Black superheroes with electrical powers is sometimes cited as a cliche of the modern superhero comic universe. Re this I was wondering what the actual count was of black heroes with electrical and electromagnetic powers?
Fictional Black African-American DC animated Superheroes with the power to manipulate electricity
This list includes the three I thought off off-hand (Black Vulcan, Black Lightning, Static), plus a couple of others who seem to be spin-offs of or affiliated with the first three.
I’d also toss in Storm from the X-Men, with her weather-related powers of lightning.
Storm’s mother was also a Kenyan sorceress. Maybe it falls into a really old ‘African Americans do voodoo’ stereotype?
I doubt it, though. Having the power to harness electricity is pretty widespread in the comic book world. Wiki has a list of black superheroes. How many of them can harness electricity or control weather or some such?
Looking at Wiki’slist of Black Superheroes, the ones I’m familiar with, or can quickly find info on, with powers that include electrical control:
Black Lightning
Black Vulcan
Static
Coldcast (odd choice of names, but, hey)
Lightning (Black Lightning’s daughter - he also has a daughter named Thunder, who has a completely unrelated power set.)
Shango the Thunderer
Bandit/Night Thrasher
Bedlam
Plus variants of several of them, like Juice.
Most of them are DC.
Also, I can’t remember his name, but one of the characters in Irredeemable is a black guy with electric powers, who lampshades this cliche (the first time I’ve ever actually heard it was a cliche).
Okay. But Electro, Livewire, Atom, Magneto (does he count?) are all white and those are the more famous ones (I think).
It very well could be a stereotype. But so are lesbians.
Jakeem Thunder typically fights crime and saves lives by telling his genie how to handle the problem du jour – which maybe wouldn’t count, except the genie is a living thunderbolt crackling with electricity (complete with the repeatedly-exploited weakness of getting hit upside the head with a lightning rod).
I’ve tended to assume that it was at least partly (possibly unconsciously) based on color schemes; the skin colors of a brown or black colored person goes well with the yellow-colored lightning/electricity of comic books, and with costumes colored with that theme. Sort of the same principle as black guys wearing gold jewelry in real life; black and brown go well with yellow and gold.
Black Vulcan really shouldn’t add to the count. He’s an ersatz Black Lightning created for Superfriends because some dispute with Tony Isabella (BL’s creator) meant they couldn’t use the real thing.
Well, electric superpowers for black superheroes may be a cliché, but at least it’s better than the stereotypes exploited on Super Globetrotter. I mean, Sweet Lou Dunbar had a giant afro that contained any kind of thing they could possibly need, and Freddie Neal could turn into a basketball.
Seriously, a basketball! What kind of super power is that? Turning into a basketball so the Man can dribble his @ss down the street. I bet he’d LOVE to have electric superpowers.