Black Lightning's Back

I more or less watched all four seasons / 58 episodes of the CW's Black Lightning. It was hard going at times, because the stupidity factor was very high at times, but I hung in there as best I could. And I'm sorry that it's been cancelled, because for all of its faults, at least it was a tv show which had some empowered Black folks. In case you haven't noticed, there's not a whole lot of that going on out there. 

It also had a consistently great soundtrack. I often found myself summoning up remembrance of great tunes past or Googling to find out what that most excellent song was.

But now it's gone, and I started thinking about the comic book version of the character. I'm sure I saw Black Lightning in a cameo or two along the way--in fifty-five years of comic book reading, you bump into most of the characters in one way or another--but I'd never read an issue of a Black Lightning comic book. And then I remembered that Trevor Von Eden, one of my favorite comic book artists (and probably my favorite lay-out artist ever) had been there at the birth of Black Lightning. (In fact, he was co-creator with Tony Isabella.) So I decided to have a read.

The library had Black Lightning Volume 1, which collected issues 1 - 12 of the first run at the character. 232 pages. Normally that would take me a day or two to read. I'm sorry to say that it took me a couple of weeks. And it was not a pleasant slog. 

For one thing, every page was packed with stupid cliches. Characters who talked in stilted fashion, using slang that I'm pretty sure no one-- Black, White, Brown, Yellow, or Red--has ever used. For another thing, there were always White characters in authority positions who dominated the power structures...from Jefferson Pierce's mentor / stand-in dad 

Black Lightning #12 appeared in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #1 and later in World's Finest Volume 1 #260 January, 1980...which surprised me, as I didn't realize that DC had done much of that kind of thing, but when I looked into it, quite a few of the Cancelled Comics Cavalcade stories had found there way into print somewhere or other...even the two issues of Kamandi that I had spent many a year pining over. 

I was also struck by a few parallels between Black Lightning and one of Trevor von Eeden's other Big Projects, Thriller. (I always had a soft spot in my heart for Thriller, and have read the series several times. It is also a book which showcases Trevor von Eeden's breakdown skills quite magnificently.) Both of these books featured Trevor von Eeden's art. Both ran twelve issues (well...more or less, right?). And in both books, the writer left first (after 7 for Thriller, after 10 for Black Lightning) and then the artist left before the end of the series (after 8 for Thriller, after 11 for Black Lightning). Of course, there's no comparison between the two in terms of quality. Black Lightning is journeyman work for von Eden, and features what The Comics Journal used to refer to as "dopey, inspired comic book" writing. Thriller features superb artwork (for 8 issues--though Alex Niño, who took over for the last four issues, was no slouch) and some very interesting writing (for 7 issues--and then Bill DuBay carefully extracted everything original out of the book and insured that it could not survive much longer).