Black Lightning Strikes Out!

Black Lightning - Cold Dead Hands is a modern reworking of the Black Lightning concept by the Tony Isabella, the characters creator. It's a modern comic book story with modern comic book art and that means for this fanboy it's an inferior outing compared to its Bronze Age source.

I give Isabella credit for trying to make this reimagined Black Lightning fit into the world of the modern day, a world in which young black men are shot down for far too little reason far too often. Once again we have the teacher-hero who returns to elevate the lives of the children and bring them hope. But in this case, the teacher-hero smacks too much of the type I don't like, given credit for charm but showing little evidence of labor and gifted with interested and bright students just eager for a chance. No one ever does the struggle of battling the system on behalf of kids who don't care for the battle to be fought, but Black Lightning came the closest. This version has too much Freedom Writers aroma for me, even if Jefferson Pierce is black.

And the Black Lightning here is not alone, but we are forced to encounter an avalanche of back up characters, most far too swiftly. The modern art makes identifying characters difficult in the best of times and saddling the reader with lots of pretty much identical people makes it almost impossible to keep up. And then there are shape-shifters too.

The villain in this story is Tobias Whale, but in contradiction to the original we get a black Whale, the albino villain trope being cast overboard in this instance. Unfortunately the bleached white skin in opposition to Jeffersion Pierce was much of the thematic undercurrent of the series. He's not as scary and doesn't feel nearly as memorable.

And where did all the fucking aliens come from. It seems the DCU is now rife with aliens around every corner. I'm not sure if this is the way it is these days, but these sci-fi touches really scratch gashes in the realism  a series like Black Lightning is supposed to have.

This is a more powerful Black Lightning too, a man with an electrical field and a suit that makes the most of it in some creative ways. I'm worried that Black Lightning is too powerful, too far removed from his "blaxploitation" fisticuffs mode, but I can handle that change I guess.

All in all this was a much less compelling read than the original or the nineties revival. It lacked the chutzpah of both of those series and as pretty as it could be, was at times just plain confusing.

Note: This post originally appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo. 

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