I will say that artwork looks great, and the dialogue/depictions weren't as frustrating as I've read before. Do they have any Black Panther issues without the dialogue/word balloons? Where you can write your own dialogue?
Also, dead on about Black Lightning. I stopped watching that show. I gave it like one episode this season and that was enough. The first season was much better than I thought it would be. Though going into it, I suspected that when I heard Anissa particularly, but also Jennifer, were going to be on the show, that BL would be sidelined and the show would be more about his daughters, especially Anissa. And even though he was disrespected and checked even in Season 1, by his wife and his daughters, he was reliant on Gambi (a white man, which I'm not tripping too much on because that is like some of the comics I've read; though it does annoy me that Anissa, once again, in particular, never disrespects or challenges Gambi like she does her own father. She's more inclined to listen to his advice. It also is just a pet peeve but I don't like when they call him "Uncle Gambi". Shouldn't it be Uncle Peter or whatever his first name is? I don't feel like looking it up right now to be sure).
There was some good BL moments in Season 1, some nice action, nice social commentary, good soundtrack, Tobias Whale, and the story did try to keep BL as the lead character somewhat. But Season 2 just got boring in spots, and the lack of action, the lack of villain costumes, the lack of superheroics, the poor use, underuse, of characters like The Masters of Disaster and Looker, the focus on family drama above all just lost me.
They even introduced a cool, original character at the end of Season 2, Instant, and I don't think they've even brought him back. From what I saw of Season 3, they had another potential good villain, however he's played by the actor who played Braxton on the Jamie Foxx Show, and it's a failing of mine, but I can't shake Braxton out of my head even though he's did his best, from what I saw, to make this a legit threat to the Pierce Family and to the city of Freeland. Also, Bill Duke is very good as well, but the show is lacking an energy to make it must viewing for me.
Also, Season 3 opened with Anissa donning a whole new superhero/vigilante identity (with a cool costume) and it felt to me that this is the show the Akils should be writing. Anissa is a much more dynamic, and I'll just say it, masculine, character than Jefferson. They even gave Anissa her own lair and her own Anissamobile. We get to see her various romantic/sexual relationships, she's more rooted in the community (which was supposed to be one of the things that made BL stand out in the comics, IMO). I think both the Anissa and Jennifer actresses are good, and if they had just done a show about an original vigilante character, with the Anissa actress, I might have given that a chance (if I watched the whole pilot of Batwoman I have a high tolerance for pain), and from what I've seen of Anissa the vigilante, she's much more assured and the actress is better.
Like you Emperorjones I thought the show started of better than I expected. Good looking cast; good villains; and they hit a high note on the music selection. Gambi being the brains of the out fit (and even being a reformed agent provocateur) reeked of M.A.N.T.I.S and Blade's folly in that regard. Anissa lesbianism was strident and even her first girlfriend had to drop a comment on being replaced by an Asian chick. I liked the rogues, Lala, Tobias and Jill Scott's characters butI knew trouble was brewing when they took her out so early on. Bill Duke is great.
As far as Black Lightening himself I was able to deal with him as long as he had some agency... being a principal, single dad, husband on the mend, vigilante but when they contrasted all those things is was hard to watch him. The "uncle Gambi" thing is so cloying. The messages and images seen on shows like this speak volume on how Afrakan (so called black) super heroes are repurposed or just straight up purposed to be incomplete and feeble.
Thanks for getting back to me on this. I was eager to see what your thoughts were on the show. I agree with you a lot. I thought Jill Scott-who is underrated as an actress IMO-got underused big time. I know the comics's version of the character was tied to another organization so I was hoping they would bring that piece into it, but it appears they just made Scott's character "Lady Eve" in name only. I do think there have been good actors for the villains, but there's been too little flair. Perhaps the showrunners were going for more realism, but to me, a show about a dude that can shoot lightning out of his hands and wears a costume is already way beyond reality so they should go with it. I think the writing and themes had already set the show apart from the other CW shows, and having more costumed supervillains would not have just turned it into a clone of the Arrowverse shows. Speaking of costumes, I've never loved either of BL's main costumes. When they did that flashback scene like in the first episode, with the comic's accurate costume I thought that was awesome and I wish we had gotten that costume.
The MANTIS comparison is interesting. I loved the original television movie. It had the social commentary, a cool black superhero, and was reminiscent of BL or Luke Cage, now that I think of it. However, I only watched a bit of the television series. I saw that almost every black supporting character (outside of a very beige looking-biracial?-police detective) had been replaced with white characters and that MANTIS had become race-less and generic, so I never kept up with it. It's a shame they didn't get it right there. The MANTIS name, concept, and suit were cool and Carl Lumbly was very good in the role. To a lesser extent, they deracialized Blade, in his own show, starting with Blade Trinity, in the sense that he was sidelined for the new white characters, and this was most egregious in Blade: The Series. Blade Trinity still had Wesley Snipes, and while Kirk Jones was game, he just didn't have the charisma to own the camera even when it was focused on Krista and Marcus.
Back to BL's show, with Anissa being a lesbian I suspected she would get a lot of focus. A "strong black woman"
and lesbian to boot, that's Hollywood's jam right now. If she wasn't lesbian she would be with a white male love interest at this point. Though her relationship with Grace is in the comics (I like the depiction there more), Anissa's pro-black politics aren't (from what I've read) and I thought it was sketchy to have her be the most outspoken when it comes to pro-blackness yet dump a black woman for an Asian woman. But that's part of the game too. When you look at Greg Berlanti's shows, he's going to promote homosexuality and interracial relationships and he doesn't have a great track record when it comes to depicting black men. Even after they turned Mr. Terrific gay it took them a couple seasons to not make him a total goof. And now they've turned Batwoman's Luke Fox into a goofy, weak Curtis Holt-like character. James Olsen was poorly handled and the last I saw, he was checked at his job at the Daily Planet, before he left that show. Once they nixed his relationship with Kara all in one episode at the beginning of Season 2, and brought in Mon-El there was no real need or place for the character anymore, so they came up with the Guardian thing to give him something to do, but that ran it's course for them I suppose, and maybe him. He deserves better and more as an actor. Admittedly I did like him as Guardian (really liked that suit; though I wish they had saved the Guardian thing for Arrow's Diggle; and looking back, I wish the actor had been John Henry Irons instead). As for Diggle, there's the interracial thing of course, but him also being super loyal (but not always, to his and the show's credit), and the 'heart' of the team. They made him an ordained minister (I mean, why not? ), an elite soldier who gets showed up constantly by Oliver who only had five years of training on that island, and when Diggle actually becomes Arrow they sort of make him a drug addict who needs some kind of drug (wish they had named it Venom) to stave off nerve damage he had but hadn't told anyone. Martian Manhunter is always being sidelined, forgotten, or punked out, and then they gave him the whole pacifist thing for a second as an excuse for him not to kick ass. Kid Flash and Firestorm were so underused, when they left their respective shows, that didn't mean much at all (I've heard Kid Flash is coming back though).
In comparison, BL gets more focus than any of the other black male CW characters, by dint that he's the 'main' character, but I had a feeling-as I said before-that his daughters would get more shine than him, and we also see his wife fronting on him. Though they've tone that down. In season one, they didn't even let him and his vice-principal have a thing and she was fine. I didn't like the route they took with her character.
I think Joe West-(of course a non-superpowered character) is probably the best depicted black male character in the CW Arrowverse. He had two black wives and he didn't run out or cheat on either of them. He's depicted as a loving father, and he gives good advice, and he's brave and willing to fight to protect others. And Jesse L. Martin usually delivers every time he's on the screen. One could see him fitting the role of the wise old Negro sage to help the white protagonist along (almost a Magical Negro) but still, he's a well-acted, and largely well-written actor.
