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That might seem like a tall order for a tailor, but it turned out to be part of the family business. A family friend, Gambi created not just Black Lightning's costume, but the gadgets that gave him his powers. Instead, he got them from his tailor, Peter Gambi. It wasn't the first time McDuffie made a tongue-in-cheek satirical jab at racism in superhero comics, but sadly, it would be one of the final times he'd have the opportunity before his death in 2011. Now called the Brown Bomber, he was featured as part of the Justice League in a story where the trickster god Anansi had rewritten reality so everything was, well, so wrong that the Brown Bomber could be on the Justice League.
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The legendary writer Dwayne McDuffie, probably best known as the co-creator of Static and the head writer for Cartoon Network's Justice League Unlimited, managed to work him into a story during his run on Justice League of America. Thirty years later, though, the character made a pretty surprising return in the pages of Justice League of America. They even gave him a costume that looked like a basketball player's uniform.įortunately for everyone concerned, Isabella talked them out of it. In other words, DC's first black superhero was not actually going to be black, and feature plenty of stereotypes besides. As Isabella revealed on his blog, the original plan was to create a superhero called the Black Bomber, with the hook being that he was actually a white racist who turned into a super-powered black man when he was stressed out, with neither personality being aware of the other.