Comic Review: The Other History of the DC Universe Book One (DC Comics)

DC Comics releases an arc that focuses on a hero from the other side of the universe in The Other History of the DC Universe on its first volume.

That’s a very rare thing to come across a comic like this, and it takes you to introduce another superhero in the DC Universe. I thought that DC Comics would have enough giving out the Dark Nights Metal or Batman comics or Superman comics at the same moment. And I know you’re thinking if this is like Static Shock, well you’re not wrong, but depending on the story, this one would be more similar to the show itself. The story is written by John Ridley and illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli. Giuseppe is an Italian comic book artist who is best known for his work on the Marvel Comics titles like Spiderman, and Hellblazer from DC Comics. And John Ridley is a screenwriter, novelist, and such who is best known for a show called “12 Years a Slave”, and won an Academy for Best Adapted Screenplay. He also created the critically acclaimed anthology series of American Crime which follows an anthology format of many characters who have involved in a crime that they’ll never escape from guilt.

The front cover shows a distinctive background that was painted by many digital artists colored with acrylic. It’s a raw power that is coming from the background and the main character at all. So the character’s image from the image is almost looked like Shazam or Static Shock, but to me, this is like the adult version of Virgil Hawkins as Static. If you watched that episode where Static got sent to the future to see himself at the end of the episode along with Batman Beyond. It does feel nostalgic to see someone from one of my favorite heroes since childhood or every childhood of African American ancestry. But anyway, he’s holding his hand out, powering up to make lightning just to know that his power is in his grasp.

So the story starts with the main character that I’ve mentioned before, he’s an African American named Jefferson was determined to make himself a superhuman by breaking a record at the Olympics, he spent his life running, meaning running away from punks who wanted to take his lunch money, and if it’s not enough, someone told him that his father was shot, he ran to save him, but he admitted that he became too slow. Afterward, he participated in the Olympics to compete and won easily at the end. But realizing after all that time that he trained was it any of use to him? Right now there are some murders that were soaring through the city. After the games, he left Germany and traveled to America, during his time he ran into some DC Universe heroes along the way, doing their day jobs of saving people’s lives and such. And not too long ago, he met an acquaintance of his father named Peter who gave him a reason to fight, and he has powers, with lightning, and named himself Black Lightning. And every other part of the story takes you to tell how he struggled his life as an ordinary human and as a superhero, but he still leads a happy life for his family while he’s fighting crime, it’s his double life as a human being.

The story is more of an introduction of who he is, but I never expected to read a comic about Black Lightning’s background story. Some say that his powers are similar to Static Shock, that’s because he is. I’m just reminiscing from the past few episodes of Static and somehow there’s one episode that got me a bit of deja vu and going back to this comic, it was an episode where Static gets to meet a retired old man from a community home for seniors who happened to be an electric-manipulating superhero from the 60s, which is Soul Power. Apparently, he was one of Earth’s first superheroes where the old man gained his electricity powers by accident as a kid and cheated death after he was being knocked into the generators. But according to that, Soul Power was originally intended to be the counterpart of Black Lightning, but the character developed was contributed by the creator, Tony Isabella. So he shares his costume, powers, and ethnicity with him. It’s kind of far fetched, but now I know the story.