So I’ve seen this post go around a few times and I kind of want to defend DC on this. The abundance o black male superheroes with electric powers have less to do with lack of creativity and more to do with rights issues and making one-off homages.
Let’s go through all of these heroes.
Black Lightning was the OJ Black Electric Hero, created in 1977 by Tony Isabella. The character got his own comic but was canceled after 12 issues. Around this time DC wanted to include Black Lightning in their new animated show Super Friends but was told they would have to pay rights to Isabella. Instead, the cartoon created Black Vulcan, who was essentially the same character with a different name. This ended up pissing off Isabella, souring his relationship with DC and leading to rights issues with Black Lightning for decades. As Black Vulcan was created just for the cartoon, he never appeared in the comics, and only really popped up in pop culture when someone wanted to make a reference to the Super Friends. One of these references was in the early 2000s Justice League cartoon, where a two-parter revolved around a team of heroes created by Amanda Waller, all of whom were inspired by the Superfriends. This is where Juice was created, a one-off villain who died following the episode and was never used again.
Arguably the most famous of the Black Lightning clones, and arguably one who has become more famous than him is Static, created by Dwayne McDuffie in 1993, originally for Milestone Comics. A combination of two of McDuffie’s favorite heroes, Spiderman and Black Lightning, Static was meant to be a young black superhero with electric powers who would grow and mature into being a great hero. Milestone Comics would eventually be bought by DC, with many of its heroes incorporated into the DC Universe, resulting in the animated Static Shock series. The creators of Static Shock wanted to have an episode where Static teamed up with Black Lightning, who would act as a mentor to the young hero. The problem was, Isabella was still pretty pissed at DC, and they could get the character’s rights. As a result, we got Soul Power, another one off hero who never appeared outside this one episode or in any other superhero media.
The last of the Black Lighting clones is a literal Black Lightning clone: Black Power. Black Power actually is Black Lighting, or rather the Black Lightning from Earth-Three, an alternate Earth was all superheroes are villain and villains are heroes. Black Power was created for the DC animated film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, and, you guessed it, never appeared after this event.
Of the last two heroes, Shango is a minor Firestorm ally, inspired by the actual West African god Ṣàngó, while Thunder Fall was a minor Congolese superhero who briefly teamed up with the Batfamily.
So in short, I would really only consider there being 4 black superheroes with electric powers in DC, really 2 considering Thunder Fall is dead and Shango hasn’t appeared since the 1990s. The rest are mostly placeholders, used since DC couldn’t use Black Lightning, something that has thankfully changed in recent years since we now have the awesome Black Lightning show on CW.
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