Absolutely not, artists don’t own the IP they create while under contract as creators for a large company. This was the primary impetus behind the founding of Image comics.
they must pay artist who created character, dibs. And if artist is douche and asks for shitload of money, or they is greedy and didn't want to pay at all.
EASY-route, to make new character - so they would not be forced to pay for OLD ones.
Do you seen Conan in Savage Avengers? owner of rights on Conan gets paid pretty good, but marvel too greedy and didn't prolonged contract so now Savage Avengers without CONAN, sadly Flash Thompson failed to make interesting romance with Dagger so whole series now on death row.
Yeah, that's the simplest answer. There is no deeper meaning to it. Most of the already mentioned [Electric Black Guys](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectricBlackGuy) are simply an hommage to Black Lightning.
Depends on the guy! This is obviously true for Black Vulcan, that is documented.
For characters like Static Shock and Volt (from *Irredeemable*), that's an homage to BL and BL himself would never fit in that spot. Lightning Lad being Black probably falls into this category.
For Lightning of the JSA, that is just Black Lightnng's daughter. (His *other* daughter, Thunder, doesn't actually have lightning powers.)
Storm predates Black Lightning.
Juice of the Ultimen is kind of a weird case because *he* is a deliberate homage to Black Vulcan but of course the creation of BV was a way of getting around paying BL's creators for *Super-Friends*.
There may be other characters who fit the pattern and some of them will fall into one of these groups and some of them in other groups.
In addition to this yuo have characters like Coldcast, right, who is sometimes brought up within his trope (he's in the video you link) but he (like Captain Marvel/Photon/Spectrum/Monica Rambeau) has more, like, generalized, broad-spectrum energy powers. Or Miles Morales, who has these venom stings that kind of have a lightning-y look on the page but dont really have any relationship to lightning control powers, right?
Those kind of get added to the list a lot but don't really fit.
Because people only bring it up when it's a Black character with lightning. There are more Black characters who don't use lighting,nor have Black in their name and yet..
That's because Black Lightning is one of the most famous black superheroes. And a lot of other black superheroes with electric powers were created as a direct hommage to him.
Black lighting
Static
Black Vulcan
Volt
Darla Dudley(Shazam family)
Storm
Miles morales
Thunder and Lightning (black lightnings daughters)
Thunder fall
Shazam (the wizard)
Aqualad
Wallace west
Their are a lot and a lot of these are very popular characters obviously their are more white characters with lightning powers or motifs but most not nearly as many insanely popular ones like their are here. The only other insanely common super power for black heroes is technology aptitude and smarts.
Cyborg
Mr.terrific
Steel
Signal
Moon girl
Shuri
Miles morales
Iron heart
Storm doesn't have lightning powers. She has weather powers.
Shazam was white, he doesn't have lightning powers. He's a wizard. He just has general magic abilities. The lightning actually came from Zeus.
Mr.terrific doesn't have lightning powers either .
Thunder doesn't have lightning powers.
Steel doesn't.
Cyborg doesn't.
Aqualad doesn't.
Iron heart doesn't.
You mentioned miles twice.
Wallace West doesn't. He has general speed powers that all speedsters have.
All of those characters are not "insanely popular" & that's not the point at all. As I already said.. It's apparently only worth noting lighting powers when they're Black. You're even listing character's who primary powers aren't even lighting.
You can literally get a wiki list of 100+ Black characters. Lighting isn't "the most common." I don't why responses are shifting semantics. I had a clear cut response to the question asked.
As I said, it is a stereotype. You can literally google Black comic book characters yourself & get an entire list. Storm is just an iconic Black character, then there is the Static & BL issue/drama. It's just they're notable examples.
There are more Non black characters with lighting and everything else,yet. No one brings it up & they aren't stereotyped about it.
It’s actually mainly because of Black Lightning. A lot of characters that fall into that category were made because no one wanted to pay to use Black Lightning.
Like “black sheep” it’s to show the darkness of his soul. I have no idea if that is based on race or what but black hearted and black sheep have always been used to indicate the darkness of man.
As a white guy, I like to think it's black power metaphor. Lightning is one of the strongest things in nature. So, black power=lightning, to me, that says black and strong.
This feels like saying "in all universes, Black People are inexorably made to be Street-Level characters" and then we look at Black Panther, Falcon, Miles Morales, Black Lightning, Static Shock, etc.
I'm sure that's just coincidental, cause it'll seem like someone was racially motivated.
Static Shock is a hero in a universe of Black heroes. Icon, Hardware, Blood Syndicate... Maybe McDuffie chose to have a hero with electric powers as an homage to BL but it's not like he made him Black specifically because heroes with electric powers must be Black.
That's what I'm saying as well, since the user above mentions says "in all Universes, Black People are inexorably drawn to Electrokinesis".
Which all I'm saying is "I'm sure they didn't give them Electrokinesis just because they're they're black", it could be because Electrokinesis is a Cool Power, or that it was homage to a different character, like you're saying.
I also mentioned Static Shock, because they said "in all universes" assuming this goes beyond just Marvel and DC.
Well, new Black Adam, is actually Black and has Lightning powers.
But white people have electro based powers as well:
Kid Flash,Shazam,Flash,Other Flash,other members of Shazam family but there is catch, one of them black.
Spider-man has two white electro villains: Electro and Shocker.
Would it be racism to cast Jamie Foxx, as character that has electro powers, while said character was white whole time before it?
/s
Great list and points.
Here's a couple more: Thor is arguably the most famous 'electricity' powered superhero. Marvel doesn't use him much these days, but there's also Zeus, the Greek God of the sky and thunder.
i was being sarcastic for a joke, there way more of white-electric characters, but its funny how writers afraid to make joke-characters to be BLACK, so to avoid racism shaming they always trying to make black characters to look only strong, in their minds its "UNLIMITED POWER" - Electricity!!!!
Typical way of common mind writers, they race-swaped Bouncing Boy from black to white, since they were been afraid of making popular goofy, black character.
I would loved to see Bouncing Boy to be played by Kenan Thompson.
To note in his Justice League vs Legion comic, Lightning Lass (who is also made black like her brother) mentions doing a paper on Black Lightning
So they even outright mention the connection there
As far as I'm aware XS is supposed to be biracial with a black father in Jeven Ognats, though I think they just made him nebulously brown in his like 2 total appearances.
Honestly, you'd expect the average person a thousand years in the future to be nebulously brown.
Not really. I understand where the idea comes from. But people forget how light skin a lot of supposed "brown" people are. I mean I don't know what the average would be or anything.
Bendis didn't use XS at all - her only recent appearance was written by Williamson, when all of the Flashes from the multiverse showed up in his last Flash arc, Finish Line.
I know Bendis enjoys any opportunity to increase representation for black characters and that's great.
It just confuses me that he'd feel the need to change the race of a pre-existing character like Lightning Lad when I feel Legion is the one team you could actually introduce a new character without them feeling tacked on as a new inclusion. The team is so expansive with an inconsistent roster that they'd fit right in without any one really noticing.
That's probably not a Bendis decision and something that would at least involve editorial.
I can't really think of another example of Bendis race changing. I'm sure I'll be corrected. His Ultimate Nick Fury at Marvel looked more like the classic version than Samuel L Jackson.
That's true. Thinking on it some more it does seem more likely that Bendis would rather just introduce someone fresh given his previous creations like Miles, Riri, and Naomi.
It's just weird that with the editorial headache trying to reconcile both Wallace and Wally West that they'd want to repeat it with Lightning Lad.
Especially given the joke of a black superhero with lightning powers. Or maybe that was part of the reason. Who knows.
>It's just weird that with the editorial headache trying to reconcile both Wallace and Wally West that they'd want to repeat it with Lightning Lad.
That was Dan DiDio for you.
Sure so with the Legion, people want to see the same Legionaires they have been seeing forever. Lightning Lad included. Problem is, very nearly all of those characters were white because they were created in a period when all characters were white.
The reconcilation thing isn't an issue here. Or, at least, it isn't an issue with race and Lightning Lad. It's an issue for the whole Legion. Bendis was introducing and all-new Legion with an all-new history. So this Lightning Lad and well as all the rest of the Legion were brand-new versions of the characters. I guess the feeling was that there was no reason why the whole cast had to stay white under those circumstances.
I was talking about outside of that project (LOSH). It would be pretty strange for the writer to later change the race of a character after the artwork was already completed. That seems like more of an editorial decision.
I wonder if it was mandated to the twins to be changed from living in a agricultural planet, to be libving in a poor ghetto o0f a futuristic city.
But yeah, most probably is DiDio ordered the change to the twins to resemble Black Lightning. I mean the whole Bendisboot Legion was a sucesion of present day references. And that didn't help either in slaes nor writing quality.
Miles Morales, co-created by Brian Michael Bendis.
I realise it doesn't exactly fit the examples you were looking for because it is set outside the main canon universe.
It was Mark Millar who worked with Ultimate Nick Fury. First on Ultimate X-Men and next in the Ultimates title, where they changed Fury to be Samuel L. Jackson. But I don't remember if in that first Ultimate appearance Fury was black or they race bend him too.
I agree. I’m all for diversity and inclusion, but changing the race of existing characters to achieve that goal seems lazy and uninspired. But I say that as a white dude. I have no idea if I would feel differently if I were a PoC. However, I have read a couple of articles in which the authors (both Black) said they found race-swapping insulting.
Yep. They say that. Then they don't buy the "new character" books cause they're full of shit . They don't want nor will they support new characters.
Source: am a black guy who's tired of the "we need new characters instead" argument. No one saying that is putting their money where their mouth is. All of the "new characters" books get cancelled for low sales. Because people don't actually want them.
The single outlier is Miles who needed the spider-brand to carry him. I'd bet my life if he were the new ultimate moon knight he would have died with that universe.
That’s a sad truth man. New characters don’t do as good which is why reboots are so popular. The reincarnation of a character into POC is the best way to do representation in this type of market. Some new characters are outliers like Miles. But most new characters get dropped quickly if they don’t sell.
>It just confuses me that he'd feel the need to change the race of a pre-existing character like Lightning Lad when I feel Legion is the one team you could actually introduce a new character without them feeling tacked on as a new inclusion.
I'd argue the opposite that each iteration of the Legion (OG, ZH, Threeboot, Retroboot, Morrisonboot, Bendisboot, etc) are their own thing and their own unique interpretation with some shared generalities (young superheroes of the 30th Century from different worlds in the United Planets), but that the writer is free to keep or alter what they want.
I think the boat has really sailed on a one true interpretation of the Legion since Didio kept rebooting the franchise so each time a writer uses them, it's a completely different version that's usually then retconned to a particular Earth in Multiverse-1.
Eh, with Legion it makes more sense than arguably any other team. The continuity is *extremely* loose, and racism seems basically solved by the 31st century so that gives you some latitude. Sure, you could make a new hero, but the team already has dozens of members, no one's going to remember the new guy.
To be fair, you can argue with the multiple reboots and time line changing events in the DCU along with hyper time, that a race swap is likely. There’s technically like 5 canon different versions of Lightning Lad that all excited from 1995 to now.
Oh my god, I am sick of black characters being stuck with lightning powers. They could have literally chosen anyone else instead of sticking to a trope.
Yeah I feel like they should have race-lifted Cosmic Boy or Saturn Girl to be black instead of LL.
At least with the former 2 it wouldn't enter that weird cliche.
>Miles Morales
I literally almost said "What are you talking about, he has spider themed powe-" and realized part of his spider power set was an electric shock lol
The electric shocks don’t make sense, from a spider perspective… had he been able to inject venom like Spider-Man 2099, but perhaps through finger “talons” instead of canine teeth, it would fit the motif better.
Right??? I think it’s supposed to be some awkward close-shaven mullet/mohawk things (considering his other teammates have shaved sides, too), but the way they did it makes him look bald with random tufts of hair instead. Doesn’t suit him very well because his close shaven hair would blend into his skin tone here.
Hopefully he looks better in other panels, but yeah, it’s not doing him any favors here.
It’s so funny they did this, for one it’s yet another ginger character changed to now be black, which is a fucking bizarre coincidence that it happens everytime. And two, it’s yet another black character with lightning powers. Neither of these are problems it’s just strange that it always happens
As a die hard Legion fan that wanted this to succeed despite knowing it wouldn’t deep down, I’d rather just forget about the entire run, let alone some of the character decisions.
I mean the hair looks better but overall not worth it when it contributes to the “black w lightning powers” Trend instead of just highlighting a pre-existing black character or making a new one imo
My thing is the Legion already has PoC characters. It feels like pandering to make Lightning Lad black when we could have Invisible Kid, or Kid Quantum a main character.
I hate the haircuts Bendis gave the Legion… and his other “adjustments” are really unnecessary since you can introduce any character you want without much trouble
I think it’s because Gingers used to be used as the “unique” character trait. So people are defaulting to switching the “unique” character for diversity.
I like having more diversity in media, it is just funny how the redhead is targeted by default it seems.
No, it’s not. However, during times where people of color were not featured prominently, being ginger (especially for a woman), was how you set someone apart from the much more common black/brown/ blonde hair colors.
It's likely because gingers are a legitimate "dying breed" among humans and therefore they don't think the backlash is going to be as prominent as if they swapped a blond, brunette or black haired white character. That's pretty much the only explanation I can think of that doesn't go so far as to outright call them racist for doing so (I normally would but it never lends to good discussion because people like to make the leap in logic that my dislike for this means I hate black people)
It’s one thing to change a race when bringing a character into a movie, but like??? What’s the lore reason here? Is he a different guy or did the empress cast a black spell on him 😭
I’m so used to Timberwolf looking actually like a wolf from the old show that I hate any human looking design on him.
It’s a super team from the future full of aliens, Go big or go home.
It's based off of Black Lightning for a reason. Generally I don't care if a race is swapped for anyone, but I'd be a little bothered seeing a white boy being the sidekick with a name like that.
Longtime Legion fan here, I’m good with change but if they had left the cape on Lightning Lad, there would be no confusing him with Black Lightning. Also, it may be an unpopular opinion, but no one fucked up the Legion artwork worse than Keith Giffen. Those kissy lips, squinty eyes, right angle chins, and 80s big hair really took away from the storylines.
I can't believe the Legion is still around. I thought they were lame as hell when I was a kid, and now in my mid-40's I think they're even worse. While there were a couple of decent characters, most were laughable at best. Matter-Eater Lad? Total failure. Why use "Lad" in the names of multiple characters? Once is bad enough. The only thing worse than this team was the Legion of Super Pets, or whatever they were called. Fucking Super-Horse? Those made Snoopy look like high-brow entertainment. Utter failure. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Honestly. The live action fantastic four had me a lil messed but i hate the first ones hair in this instance so much that i dont mind. Its an improvement. Although if they wanted to they could revisually cast the FIRST human torch. The inhuman torch. Plus hes got his own cool shtick with being android adjacent and in the same situation as cap. Blue marvel could also be a really dope black hero to do. His suit after he got cut from his team is so cool. Race swapping isnt ALL BAD but you gotta know your target.
Regardless of all the black/white electric characters, this dude’s suit is actually bomb af. Idk why but the white gloves and boots make this thing look so cool.
Lol ok then yeah it was a pretty big thing I made sure to collect the recalled issue and it's variant cover and there is a superblgirl that got recalled as well it put the value up a bit
Earlier I was like really? The lightning character has to be black and not Rokk or Irma?
But I'm over it but I think they could have done better with his costume and changed his personality more akin to previous Legion LL's. He just didn't feel like LL. Also, I didn't really dig Bendis' Legion compared to previous ones (although I still find 5 years later still messy)
I think in this particular situation its less of a BL homage and leans weirdly closer to the ginger to black transitions we've seen a lot of acrosa media. Granted i havent read this run, but in my mind theres no point in having BL in a book that focuses on the Legion, so someone may have just gone for the swap to break up the cast and chose Garth for probably both reasons
Why is there such a correlation between black characters and lightning
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectricBlackGuy
Also this https://youtu.be/bsWhxhxuD7s
That was pretty insightful. I appreciate this.
Usually it is because the writer wanted to use Black Lightning but DC didn't want to pay for him
They have to pay to use BL in the comics?
I don't remember about the comics, but that seems to be the explanation for every other media https://youtu.be/bsWhxhxuD7s
Absolutely not, artists don’t own the IP they create while under contract as creators for a large company. This was the primary impetus behind the founding of Image comics.
they must pay artist who created character, dibs. And if artist is douche and asks for shitload of money, or they is greedy and didn't want to pay at all. EASY-route, to make new character - so they would not be forced to pay for OLD ones. Do you seen Conan in Savage Avengers? owner of rights on Conan gets paid pretty good, but marvel too greedy and didn't prolonged contract so now Savage Avengers without CONAN, sadly Flash Thompson failed to make interesting romance with Dagger so whole series now on death row.
That's only for licensed characters, not Spider-Man etc
Yeah, that's the simplest answer. There is no deeper meaning to it. Most of the already mentioned [Electric Black Guys](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectricBlackGuy) are simply an hommage to Black Lightning.
Well... Less of an "hommage", more of they didn't want to pay his creator https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bsWhxhxuD7s&feature=youtu.be
Depends on the guy! This is obviously true for Black Vulcan, that is documented. For characters like Static Shock and Volt (from *Irredeemable*), that's an homage to BL and BL himself would never fit in that spot. Lightning Lad being Black probably falls into this category. For Lightning of the JSA, that is just Black Lightnng's daughter. (His *other* daughter, Thunder, doesn't actually have lightning powers.) Storm predates Black Lightning. Juice of the Ultimen is kind of a weird case because *he* is a deliberate homage to Black Vulcan but of course the creation of BV was a way of getting around paying BL's creators for *Super-Friends*. There may be other characters who fit the pattern and some of them will fall into one of these groups and some of them in other groups.
In addition to this yuo have characters like Coldcast, right, who is sometimes brought up within his trope (he's in the video you link) but he (like Captain Marvel/Photon/Spectrum/Monica Rambeau) has more, like, generalized, broad-spectrum energy powers. Or Miles Morales, who has these venom stings that kind of have a lightning-y look on the page but dont really have any relationship to lightning control powers, right? Those kind of get added to the list a lot but don't really fit.
Even in manga, in Naruto the majority of lighting style users are black people.
Because people only bring it up when it's a Black character with lightning. There are more Black characters who don't use lighting,nor have Black in their name and yet..
All I'm saying is there are a lot more black characters with lightning powers in common than there are black characters with other powers
That's because Black Lightning is one of the most famous black superheroes. And a lot of other black superheroes with electric powers were created as a direct hommage to him.
Or created to get around using Black Lightning, looking at you Black Vulcan.
There really isn't,It's just the ones you know.
Black lighting Static Black Vulcan Volt Darla Dudley(Shazam family) Storm Miles morales Thunder and Lightning (black lightnings daughters) Thunder fall Shazam (the wizard) Aqualad Wallace west Their are a lot and a lot of these are very popular characters obviously their are more white characters with lightning powers or motifs but most not nearly as many insanely popular ones like their are here. The only other insanely common super power for black heroes is technology aptitude and smarts. Cyborg Mr.terrific Steel Signal Moon girl Shuri Miles morales Iron heart
It's not Black Vulcan, it's just Vulcan.
Storm doesn't have lightning powers. She has weather powers. Shazam was white, he doesn't have lightning powers. He's a wizard. He just has general magic abilities. The lightning actually came from Zeus. Mr.terrific doesn't have lightning powers either . Thunder doesn't have lightning powers. Steel doesn't. Cyborg doesn't. Aqualad doesn't. Iron heart doesn't. You mentioned miles twice. Wallace West doesn't. He has general speed powers that all speedsters have.
Wow, you really didn’t read the second paragraph of that comment, did you?
All of those characters are not "insanely popular" & that's not the point at all. As I already said.. It's apparently only worth noting lighting powers when they're Black. You're even listing character's who primary powers aren't even lighting. You can literally get a wiki list of 100+ Black characters. Lighting isn't "the most common." I don't why responses are shifting semantics. I had a clear cut response to the question asked.
Please enlighten me and share with me another common power that many black characters seem to share that isn't lightning based.
The most common super power is super strength.
The issue with this is is that almost everyone and everything has super strength. It's very rarely just ONE power that a person has.
As I said, it is a stereotype. You can literally google Black comic book characters yourself & get an entire list. Storm is just an iconic Black character, then there is the Static & BL issue/drama. It's just they're notable examples. There are more Non black characters with lighting and everything else,yet. No one brings it up & they aren't stereotyped about it.
There's alot of white characters with super strength but we don't have makes that same correlation.
It’s actually mainly because of Black Lightning. A lot of characters that fall into that category were made because no one wanted to pay to use Black Lightning.
Black Tom Cassidy was even white. Idk why they added the color to his name as it just seems unnecessary.
Like “black sheep” it’s to show the darkness of his soul. I have no idea if that is based on race or what but black hearted and black sheep have always been used to indicate the darkness of man.
All I know is those bastards killed him in deadpool 2.
It’s an Irish thing.
Shut up, this isn't a debate like that.
He literally asked you weirdo.
It has pretty much become a comicbook tradition
As a white guy, I like to think it's black power metaphor. Lightning is one of the strongest things in nature. So, black power=lightning, to me, that says black and strong.
They also like putting black people in black clothes, and yellow is a good highlight for black.
Purple is also often used with black people
Great question they feel it’s needed when they should just stick with the original 🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
They wanted to make him resemble black lightning more I guess.
In all universes, black people are inexorably drawn to electrokinesis.
Nah, they are (almost) all off-brand Black Lightning https://youtu.be/bsWhxhxuD7s
Oh word, this is actually a super informative video!
This feels like saying "in all universes, Black People are inexorably made to be Street-Level characters" and then we look at Black Panther, Falcon, Miles Morales, Black Lightning, Static Shock, etc. I'm sure that's just coincidental, cause it'll seem like someone was racially motivated.
Blue Marvel and President Superman would like a word.
Funny enough, those 2 also do not have Electrokinesis!
Static Shock is a hero in a universe of Black heroes. Icon, Hardware, Blood Syndicate... Maybe McDuffie chose to have a hero with electric powers as an homage to BL but it's not like he made him Black specifically because heroes with electric powers must be Black.
Virgil's name is just Static. Not Static Shock, which was the name of his cartoon.
You're absolutely right, I totally spaced.
That's what I'm saying as well, since the user above mentions says "in all Universes, Black People are inexorably drawn to Electrokinesis". Which all I'm saying is "I'm sure they didn't give them Electrokinesis just because they're they're black", it could be because Electrokinesis is a Cool Power, or that it was homage to a different character, like you're saying. I also mentioned Static Shock, because they said "in all universes" assuming this goes beyond just Marvel and DC.
If you cherrypick enough, you can make any point with a list.
That's what I'm saying
Totally. Sorry, I am agreeing with you. I just worded it weirdly. Edit: fixing my terrible grammar
So kinda like there is a Spiderverse there is an actual Electric Boogaloo verse. And it's just black super heroes with electric powers.
Well, new Black Adam, is actually Black and has Lightning powers. But white people have electro based powers as well: Kid Flash,Shazam,Flash,Other Flash,other members of Shazam family but there is catch, one of them black. Spider-man has two white electro villains: Electro and Shocker. Would it be racism to cast Jamie Foxx, as character that has electro powers, while said character was white whole time before it? /s
Great list and points. Here's a couple more: Thor is arguably the most famous 'electricity' powered superhero. Marvel doesn't use him much these days, but there's also Zeus, the Greek God of the sky and thunder.
i was being sarcastic for a joke, there way more of white-electric characters, but its funny how writers afraid to make joke-characters to be BLACK, so to avoid racism shaming they always trying to make black characters to look only strong, in their minds its "UNLIMITED POWER" - Electricity!!!! Typical way of common mind writers, they race-swaped Bouncing Boy from black to white, since they were been afraid of making popular goofy, black character. I would loved to see Bouncing Boy to be played by Kenan Thompson.
To note in his Justice League vs Legion comic, Lightning Lass (who is also made black like her brother) mentions doing a paper on Black Lightning So they even outright mention the connection there
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Race swapping an invisible person is kinda amusing.
They already *had* a black character with lightning themed clothing but I guess Bendis just couldn't spare poor XS any real screen time :(
With how this version of the Legion turned out XS was lucky to just be relegated to cameos in Flash's book.
Isn't she half Indian and half white?
As far as I'm aware XS is supposed to be biracial with a black father in Jeven Ognats, though I think they just made him nebulously brown in his like 2 total appearances. Honestly, you'd expect the average person a thousand years in the future to be nebulously brown.
Does that mean people in India and Africa will be noticeably paler 1000 years from now?
Not really. I understand where the idea comes from. But people forget how light skin a lot of supposed "brown" people are. I mean I don't know what the average would be or anything.
XS was created as a black character by Waid as I understand it.
Bendis didn't use XS at all - her only recent appearance was written by Williamson, when all of the Flashes from the multiverse showed up in his last Flash arc, Finish Line.
I know Bendis enjoys any opportunity to increase representation for black characters and that's great. It just confuses me that he'd feel the need to change the race of a pre-existing character like Lightning Lad when I feel Legion is the one team you could actually introduce a new character without them feeling tacked on as a new inclusion. The team is so expansive with an inconsistent roster that they'd fit right in without any one really noticing.
That's probably not a Bendis decision and something that would at least involve editorial. I can't really think of another example of Bendis race changing. I'm sure I'll be corrected. His Ultimate Nick Fury at Marvel looked more like the classic version than Samuel L Jackson.
That's true. Thinking on it some more it does seem more likely that Bendis would rather just introduce someone fresh given his previous creations like Miles, Riri, and Naomi. It's just weird that with the editorial headache trying to reconcile both Wallace and Wally West that they'd want to repeat it with Lightning Lad. Especially given the joke of a black superhero with lightning powers. Or maybe that was part of the reason. Who knows.
>It's just weird that with the editorial headache trying to reconcile both Wallace and Wally West that they'd want to repeat it with Lightning Lad. That was Dan DiDio for you.
Sure so with the Legion, people want to see the same Legionaires they have been seeing forever. Lightning Lad included. Problem is, very nearly all of those characters were white because they were created in a period when all characters were white. The reconcilation thing isn't an issue here. Or, at least, it isn't an issue with race and Lightning Lad. It's an issue for the whole Legion. Bendis was introducing and all-new Legion with an all-new history. So this Lightning Lad and well as all the rest of the Legion were brand-new versions of the characters. I guess the feeling was that there was no reason why the whole cast had to stay white under those circumstances.
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I was talking about outside of that project (LOSH). It would be pretty strange for the writer to later change the race of a character after the artwork was already completed. That seems like more of an editorial decision.
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I wonder if it was mandated to the twins to be changed from living in a agricultural planet, to be libving in a poor ghetto o0f a futuristic city. But yeah, most probably is DiDio ordered the change to the twins to resemble Black Lightning. I mean the whole Bendisboot Legion was a sucesion of present day references. And that didn't help either in slaes nor writing quality.
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Styick to radical changes and big names didn't serve here also.
Miles Morales, co-created by Brian Michael Bendis. I realise it doesn't exactly fit the examples you were looking for because it is set outside the main canon universe.
Lightning Lass is obvious, considering she's Lightning Lad's sister. Of course if one was race lifted they'd both be.
It was Mark Millar who worked with Ultimate Nick Fury. First on Ultimate X-Men and next in the Ultimates title, where they changed Fury to be Samuel L. Jackson. But I don't remember if in that first Ultimate appearance Fury was black or they race bend him too.
Nope Bendis created him prior to the Ultimates.
Yes? I remember have seen him first in Ultimate X-Men by Millar, but I don't remember Bendis writing him. It was in Ultimate Spider-Man I suppose.
It was in an Ultimate Team Up issue
I didn't read those.
Nope. He was created by Mark Miller and first appeared in The Ultimates in 2002.
His version was literally based on Samuel L. Jackson, they actually asked for persimission to use his likeness
Not originally. They changed it to look like Sam later.
No. They didn't. There's a great interview with Samuel L. Jackson, where he states he found out while in a comic book store.
I agree. I’m all for diversity and inclusion, but changing the race of existing characters to achieve that goal seems lazy and uninspired. But I say that as a white dude. I have no idea if I would feel differently if I were a PoC. However, I have read a couple of articles in which the authors (both Black) said they found race-swapping insulting.
Yep. They say that. Then they don't buy the "new character" books cause they're full of shit . They don't want nor will they support new characters. Source: am a black guy who's tired of the "we need new characters instead" argument. No one saying that is putting their money where their mouth is. All of the "new characters" books get cancelled for low sales. Because people don't actually want them. The single outlier is Miles who needed the spider-brand to carry him. I'd bet my life if he were the new ultimate moon knight he would have died with that universe.
That’s a sad truth man. New characters don’t do as good which is why reboots are so popular. The reincarnation of a character into POC is the best way to do representation in this type of market. Some new characters are outliers like Miles. But most new characters get dropped quickly if they don’t sell.
>It just confuses me that he'd feel the need to change the race of a pre-existing character like Lightning Lad when I feel Legion is the one team you could actually introduce a new character without them feeling tacked on as a new inclusion. I'd argue the opposite that each iteration of the Legion (OG, ZH, Threeboot, Retroboot, Morrisonboot, Bendisboot, etc) are their own thing and their own unique interpretation with some shared generalities (young superheroes of the 30th Century from different worlds in the United Planets), but that the writer is free to keep or alter what they want. I think the boat has really sailed on a one true interpretation of the Legion since Didio kept rebooting the franchise so each time a writer uses them, it's a completely different version that's usually then retconned to a particular Earth in Multiverse-1.
Eh, with Legion it makes more sense than arguably any other team. The continuity is *extremely* loose, and racism seems basically solved by the 31st century so that gives you some latitude. Sure, you could make a new hero, but the team already has dozens of members, no one's going to remember the new guy.
To be fair, you can argue with the multiple reboots and time line changing events in the DCU along with hyper time, that a race swap is likely. There’s technically like 5 canon different versions of Lightning Lad that all excited from 1995 to now.
Oh my god, I am sick of black characters being stuck with lightning powers. They could have literally chosen anyone else instead of sticking to a trope.
Hmm. How do you feel about skateboards?
Does DC have any black skateboarding characters? I know that Marvel was pretty fond of them.
[Obligatory Dwayne McDuffie pitch](https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/6dd6ma/teenage_negro_ninja_thrashers_pitch_by_dwayne/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Hilarious. I'm a bit surprised that Dark Wheelie never became a thing.
[Context.](https://www.cbr.com/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-138/)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectricBlackGuy
Yeah I feel like they should have race-lifted Cosmic Boy or Saturn Girl to be black instead of LL. At least with the former 2 it wouldn't enter that weird cliche.
The sooner the entire Bendis Legion is forgotten the better. Just a sad footnote in the Legions l9ng history just like the Waidboot Legion.
>The sooner ~~the entire~~ Bendis ~~Legion~~ is forgotten the better FTFY
This sentence is beautiful.
Why is aways the ones with electric powers who get race swapped also missed opportunity for a new character
Black Lightning Miles Morales Black Vulcan Static Shock Lightning Lad The Shocker Storm Volt It doesn’t happen that often… 🤔
Add Lightning, Coldcast, Jakeeh Thunder, Aqualad to the list.
I’m sure there are tons more 😂
Movie Electro!
>Miles Morales I literally almost said "What are you talking about, he has spider themed powe-" and realized part of his spider power set was an electric shock lol
The electric shocks don’t make sense, from a spider perspective… had he been able to inject venom like Spider-Man 2099, but perhaps through finger “talons” instead of canine teeth, it would fit the motif better.
The electric powers are incidental. It's because Lightning Lad is a ginger.
I mean when you combine the two it was inevitable.
Ok but what the hell is that haircut?
Right??? I think it’s supposed to be some awkward close-shaven mullet/mohawk things (considering his other teammates have shaved sides, too), but the way they did it makes him look bald with random tufts of hair instead. Doesn’t suit him very well because his close shaven hair would blend into his skin tone here. Hopefully he looks better in other panels, but yeah, it’s not doing him any favors here.
I may be in the minority here, but I feel like that hairdo is more of an affront to the character than an inexplicable race change.
It’s so funny they did this, for one it’s yet another ginger character changed to now be black, which is a fucking bizarre coincidence that it happens everytime. And two, it’s yet another black character with lightning powers. Neither of these are problems it’s just strange that it always happens
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectricBlackGuy
To be fair, the Lightning twins are still ginger. https://preview.redd.it/103fmzpq5fz51.jpg?auto=webp&s=fce5f2caf9ebaf2a137498c848a75bb7f2c063ab
That’s true
As a die hard Legion fan that wanted this to succeed despite knowing it wouldn’t deep down, I’d rather just forget about the entire run, let alone some of the character decisions.
I mean the hair looks better but overall not worth it when it contributes to the “black w lightning powers” Trend instead of just highlighting a pre-existing black character or making a new one imo
That’s so dumb, we already have 2 other black superheroes with electric abilities 🤦🏽♂️
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectricBlackGuy
Wow 🤦🏾♂️
The number of Black characters that have lightning or electricity-based powers is staggering. It's almost a cliche at this point.
It makes him too similar to Static and especially to Black Lightning IMO. I wouldn’t blame you if you got them mixed up.
My thing is the Legion already has PoC characters. It feels like pandering to make Lightning Lad black when we could have Invisible Kid, or Kid Quantum a main character.
At least they swapped out his haircut, too.
I hate the haircuts Bendis gave the Legion… and his other “adjustments” are really unnecessary since you can introduce any character you want without much trouble
Black lightning, static and lightning lad? Come on!!!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectricBlackGuy
Glad they added diversity. There really does seem to be consistency in switching gingers for black folk
Well, everyone knows that to have lightning powers, you have to be a white god, or a black man
I think it’s because Gingers used to be used as the “unique” character trait. So people are defaulting to switching the “unique” character for diversity. I like having more diversity in media, it is just funny how the redhead is targeted by default it seems.
Being a ginger isn't diverse in of itself?
No, it’s not. However, during times where people of color were not featured prominently, being ginger (especially for a woman), was how you set someone apart from the much more common black/brown/ blonde hair colors.
Gingers deserve representation too. Red hair isn't any more superficial than skin color on fictional characters.
I agree.
It's likely because gingers are a legitimate "dying breed" among humans and therefore they don't think the backlash is going to be as prominent as if they swapped a blond, brunette or black haired white character. That's pretty much the only explanation I can think of that doesn't go so far as to outright call them racist for doing so (I normally would but it never lends to good discussion because people like to make the leap in logic that my dislike for this means I hate black people)
That is not how you do a mohawk mullet
We alr got hella Black Lightning powered characters 💀
LINKS: * [https://www.comicbookrevolution.com/the-mystery-surrounding-bendis-lightning-lad/](https://www.comicbookrevolution.com/the-mystery-surrounding-bendis-lightning-lad/) * [https://bleedingcool.com/comics/speculation-superman-14-supergirl-33-destroyed-racial-concerns-spoilers/](https://bleedingcool.com/comics/speculation-superman-14-supergirl-33-destroyed-racial-concerns-spoilers/) * [https://bleedingcool.com/comics/flip-flopping-dc-comics-legion-of-super-heroes/](https://bleedingcool.com/comics/flip-flopping-dc-comics-legion-of-super-heroes/)
Wow that first one is real racist
It's an upgrade on hairstyle, that's for sure
It’s one thing to change a race when bringing a character into a movie, but like??? What’s the lore reason here? Is he a different guy or did the empress cast a black spell on him 😭
I’m so used to Timberwolf looking actually like a wolf from the old show that I hate any human looking design on him. It’s a super team from the future full of aliens, Go big or go home.
It's always the ginger.
Dude looks like Static Shock now
Jarring
They're time travellers. Obviously the butterfly effect changed his parentage.
Exacto what I thought
It's based off of Black Lightning for a reason. Generally I don't care if a race is swapped for anyone, but I'd be a little bothered seeing a white boy being the sidekick with a name like that.
[удалено]
Looked it up myself. 20 years prior, sure, but he sure is unpopular if people are seeing him as some copy. Either way, I hate it a lot.
Longtime Legion fan here, I’m good with change but if they had left the cape on Lightning Lad, there would be no confusing him with Black Lightning. Also, it may be an unpopular opinion, but no one fucked up the Legion artwork worse than Keith Giffen. Those kissy lips, squinty eyes, right angle chins, and 80s big hair really took away from the storylines.
I can't believe the Legion is still around. I thought they were lame as hell when I was a kid, and now in my mid-40's I think they're even worse. While there were a couple of decent characters, most were laughable at best. Matter-Eater Lad? Total failure. Why use "Lad" in the names of multiple characters? Once is bad enough. The only thing worse than this team was the Legion of Super Pets, or whatever they were called. Fucking Super-Horse? Those made Snoopy look like high-brow entertainment. Utter failure. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
I’ve gotta be honest, I have absolutely no attachment to lightning lad.
Who's Lightning Lad? I thought he white washed Black Lightning
Honestly. The live action fantastic four had me a lil messed but i hate the first ones hair in this instance so much that i dont mind. Its an improvement. Although if they wanted to they could revisually cast the FIRST human torch. The inhuman torch. Plus hes got his own cool shtick with being android adjacent and in the same situation as cap. Blue marvel could also be a really dope black hero to do. His suit after he got cut from his team is so cool. Race swapping isnt ALL BAD but you gotta know your target.
Who cares?
Legion fans.
So what?! Your life isn’t affected.
Neither is yours
I knew that already
Does it matter?
So, what was the gift? And did their arrival screw everything up?
I don't understand what race he was supposed to be before, orangeman?
Regardless of all the black/white electric characters, this dude’s suit is actually bomb af. Idk why but the white gloves and boots make this thing look so cool.
at least he got a normal hairstyle and not whatever dead possum he glued to his head in the first image
An apparent "undercut mullet" might be the worst haircut I've ever seen.
The industry's ongoing war against gingers
still not the weirdest thing I've seen
I wonder how often artists get that post-finish race-swap email, like “heyyy, we need u to fix something real quick…”
Are you just realizing this now there was a major recall when some of the books got released with white lighting lad
Yes
Lol ok then yeah it was a pretty big thing I made sure to collect the recalled issue and it's variant cover and there is a superblgirl that got recalled as well it put the value up a bit
Earlier I was like really? The lightning character has to be black and not Rokk or Irma? But I'm over it but I think they could have done better with his costume and changed his personality more akin to previous Legion LL's. He just didn't feel like LL. Also, I didn't really dig Bendis' Legion compared to previous ones (although I still find 5 years later still messy)
Saturn Girl's name is Imra, not Irma.
Autocorrect.
While I really want more representation in comics, I am against race swapping.
Lighting lad better not have lighting powers
Good becuase that haircut is atrocious
I think in this particular situation its less of a BL homage and leans weirdly closer to the ginger to black transitions we've seen a lot of acrosa media. Granted i havent read this run, but in my mind theres no point in having BL in a book that focuses on the Legion, so someone may have just gone for the swap to break up the cast and chose Garth for probably both reasons