Tony Isabella Talks ‘Cold Dead Hands’ and Writing A Younger Black Lightning

For the first time in over 20 years, the man responsible for creating one of the first Black superheroes in comics is returning to the fold. “Cold Dead Hands” will be the next outing for Jefferson Pierce, a.k.a. Black Lightning, and will be written by none other than Tony Isabella himself. Timing couldn’t be better as “Cold Dead Hands” is set for a debut of Nov. 1, 2017, not long after the CW series based on the character will premiere. Isabella was gracious enough to give BNP some of his time to talk about his return to the character, Jefferson Pierce’s return to his hometown of Cleveland, and some of the key differences between the upcoming mini-series and his past works.

The Return of Black Lightning Black Nerd Problems: It’s been over twenty years since you last wrote a Black Lightning series. What encouraged you to do so now? Had you been interested in returning to the character for a while? Or was this just perfect timing? Tony Isabella: I’ve always said I would be happy to write Black Lightning stories for the rest of my life. That wasn’t going to happen under DC’s previous management. But, under the current management, DC and I have been working on things to our mutual benefit. My return to Black Lightning was sort of inevitable. When Dan DiDio asked me to write a new series, I said “yes” immediately. And this was before the TV series got moving. The perfect part of all this is that my new Black Lightning comic-book series will kick off at a time when the Black Light…