Posted in: Comics | Tagged: black lightning, Comics, cress williams, entertainment, Jefferson Pierce, tony isabella, Trevor Von Eeden

Black Lightning – Still Looking Good At 40

With all the talk about diversity in comics, this seems like a good time to talk about one of the first major African American superheroes to appear in DC Comics. 40 years ago this month saw the debut of Black Lightning by Tony Isabella and Trevor Von Eeden in his own comic.

To give you a better idea of the mindset of DC at the time, they were seriously going to publish a character called Black Bomber, a white racists that became a black superhero when under stress. I am at a total loss on how something so insulting could ever have been considered. Before the project could move forward, the editor behind it left DC and the company turned to former Luke Cage writer Isabella to straighten the project out. Isabella had been working on Black Lightning for a while and convinced the new editor to go with him instead. Isabella would write the first ten issues before Denny O'Neil took over for one issue and then the series was cancelled in a large scale pruning of titles referred to as the DC implosion.

Black Lightning is Jefferson Pierce, a gold medal Olympic decathlete who would go on to become a teacher and eventually principal of a school in the Metropolis area known as Suicide Slums. He kept his abilities a secret until a group called the 100 were trying to take over the area and killed one of his promising students. He took on the costume to stop the 100. He once told Mr. Terrific he chose the name Black Lightning because he was the only African American superhero and he wanted everyone to know who they were dealing with.

The character spent some time guest starring in series like Detective Comics and Justice League of America, even turning down membership in the JLA. He would eventually find his way to a new series and team in 1983 – Batman and the Outsiders from Mike W. Barr, Jim Aparo and Alan Davis.

At this point Black Lightning had lost his powers due to a psychological block after an innocent bystander named Trina Shelton got killed in a confrontation with armed gunmen. Batman recruit him along with the rest of the Outsider for a mission to save Lucius Fox from Markovia. Pierce's powers were restored and he joined on full time with the Outsiders. While with them he had to deal with Shelton's parents hiring the Masters of Disaster to kidnap Pierce, but when the discovered he still regretted their daughter's death and was willing to be executed, they sacrificed themselves to save him. With the Outsiders breaking up, Pierce would move to Brick City where he continued his solo adventures in a new Black Lightning series in 1995 that brought Isabella back to the character and joined him with artist Eddy Newell.

The series last thirteen issues with Isabella being replaced after issue eight with writer Dave de Vries. Without a series, Black Lightning would step back a bit while Jefferson Pierce stepped up joining President Lex Luthor's cabinet as Secretary of Education in 2000. He popped up in books like Green Arrow and the new Outsiders (which featured his daughter Thunder). Pierce would inadvertently kill a bad guy and was pardoned by incoming President Pete Ross, but Pierce had to step down as Secretary of Education.

In 2010, Jen Van Meter and Cully Hamner would release a six-issue limited series called Black Lightning: Year One. This series would flesh out the early years of Pierce and connect his origin to the criminal organization the 100 and Tobias Whale.

Black Lightning would also finally join the Justice League as part of the team put together by Brad Meltzer and Ed Benes.

His personal life has had great tragedy as his niece, Joanna, was murdered and his daughter, Anissa, who took up the mantle of Thunder ended up in a coma. The New 52 would take him into conflict with Blue Devil over a crime wave by Tobias Whale.

But, after forty years, the biggest thing to happen for the character is in the works now as actor Cress Williams is going to being Black Lightning to live in a new pilot for the CW. The concept from Greg Berlanti, Salim Akil and Mara Brock Akil was originally set up at another network, but when that fell through the CW jumped on it and the pilot is being worked on now. The pilot also stars China Anne McClain as his ex-wife Jennifer and Nafessa Williams as his daughter Anissa. Now word on if the pilot will tie directly into Berlanti's Arrowverse, but if its given a series order, it would make sense for it to join the CW's other superhero shows.

Black Lightning has always been a strong character that did well in a supporting role, but stumbled a bit in the spotlight. Hopefully, after 40 years, the television series will help shed the light on the character that it deserves and that will filter back into the comics.

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