It truly is a return to greatness

Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands 1-6
DC Comics
Creators: Tony Isabella, Clayton Henry, Yvel Guichet and Pete Pantazis
Cover dates: January 2018 to June 2018

I've been discussing my recent reading projects — the Black Lighting comics written by the character's creator, Tony Isabella. That includes the original 1977 series and the subsequent 1995 relaunch. I've had these two sets of comics in my collection for a number of years. I made it a point to read them now largely because this series was coming out, and it also would be written by Isabella.

This series is very much a product of its time, being ripped from the current headlines of innocent black people being harassed or shot simply because they are black. I criticized the 1995 series for being such a product of its time that it felt very dated reading it now, more than 20 years later. I admit we are still too close to the current time to judge accurately how well this title will age, but I don't think this series will suffer that same problem.

Isabella does a wonderful job of presenting today's racial tensions as the complex issue they truly are. While the members of the black Simmons family tragically at the center of much of the action of this tale are innocent victims of circumstance, the story does not shy away from presenting black characters as villains. Also, some very bad examples of humanity on the police force in this story are not used to depict all police officers as evil, corrupt or misguided. The characters are people first, and the color of their skin does not factor in what kind of people they are or what role they fill in society.

Having read this latest series immediately after the previous two, I also appreciated how Isabella took great supporting characters from Black Lightning's previous casts, and updated or tweaked them in nice ways. For instance, Walter Kasko was a fellow teacher with Jefferson Pierce in the 1995 series. In "Cold Dead Hands," he becomes the principal at the Cleveland school where Pierce now teaches. A police detective contact from the previous series, Tommy Colavito, becomes a young, female police detective named Tommi Colavito, who we learn in the story grew up with Pierce. There was nothing that would detract for someone being exposed to a Black Lightning comic for the first time with this story; rather it was a nice treat for longtime readers.

I also appreciated the artwork in this series more than that in the 1995 series. Clayton Henry has a dynamic style that shows the action well and also offers a variety of faces and physical characteristics that make it easy to distinguish between characters at a glance. He also gives Black Lightning a new costume, mirroring the one used in the new CW television show, which I think is a smart move if DC hopes to capitalize on the TV program for comic sales and vice versa. That doesn't mean all characters in the comics should mimic their appearances in other media, but for one that appears as infrequently in comics as Black Lightning, why not?




If you didn’t try this series as it came out just a few short months ago, I believe the trade is being solicited now for an October release. Keep a lookout for it, as this is good comics!

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."