CoC Week: Black Lightning vs the Slime Killer

[alicemacher]

Black Lightning (Jefferson Pierce), created in 1977 by writer Tony Isabella and artist Trevor Von Eeden (who is Guyanese-American), was DC's first superhero of colour to get his own title. He also subsequently appeared in such titles as Detective Comics, from which this tale comes.


From "Explosion of the Soul!", Detective Comics vol.1 #494 (Sept. 1980). Writer: J.M. DeMatteis, artist: Gérald Forton.



Black Lightning collars a pair of robbers, who are relieved it's he who caught them and not the Slime Killer, a hooded vigilante who's recently been culling crooks in Suicide Slum, and scaring the shit out of the rest. Meanwhile, in his day job as an English teacher, Jefferson tries reaching out to his bright but defeatist student Jonathan Davis.







Back on patrol, still anguished over Jonathan's apathy and resignation, Black Lightning has his first run-in with the Slime Killer, who's just claimed another couple of victims.







Slime Killer spray-paints his opponent in the eyes and escapes.







Jefferson, feeling compassion for the disturbed Mr. Davis, costumes up and slips back into his home to try talking things over, but he's not there. A cry of agony from outside clues him in that the father too has costumed up, to claim more lives, so off goes Black Lightning to stop him.

Comments

[kamino_neko]

Davis also had someone with motivation to help him who wasn't also in a similarly unhealthy mindspace. (Granted, Dan wasn't quite as far gone as Rorschach, and certainly broke in a different direction, but...still not quite healthy.)

[alicemacher]

I think it helps that Jonathan, unlike Dan, is still quite young and therefore has neither seen as much nor had the time to really internalize the despair he professes. Note the pauses in his dialogue in his first scene: "It doesn't... bother me," "I just... accept things..." and his morose facial expression and posture in that panel. Jon doesn't really feel that way deep down. It's a defensive front, which crumbles in the climax as we see he really does care.

In contrast, Dan Dreiberg, while far from uncaring (or claiming to be) as such, has lived long enough, has witnessed enough evil -- and the toll it took on his only friend -- that even apart from the Keene Act cutting short his crimefighting career, he's come to feel genuine despair, or at best ambivalence, about whether there was any point to his adventuring. So yes, although he does his best to reach out and renew his friendship with Rorschach (and Rorschach, in his own, even more halting way, does so in turn), Dan isn't in a position to help his friend change his outlook and his ways.