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."

It was an electrifying debut

Black Lightning 1-11
DC Comics
Creators: Tony Isabella, Trevor Von Eeden, Frank Springer and Vince Coletta
Cover dates: April 1977 to October 1978

Longtime readers of this blog know I buy more comics than I read. Oh, I intend to read all of them eventually, and I've slowed down in my buying quite a bit in more recent years, but I still have a huge backlog of trades, hardcovers and even single-issue back issues that I have purchased over the years and haven't gotten around to reading yet.

I usually read comics from that backlog at random as time allows. Every now and then, though, something will prompt me to grab something from the middle of the stack and vow to read it next. The announcement some months back that Tony Isabella would be returning to write for DC Comics on his creation, Black Lightning, prompted such a move.

I know a little about Black Lightning, but I'm no expert. I've read the late 1970s issue of Justice League of America where Superman invites Black Lightning to join the League and the hero of Suicide Slum famously turns down the invitation. I've read several issues of the various iterations of the Outsiders (both with Batman and without). I've read more recent issues of Justice League where Black Lightning was a member. There have been many, many other stories that included Black Lightning — some even featuring him as the title character such as Black Lightning: Year One by Jen Van Meter and Cully Hamner from almost 10 years ago now — but I've never read any of the Black Lightning comics written by his creator, Tony Isabella, a writer whose work I enjoy.

In the late 1970s when this initial series debuted, I was 10 years old. There were no comics shops; instead we bought our comics at the grocery store or department stores. Limited availability, limited mobility and limited resources — even though this was a time when comics were a fraction of the cost they are now — all contributed to my being unaware of the new character or his title at the time. And honestly, even if I had known about Black Lightning in 1977, I likely wouldn't have cared to buy his comic when other names were more recognizable to me.

But as an adult collector, I've long been curious about the initial series and Black Lightning's mid-1990s second solo series, also written — at least initially — by Isabella. Over the years, I've managed to track them all down. Now a new, modern start for Black Lightning was being planned, and Isabella would again by writing Jefferson Pierce. I wanted to read all three series together. The fact that a new "Black Lightning" television adaptation was coming was also a factor, but less of one since it would debut on the CW before the new comic series and before I'd have a chance to read the back issues I owned.

I enjoyed watching the CW's debut season of "Black Lightning." While I'd heard names like Tobias Whale and Inspector Henderson from the comics before, watching this new television program told me a lot about these people I knew little about. It also introduced me to names I'd not heard before like Peter Gambi and The 100. While some of the relationships and interactions depicted in "Black Lightning" the television series were not exactly the same as those from the comics, the show served as a nice introduction prior to reading these earliest Black Lightning comics.

The first Black Lightning comics series ran for 11 issues before being caught up in the "DC Implosion," a name coined in jest mocking the line-wide expansion that had just been announced as the DC Explosion. I didn't know it at the time I bought these back issues, but the sudden cancellation of many titles at DC in 1978 left many story lines unresolved and several issues written and drawn without a title to publish them in. Black Lightning was no exception, and what would have been issue No. 12 later ran as a segment in an issue of World's Finest Comics. Sadly, I don't own that World’s Finest issue, but I found the previous 11 issues of Black Lightning quite enjoyable despite the abrupt ending.

Peter Gambi is still very much a father-figure and mentor to former Olympian Jefferson Pierce, who has returned to Suicide Slum to teach by day and clean up the streets by night. I was surprised to learn that initially Black Lightning did not have the metahuman powers he would later develop. Instead, he has an electromagnetic belt that gives him a protective force field and some limited ability to discharge electrical current in the form of lightning bolts. But the belt is the source of those abilities; they do not exist within Jefferson himself.

Primarily, Black Lightning battles The 100, a gang that controls much of the vice in Suicide Slum and keeps the populace in check by recruiting its young people and keeping people afraid, on drugs or both. Tobias Whale is one of the chief architects of The 100's activities, and very early on they recruit an archer/assassin named Merlyn to take out Black Lightning. I've always liked the character of Merlyn and did not know he was associated with Black Lightning at all. I was also pleased to find out after reading the early issues of Black Lightning with his involvement, that this is one of the earliest appearances of the character since his debut in the pages of Justice League of America.

For those who don't know, Suicide Slum is a subdivision of Metropolis in the comics. That's how a cop like Inspector Henderson, a frequent Superman supporting character in some eras, comes to play such a large role in early issues of Black Lightning. But also, being set within Metropolis, it would make sense that Superman might show up in some form in this first Black Lightning series. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he does appear in several issues, as does Jimmy Olsen. Nice continuity tie-ins there!

And then there's the title character, Black Lightning, a.k.a. Jefferson Pierce. Pierce is a likable, relatable character in these earliest issues. He has confidence, which he would need to play dress up and believe he has a chance against the thugs he fights. He is a skilled athlete as readers are reminded by references to his Olympics background, so his exploits are believable. And Pierce seems equally at ease in the classroom, teaching his students and being a role model for them as a citizen, even without his costume and flashy superhero identity. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I really enjoyed these early issues.

Be sure to come back next week and we’ll fast forward to the character’s mid-1990s relaunch.