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At time of writing the first details and overall structure of CW’s Black Lightning series have finally come to light. We’ve now got a stronger idea of what the driving impetus of the show will be as well as the names of 4 most important super-cast members. I’m specifically talking here about the superheroes and villains in the cast rather than folks like Black Lightning’s ex-wife or the prime police officer of the show. With all this info to throw around, I thought I’d breakdown who the primary cast members of the show are as characters and in the comics as well as looking at the plot synopsis released by CW.
CRESS WILLIAMS AS JEFFERSON PIERCE – BLACK LIGHTNING
Black Lightning, created in the ‘70s as DC was trying to reach new audiences, is one of the curiously more consistent superheroes of the DCU. A lot of that has to do with prominence- despite being the 2nd or 3rd most important black superhero of DC comics Black Lightning’s always been kind of a bit player. His initial run placed him on Batman’s team of C-listers the Outsiders and he remained out of sight and out of mind for a good long while. There was an attempt in the mid-to-late 2000s to raise his profile, adding him to the Justice League roster, but it just didn’t stick.
As such: in the comics, Black Lightning was a street-level hero who defends black neighborhoods while also doing a lot of community outreach. He was a teacher as well as a superhero and even served as Secretary of Education under President Lex Luthor. Interestingly, it was Black Lightning’s testimony that helped bring down Luthor’s presidency when he was eventually impeached.
CW’s adaptation looks to be keeping the basic outline of Black Lightning with a pretty unique twist on it. This Jefferson Pierce has been retired from superheroing for 9 years after the strain it placed on his family became too much and has since become a principal and pillar of the community.
That’s a pretty clever way to integrate the idea of Jeff as an educator into the proceedings and I’m really on board with the idea of a superhero being this middle-aged dad, that’s actually pretty unique in the current landscape. It also seems worth noting that CW has always been absolutely in love with black father figures in their superhero shows: Diggle on Arrow, Joe West on The Flash, Martian Manhunter on Supergirl, so it’s nice to have a whole show dedicated to the black dad for once.
Obviously, Jeff isn’t going to stay retired as the rise of a new gang known as the 100 inspires him out of retirement to become Black Lightning again. This is admittedly basically making a whole superhero show out of “I’m too old for this shit” but honestly I kind of dig it. If the superhero genre wants to persist through the 2020s part of that is just embracing people from walks of life. What’s more, making the crux of the character a concern over his legacy as spurred by getting older worked wonders for the Iron Man franchise. Speaking of legacy…
NAFESSA WILLIAMS AS ANISSA PIERCE – THUNDER
So, in the comics, both of Black Lightning’s daughters developed super powers of their own. I’m not sure if that’ll translate over to the live action show but honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. At this point trying to pull off a live-action superhero show with only 1 superhero in it is basically unfeasible. Every show needs a community of heroes working in concert with one main good guy and a rotating cast of other powered folks so Black Lightning’s daughters getting super would make a lot of sense. Actually, it’d be a solid way to square the circle of him coming out of retirement if fighting evil ended up a family affair for the Pierces.
Thunder’s power is the ability to alter her body’s mass without changing her volume. This essentially means she can manipulate her density, becoming immovable or near invulnerable as well as gaining limited super strength. I don’t really know how the density power relates to Black Lightning’s electro-kinesis but it would at least be easy to achieve from an FX standpoint and visually unique. As Black Lightning’s older daughter I suspect that Thunder is the more likely of the two daughters to develop her powers quickly. Though at the same time, Thunder has always been more of a rebel in the books and less likely to follow her dad’s example- she doesn’t even take crap from Batman in the books.
Aside from her powers, Thunder is also notable for being a lesbian in the comics. I do really hope this translates and I think there’s probably a good chance it will. CW always tends to try its best to get something for everyone in its shows so having one of Black Lightning’s daughters as a standard bearer for queer fans would be an easy way to continue that particular tradition. Overall CW prefers queer women anyway like Alex Danvers on Supergirl or White Canary on Legends of Tomorrow so I wouldn’t be surprised if Thunder got to keep her sexuality for this adaptation.
CHINA ANNE McCLAIN AS JENNIFER PIERCE – LIGHTNING
Jennifer Pierce is the youngest daughter of Black Lightning as well as the youngest character in the show overall. She was only invented in the mid-2000s…sort of, it’s a little complicated. The visual design of her character, a strikingly cool living lightning bolt appearance that her body generates all on its own, was first created in the non-continuity comic Kingdom Come. That book was set in a possible future of the DCU and, in the mid-2000s, DC adopted some of the designs from Kingdom Come for new characters as a way to make their universe feel like it was moving forward. The thrust of this, and where Lightning first appeared, was in the pages of the Justice Society of America, who actually have appeared in CW’s vast and inter-connected collection of shows in the past.
All of that being said I fully expect CW to try and streamline Lightning as much as possible. Her visual design is cool but seems really difficult to pull off in live action and the fact she just has lightning powers like her dad would be kind of visually a bit too similar to Black Lightning’s abilities. However, I do expect her to get powers eventually, maybe just saved for season 2 or something like that. See, the big twist with her powers in the comics is that she can’t totally control them.
To activate her Lightning form she has to touch something electronic and when she does, she emits a small electromagnetic pulse that knocks out everything in the area. That seems like a pretty solid pitch for how to make her powers more of a curse, a full manifestation of the damage that the superhero lifestyle is doing to Black Lightning’s family, bringing his worst fears to life. Actually, Lightning might be a decent choice for the show’s ultimate REAL bad guy, it’d certainly be unexpected.
MARVIN JONES III AS TOBIAS WHALE
Meet the goofiest goddamn gangster in all of comic books. Tobias Whale is basically Kingpin but without the dignity. I’m expecting him to undergo a pretty complete retooling much the same way most of Luke Cage’s bad guys had to be radically re-imagined for the Netflix show as their Blaxploitation origins don’t really translate to modern sensibilities. Frame as an “albino black man” Tobias Whale was Black Lightning’s first major antagonist and has since stuck around the DCU as a sporadic C-level crime boss. He’s almost got a gimmick with the whale thing (which is only part of his name because he’s fat, incidentally) but other than that he’s about at the same level of a lot of most Batman mob villains like Black Mask.
I really don’t know how much The Whale (yes, he’s really often called that) will actually feature into Black Lightning as a core antagonist. The presence of the 100 is an interesting aspect. The 100 are a weird subset of the DCU in how much of their mythos is kind of conflict between the 2009 Black Lightning: Year One comic and the ‘80s Booster Gold comic. They were first introduced in a flurry of one-off appearances, which is where they were seen backing Tobias Whale against Black Lightning. After that, it was revealed, in Booster Gold, that they were a criminal cabal run by a US Senator with larger aspirations. Later on Black Lightning: Year One retconned them to be an ancient society with origins in 1492 Spain and ties to Intergang, a Metropolis mafia with alien tech.
Given the show’s themes of community and Black Lightning’s own history in education and role as a principal, I actually wouldn’t be surprised if the 100 here followed the Booster Gold model. It’d actually work really well if Tobias Whale was just a flunky positioned to cause extreme crime in the black neighborhoods by the city leaders as a way to justify gentrification efforts in that area. That was basically the story Luke Cage was trying to tell so it’d be cool to see it done again without getting bogged down in overacting and curiously conservative politics.
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