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By the end of the 1970s, DC Comics seemed to have lost
the energy that had marked the company early in the
Silver Age. They were to most fans, old-fashioned
comics, the kind your dad read, when he was a kid.
Marvel had made a great leap forward, coinciding with
their revival of the X-men in 1976, which I consider to
be the beginning of the modern or Bronze Age of comics.
One area where DC lagged behind Marvel Comics, and the
rest of the media in general, was the absence of
characters of any discernable ethnicity other than
"White Anglo-Saxon Protestant". Most every character
had a name derived from English names and except for
the painfully blatant ethnic stereotypes, such as
Thomas "Pieface" Kalmaku in Green Lantern and the
Chinese character, Chop-Chop from the Blackhawks.
This may not seem strange until you consider some of
the creators of the period, themselves. DC Comics, and
comics as an industry has always been rife with
creators from minority ethnic groups. Consider the
names of some prominent Golden Age and Silver Age
creators, Jerome Seigel, Joe Shuster, Jack (Kirby)
Kurtzberg, Otto Binder, Stanley (Lee) Leiber, Carmine
Infantino, Steve Ditko, Irv Novick, John Buscema, Ernie
Chua, Alfredo Alcala, and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, to
name but a few. From the beginning, minorities were
represented in the creative side of comics.
So, why were they missing from the comics, themselves?
I don't know, I don't pretend to have an answer, but I
do know that the ethnicity of a character never kept me
from reading a particular comic. I actively sought out
the issue of Green Lantern, by Denny O'Neil and Neal
Adams, which introduced John Stewart as the back-up
Green Lantern for Hal Jordan, making him DC's first
African-American character, in the mainstream DC
Universe.
It's no surprise, therefore, that when DC announced a
new series, starring an African-American hero, I was
eager to check it out. If he was half as cool as John
Stewart had been in his short career, I know I'd like
him.
So it was that I bought the first issue of Black
Lightning and readily devoured it. Previously, I had
seen Marvel's idea of a Black character, Luke
Cage-Power Man, and had been turned off by the angry
rhetoric and the substandard art. Black Lightning
shared little in common with Luke Cage, apart from a
similar tailor. First of all, he was a school teacher,
in everyday life.
Jefferson Pierce returned to the Metropolis
neighborhood where he'd grown up, coming back to try to
make a difference. Everywhere he looked, were signs of
urban decay and corruption. Of course, being a comic
book, it wasn't long before his outrage drove him into
a costume and mask, to right the wrongs that he could
never right through official channels.
Using technical expertise that could have won him a
job at any high tech company, he invented a force-field
belt which could deflect bullets and transmit an
electro-static charge, through metal, if he touched it.
To conceal his identity, he devised a mask attached to
an afro wig, concealing his own short hair effectively.
Thankfully, he later disposed of this dated item.
Unfortunately, the timing was wrong for this book.
Caught in the DC Implosion, it lasted only 5 issues.
But, if John Stewart had opened the door for minority
characters, at DC, Black Lightning kicked it off it's
hinges, for good. Soon, we would see a steady increase
in the number of minority characters within DC Comics,
to the point where, when Superman died, no one batted
an eye when an African-American character was one of
those who took up the S-shield to fight for Truth and
Justice. And it hasn't been limited to African-American
males, though they have been prominently placed, there
are women, too. Vixen was a member of the JLA for a
time, Amanda Waller was the government official in
charge of the Suicide Squad, and one of the most
popular characters of the last ten to fifteen years.
There's El Diablo, a school teacher, like Black
Lightning, who fought crime and injustice in Dos Rios,
Texas and the new Batgirl is a young Asian woman.
Marvel Comics has many characters of various ethnic
backgrounds, Elektra was/is Greek(is she alive
still/again-heh-), Storm of the X-men was born in the
US and raised in Africa, Jubilee of Generation X is of
Korean ancestry. Luke Cage is still around, less of an
angry ethnic stereotype than ever, James Rhodes
(Rhodey) has been a friend and stand-in for Iron Man,
on occasion, and even pulled a stint as War Machine.
Captain America's former partner, The Falcon is still
out there, as well. The X-men seems to be one of the
most diverse series in comics, boasting members and
other hangers-on from just about every continent.
I guess my point is, good characters are where you
find them. I would rather have well-rounded, well
thought-out characters, whatever their ethnic roots,
than different-colored cyphers or stereotypes who have
no more depth than the sheet of paper they're printed
on. I guess that's one of the reasons I liked Black
Lightning, he wasn't driven by anger or rage, he was a
thinking man who decided to do something about the
things he saw were wrong.
Later, of course, he would develop electrical powers
of his own, no longer relying on the electromagnetic
force-field belt. He fought along with Batman and his
Outsiders, as well as the Justice League Task Force.
For my version, I decided to designs a new suit around
the lines of his original. I used similar colors,
except for the storm-cloud gray, which I think looks
better than the stark white of the original. for the
lightning, I went with a less-static design, less the
symbol for lightning and more of a depiction of
lightning as it actually appears.
Well, that's me done. Hope you enjoy it, and remember,
the opinions are my own. See you next month.
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