The 1990s were not kind to Pierce

Black Lightning 1-13
DC Comics
Creators: Tony Isabella, Eddie Newell, Ron McCain, Octavio Cariello, David Zimmerman, Fred Fredericks, David DeVries, Lane Shiro, Mike Huddleston and Keith Champagne
Cover dates: February 1995 to February 1996

I've been writing about finally reading the Black Lightning issues written by the character's creator, Tony Isabella. You can read my thoughts on the 1977 series here, as well as a bit of back story on how I finally came to be reading these issues I've owned for several years.

This week we are going to look at the mid-1990s relaunch of Black Lightning as a solo title. Writing chores were again handled by Isabella, but the character underwent certain tweeks in keeping with the grim-and-gritty feel of comics in the 1990s and the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths and post-Zero Hour DC Universe continuity.

Suicide Slum is replaced by the generic Brick City. The artwork is darker and not an improvement, in my opinion. I'm not familiar with much else that penciller Eddie Newell has done, but I was not a fan of his interpretation of Black Lightning or his world. Nor was I a fan of Black Lightning’s ’90s costume redesign. The big, thick wrestling-style belt and the oversized jacket collar than served to partially obscure Jefferson Pierce's face when he was in costume seemed like they would be cumbersome for a heroic action costume.

In many, many ways this title was a product of the 1990s and reading the series now, it feels somewhat dated as a result.

Having said all that, I did still like the voice Tony Isabella gave to Black Lightning and the initial story arcs of this new series. The supporting cast is expanded and fleshed out nicely. The only real misstep I saw in the writing was the representation of Gangbuster, a supporting character from the Superman books, who makes an appearance in the story arc in issues 6-8; Jose Delgado did not seem to be the same character in this story as he was in the Superman titles of the time, which I did read as they were coming out.

But then, with issue No. 9, Tony Isabella was gone and David DeVries was the new writer on the title. I'm not familiar with DeVries from any other comics work, and I don't know what brought about the change in writer, but my own feeling is that the book suffered with the change. The resulting stories under DeVries were OK, but they were more typical superhero fare where the writer could remove Black Lightning and substitute any other hero with very few changes. These just didn't feel like Black Lightning stories to me, certainly not Jefferson Pierce stories. But again, that may be my skewed history with the character more than anything else.Your mileage may vary.

Come back next week to see my thoughts on Isabella's modern return to Black Lightning, "Cold Dead Hands."