Tony Isabella, who created the Black Lightning character with Trevor Von Eeden, revealed at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention he’s working on a six issue Black Lighting miniseries tentatively called, “Cold Dead Hands.”
“I’m probably not supposed to announce any of it, but I've been doing it anyway because people ask and people keep saying, ‘Well if only DC would let Tony Isabella write Black Lightning again.’ Well yes, we are.”
Isabella is reworking the character a little bit. For example, Jefferson Pierce will be the youngest he’s ever been, at 28 years old. He’s also putting a new spin on one of Black Lightning's biggest enemies, Tobias Whale.
“In my new Black Lightning comic books series, which isn’t based on the TV series, because I started working on them independently, I’m basically changing all sorts of stuff. Because of the DC Rebirth thing, I can do whatever I want. Black Lighting is younger, he’s not married, he doesn’t have daughters, but he has cousins. And the older cousin is one of his students and I've already dropped a few hints that she’s got powers too. It’s set in Cleveland – we don't even try to disguise that fact anymore. There’s a redesigned Tobias Whale. We are getting rid of the whole Kingpin wannabe thing with Tobias Whale. He’s got the body of Lebron James. And then he’s got this whole Dick Tracy look because of the brow, a very tall head with these flesh ridges. But we are going to reduce the size of the head so it doesn’t look cartoony. He’s black, not an albino anymore. Between the ridges and the beady eyes, there’s a little bit of Whale going on there.”
Isabella also said he changed the sex of one of the main characters and pointed out it was easier to make the edit because the drafts are digital nowadays.
“I had two other strong women in the stories too, but they were evil as shit so I knew I had to have somebody on the side of the angels,” Isabella said. “It took like 20 minutes to do it. I just did a search on the character's name and changed some of the dialogue in it because I realized I didn't have a strong woman character in this story. Women are about half our audience or more right now plus I’m married to a woman.”
In addition to the Black Lighting miniseries, Isabella has a book coming out next month called, “July 1963: A Pivotal Month In Comic Book Life of Tony Isabella Vol. 1.”
“Take it from my blog, I'm buying, reading and writing about every comic book that came out the same month as Fantastic Four Annual #1. I have no idea if this will sell at all, but it will be another book I can put on my table at conventions.”
Isabella also revealed he and Von Eeden are hoping to develop a new property together. Isabella is also teaching himself how to write a screenplay, “Followed by teaching myself how to write a good screenplay.”
The last time Isabella wrote for Black Lightning was in 1995. Illustrated by Eddy Newell, Dave deVries replaced Isabella as writer halfway through the series. Visit Isabella’s blog to stay updated on news about Black Lightning and his other projects.
