Amped Up

Tony Isabella noted on his blog earlier tonight that DC is finally soliciting a trade paperback collecting the original ’70s run of Black Lightning in the current Diamond Previews catalog for April release.



I’m thrilled to hear this. Like so many who’ve met him and so many others who only know him through his writing or interactions online, I adore Tony — in part because of how he wears his considerably sized heart on his sleeve, yeah, but also because he’s made some excellent comics.

Tony was the first comics pro I ever interviewed, nearly 25 years ago now, followed
in very short order (at the same Mid-Ohio convention) by his good friend Bob Ingersoll and his new collaborator Eddy Newell. Eddy was the artist on a fresh, long-awaited Black Lightning series written by Tony, his creator, that wouldn’t debut for more than
a year. It proved to be a powerful take on humanity within the superhero genre that ended unhappily (to way understate the case) both for readers and for Jefferson Pierce’s real-world dad.

Uh-Oh

“What could be the harm in burning the beard off of this really strong homeless guy?”

That’s what Johnny Storm thought, more or less, in the example of #badcomic bookchoices made between the tiers of panels reproduced below.

Finding It

The Phillies won last night — and it had nothing to do with this post.

I wrote a blog entry titled “Losing It” upon their dropping the first game of the
season, you see. And while I’m not superstitious it’s curious that right after that all of my entries to date here disappeared. Never mind that the rest of the post was positive, despite its name.

So as I retyped lost entries, I decided to see whether I could turn the tides of fortune. The only question was, Should the opposite of “Losing It” be “Finding It” or “Winning It”? The Phils were down 3-0 going into the 9th inning when I began writing the meat of this post, so “Winning It” felt inappropriate, and I definitely had some material on the subject of finding.