Friday, January 09, 2009

Black Lightning Year One

Okay, please tell me you read the first issue of Black Lightning Year One.

It can be a little hard to follow in places; I always get confused when I get thrown lots of relatives and supporting characters and people without easy to identify spandex costumes all at once. That's why I avoid parties. Most parties.

But it's a valiant effort to take pull together all the bits of BL's backstory into a sensible narrative. You know, Peter Gambi, the apparent power internalization, the wife and kids no one ever mentioned, the very aggressive timeline of accomplishment that lets him be a former Olympic athlete/ crusading school reformer/ superhero/ potential Cabinet appointee.

What did you think?

8 comments:

Ryan said...

I personally loved the book. I've never been to interested in BL (I admit I only bought the book to show support for Cully Hamner), but this issue has be really interested in tracking down some back issues of books with BL in them

Diamondrock said...

I loved it. I thought they did a really decent job of pulling all that disparate stuff together. Let's hope it continues to to be good.

Hurrah for retcons!

B.G. Christensen said...

I try to attend only parties where easy-to-identify spandex costumes are worn.

Baal said...

I only bought it because of a good review and curiosity about what changes they were making to BL's origin. The original series was a pile of crap and the character is mostly the boring teammate that makes everyone else look better. The first issue was suprisingly good and I'll be picking up the whole mini...

SallyP said...

I liked it. I know next to nothing about Black Lightning, so there wasn't any problem with retcons for me. Good motivation and decent story, and I love Cully Hamner's art.

Martin Gray said...

I liked it lots too, did a wee review, but I won't link - I have to stop whoring so.

Anonymous said...

I still say the best interpretation of Black Lightning, ever, was done by Sinbad on Saturday Night Live.

Tony said...

I haven't seen it yet, although I loved the original series and the 1990s series.

I'm a little disappointed at all the Year One stuff. I'd like to see new adventures of Black Lightning, not rehashes of his old stuff.