maxwell said.

When he was a kid, "I really glommed on to any time there was a Black male on screen." It's one thing that attracted him to the Power Rangers, which featured a series of Black Rangers (a role originated by Zack Taylor). "There's something about seeing yourself exist on the screen, and in other spaces," he said, that makes you feel included in the culture at large.

Ultimately, he said, the hope is that the tour "will bring more diversity to the audience."

When they're not riffing on pop culture or other topics, Maxwell and his fellow comics often address what can be the awkward and uncomfortable subject of race head-on and "talk about it in a funny ways," he said, usually for a mostly white audience. He sees it as an opportunity to spend time with "an audience who might not have lived my experience, and get them to see my point of view."

Another thing the Black Power Rangers tour has the potential to do is bring the long-incubating Wilmington comedy scene to the outside world. Maxwell first met Wilson and Fortune doing shows and many, many open mics at the old Dead Crow Comedy Room, back when it was on Front Street and before it moved to its current location on Third Street.

"Wilmington prepared us," Maxwell said. "It feels like everything we've learned and the way we've supported each other, it's made us stronger. It's made us better writers."

"At this stage," he added, testing their material out of town, "That's what next for us. What's next for me is to get on the road more."

Maxwell is already planning a tour for next year, as well as some one-off shows, and he wants to bring more comics into the fold.

"We're going to be deputizing more people as Black Power Rangers," he said. "There are so many talented Black comedians in the South."

On the the most recent tour, three local comics joined the troupe in their respective cities. "Now they're linked (to us)," he said.

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Maxwell is still active on Wilmington's comedy scene, of course, which he said has made strides in terms of diversity.

"I think Wilmington, like most scenes, can always stand to do better," he said, though he's been heartened to see such shows as the Live NC Color variety show at Dead Crow and a recent bill of all-women comics at Hop Yard in Wilmington.

"That's not a thing that could've existed a few years ago," he said. "But we have a long way to go."

Contact John Staton at 910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Black Power Rangers tour born out of Wilmington NC comedy scene