Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: black lightening, blue devil, Comics, dc, tony isabella

Black Lightning Or Black Lightening?

Tony Isabella posted;

Yes, I have heard the news about Black Lightning.  You don't have to e-mail me, private message me, phone me, or post links on my Facebook page.  My only public comments to date have been "Words fail me" and, to my friend Dan Mishkin, "Forget it, Dan.  It's DC Town."

But, really, if you've ever read anything I've written about Black Lightning and DC's continued refusal to honor its agreements with me, and if you have half a brain, you already know how I feel about the news.

The news is that DC Comics are bringing Black Lightning to the New DCU, not by its creator Tony Isabella, but by Marc Andreyko and and artist Robson Rocha for a five issue arc of DC Comics Presents alongside Blue Devil. Although in the post that announced the news on DC's The Source, he is referred to three times instead as "Black Lightening" instead.

Blue Devil co-creator Dan Mishkin also commented;

DC Comics is apparently not finished with the Cohn & Mishkin characters yet: our Blue Devil will be appearing for a limited run, partnered with Tony Isabella's Black Lightning, beginning in October (but not written by any of us because, again, that is how the game is played).

Tony Isabella has always maintained that the creation of Black Lightning for DC Comics was intended as a publishing partnership, with Isabella receiving a greater creator royalty for the use of the character, with an increased amount for extra-media use. But for that reason, it seems that DC Comics went out of their way not to use the character in other media, to the extent that the character was renamed and redesigned as Black Vulcan for the Superfriends cartoon even if the character and his powers remained unchanged.

Say, you don't suppose Black Lightening could be argued as being a different character to Black Lightning, do you?

UPDATE: The DC announcement first ran at 6am yesterday. The post was amended about twelve minutes after this article ran.

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