Your right about all of them, it was definitely a different time in the 60s and 70s and they probably thought they were doing a good thing. I’m glad more thought is taken now when choosing character names 👍🏿

I think it’s important to remember that many of these characters were created in the era of “Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud.” It’s a bit easy to pick apart in retrospect.

If I recall, Black Manta was around for a long time before unmasking.

The actual reason why Black Lightning was in so little DC stories is because DC had to pay Tony(the creater of BL) everytime they wanted to use him in a storyline, so instead of paying Tony, DC took the cheap route and excluded BL and/or replaced him with multiple other carbon copies of the character throughout comics and tv series.

Watching this makes me appreciate the joke in Falcon & Winter Soldier show even more when everyone kept calling him "Black Falcon" and he had to correct them saying "It's just Falcon..."

Simple These character were created during the time of the Black Power Movement from 1966-1980s. Those along with the civil rights were national news and acted as inspiration for comic writers who wanted to create black characters. Being a son of black nationalist myself, those character were my heroes "I'm Black and I'm proud!" was one of the slogans chanted atm. Being black was seen as less than human so i was happy to see heroes uses it as a symbol of power and heroism. But as the times changed, i was also happy to see other black heroes with a verity of backgrounds and themes. So what i'm saying is that my subculture was the target audience for characters like that when i was a kid.

Silver Surfer didn’t need to be called “Silver” either. It’s very obvious he’s silver.😂

When concerning Black Racer and Black Lightning, I think it's fine, now. Black Racer evokes death, which he represents. You can't outrace death. Black Lightning outputs black lightning. It just works, in Young Justice.

Black Vulcan was actually made because Hanna-Barbera didn't want to pay the creator to license Black Lightning, not because the creator blocked it. Tony Isabella thought up until the first episode they were using Black Lightning, only to find out that Hanna-Barbera ripped off his character to avoid paying him.

There's also Black Noir from The Boys. His name is basically black-black (noir is French for black) and in the comics, he's even caucasian under his uniform. Maybe a bit of a social commentary on this trope. Also, respect for closing with Dead Mike. Perfect outro music for this vid. Keep up the great work!

Queer coding wasn't really a thing back then (especially on a kids show). A lot of characters wore costumes with exposed legs. Robin, Plastic Man, Namor, Samurai, Dollman, Brainiac to name a few. The look was mostly based of wrestling, strongman and acrobat outfits.

Most of the characters were introduced in the late 60s to the mid to late 1970s. It was the time of Blaxploitation and "Black is Beautiful", so seeing all of this, their mostly white creators took way too much to heart when naming these characters. Blade, Power Man, Vixen, Cyborg, Triathalon, and most black characters that arent legacies are exceptions.

I can tell you my reason why given that I read all of the comic books that you talked about on the day they came out. I started reading comics in 1964 with zero Black superheroes. No Black person had ever hit a white person in movies, TV or any other form of entertainment until 1968 when a rich white man got backhanded by Sidney Poitier in 1968. So at that time we did not want to be called Negro or Coloreds anymore so we owned Black and made it ours. This comes from Malcolm X's quote about why he drank his coffee black because it is the strongest when not diluted. This inspires Stockley Carmicheal to coined the phrase "Black Power" in 1966. We wanted Black Goliath because Hank Pym's 1st name was Goliath. In the 70s and 80s you better not call me anything but Black. That was the culture of our youth time. The Black movies of the 1970s were the 1st time we ever won.

"Black" should be reserved for color schemes/ costume motifs (not race clarification) Such as Blue Devil, Red Ronin, Crimson Avenger, Black Scorpion (who is white btw) and so on. Or in the case of a character having a dark heart, spirit or intentions. Black Phantom, Black Heart, Black Knight etc. Or as a combination of both reasonings. Being black (race wise) should be a coincidence at best.

Static Shock and Spawn are great outliers and they are just in general great characters.

That's a fact when X-Men was on TV in the 90's my MOMS said to me she liked to watch X-men because of the similarities between them and black people. It was that deep for my MOTHER, it blew my mind because you don't expect your mother to like your comics and take that perspective too. I was already a fan of X-men but after that, it was for life. R.I.P Stan Lee

A black racer is a type of snake, though I don’t think it can ski, and he has a better power set than his marvel version the Scarlett skier.

As my best friend once said, Black is beautiful.

Hanna-Barbera didn’t wanna pay for the rights for black lightning so they made up a superhero

Fascinating commentary! So here's a question for you (several months after you dropped this video): did you also notice that a lot of white female superhero characters also put Black in their names? Black Cat, Black Canary and Black Orchid, just to name a few. Is there a pattern there as well?

The Saturday night live sketch you talked about was so funny. I recommend everyone to find it on KZfaq.

I remember hearing about how Black Lightning was originally an abomination called "Black Bomber" who was a White Supremacist who transformed into a black guy, and Black Lightning the result of salvaging that horrible idea. It's actually kinda funny that the Teen Titans characters "Lightning and Thunder" actually showed up a mere 6 years later in New Teen Titans number 32, which came out in 1983, and are unrelated to the Black Lightning characters of the same names. Black Lightning when updated was remade with well, black lightning versus the yellow or blue normally used as lightning colors.

Man I was joking with my girl about this the other day 😂

About Black Racer. I should point out that there is a snake indigenous to the southern US, Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Also known as the Southern Black Racer or Black Runner. I always thought that in lew of the fact that the character is black, that he was named for the snake and always visualized the Racer having the swift, supple movements of a snake, and not some clunky, awkward way of moving. But that's just me?

I don't think all was referring to race...plus they didn't do it with blue marvel...bishop...and plenty more but also i think they were trying to keep the names cool cuz aum of thoae names by itself sounds incomplete and in many cases there were characters with the same or similar names

A train from the boys is a good example of a hero ish without black in his hero name

Black Spider is an especially funny one, considering he originally wore a purple and yellow costume and two (or more) other people have borrowed Eric's alias.

IDK, for me Black Lightning is kinda in the same boat as black manta. The name sounds cool and I don't know what else to call him other than Black Lightning.

A couple of things: You call Black Vulcan a ripoff of Black Lightning, and that's 100% correct. Isabella would no doubt have LOVED it if BL had joined the Super Friends, because he would have gotten some money for that! DC and Hanna-Barbera decided to be cheapskates, so BV was created to avoid paying Isabella any royalties. This happened a SECOND time with the Static Shock cartoon. BL was intended to be used in an episode, but he was switched out for Soul Power. As for Black Manta, his identity and even his face were complete mysteries until the mid-to-late '70s when it was revealed he was black. This was a shocker back then -- and VERY COOL! Aquaman's arch enemy was black (and presumably, always had been)?! Amazing!

Yk I actually have one black lightning comicbook and both the comic and the Black lightning CN shorts from back in the day were my first ever exposure to the character which If being honest him and static schock are my favorite electrical/lightning based superheroes ever

Tony Isabella didn't block the use of black lightning.. They just didn't wana pay him any royalties so they changed the name 😂💀

Saw this video and had to support the fam

I completely agreed with your observations if the character is named after something specific then cool but something like black lightning not necessary because he’s just lightning.

oh , this channel gonna be huge, he got so much info in a place

The reason black lightning is not in any of those important event is cuz the guy that created the character did a contract with dc and everythim the character ould appear they needed to pay him for the rights, cuz dc didn't want to pay him they end up not using the character that much and also doing characters that are literally black lightning but with different names Lol you already say it

Would like to point out that having black in their name had nothing to do with their race in the first place... well except for Black Goliath and Black Racer. I had no idea those two even existed before this video but they're the only examples where there is no other reason for them to be called "Black" other than race, and Black Racer... RACER really? No one thought there was a problem with that name? That might have worked if he was a race car driver instead of a skier but Knight Ski would actually be a better name for that character. Knight because of the weird medieval armor theme he's got going on with his costume for some reason and Ski for the obvious reason plus it kind of becomes a "Night Sky" pun. All of the other characters you mentioned however are actually wearing primarily black costumes. There are other examples of characters like this you didn't mention such as Black Lantern, there's actually several Black Lanterns and they're not all black people, they're called that for the same reason as Green Lantern. The Black Lantern Rings are powered by Death rather than Willpower. There's also Black Flash who in the comics actually was a member of the Black Lanterns and has been depicted in live action as a character originally called Zoom and the origins of how he became Black Flash are very different from the comics since at the time they seemed to be avoiding using the Lantern rings for some reason. Black Canary is a white woman traditionally, except in the Birds of Prey movie which ended up just being a Harley Quin movie which is the only time that character has been portrayed by a black person. Black Canary's costume has always been black which is where her name actually comes from and the same is usually true for all the other characters who have black in their name. Black Bolt, the leader of the Inhumans. Black Scorpion who is actually a City of Villains character who is a white guy in black armor. Black Widow who is a white red haired Russian woman. Black Cat who is a white female character from Spider-man. Essentially every character I just mentioned is white. There are actually more white characters with black in their name than black characters and it's because of their primarily black costumes. BTW there's also a bunch of Transformers who have the word black in their name including Black Zarak which the name Zarak actually belongs to the headmaster of G1 Scorponok who was originally a Nebulon, a human like alien in robotic power armor. He was later depicted as just a robot and that's the version that would later be called Black Zarak. There's also a human villain named Prometheus Black also known as Meltdown. Black is just his actual last name. I bring them up specifically because they're two of the only human characters who have black in their names and they're both white guys. Black Goliath I can ALMOST forgive because there are versions of his costume that are actually black which makes the name work a bit better but the version where the only black on his entire costume is his belt, nope I can't excuse that one. The Alan Scott version of Green Lantern also has more red than green in his costume but he does also have a literal green lantern that powers his ring just like ever other version of the character so I can't even make that comparison. Black Goliath really does have no other reason to be called black other than just his race. I will say that white characters tend to have a wide range of different colors for their costumes and names while the only black character I can think of with a color other than black in his name is the John Stewart version of Green Lantern. So while I don't think that calling a black character Black is a problem in of itself since it has more to do with their costume design than their race, I do think they could have chosen other color schemes for some of these characters. Black Lightening could have been called Blue Lightening for example especially given how comics at the time tended to use dark blue to highlight details so they wouldn't look like shadows when they were suppose to have black costumes on. Blue also works well as an electric color. Even when they don't have black in the name there are still a lot of black characters who tend to wear black costumes. Miles Moralis' costume is black though not as black as the original black suit Spider-man when Peter Parker had the Venom sybiote on. Miles at least still has that red web design. Sam Wilson has black in his version of the Captain America costume and it's suppose to be based on the colors of the American flag. The movie also just in general gave him a lot of black when he wore red in the comics. John Stewart even has a lot more more black than green in his costume but to be fair Kyle Ryner actually wore that costume first in the DCAU before John showed up in Justice League. At least they didn't give Diggle a black version of the Green Arrow costume when he took over after Oliver tried to quit. Though Diggle actually is an alternate version of John Stewart so he's still the only black character to use a color other than black and they're both Green.

I've often wondered this same question. Thank you for the video!

I'm curious if you have any thoughts on characters like Black Canary (who was always a white woman) getting recast as black. Or Jet Black in Netflix's Cowboy Bebop. Coincidence?

I actually like the fact that many characters have the word Black in their names. (Black Lightning, Black Panther etc.) It's just my personal opinion but as a black man, if I was a superhero or villain my name would definitely have Black in it XD

"Maybe he saw a black guy skiing . . ." *chef's kiss*

I'm sat here trying to figure out how Black Noir ended up being a walking reference to this trope despite being white in the comics

White Adam: *"Hold my dead 45th grand-grandfather homie."*

The 1st part of lightnings name referenced the type of energy he used; not even characters that could control lightning could nope his powers. Livewire can't control electricity and absorbs it to get stronger, but she can't control his.

7:20 I thought that Hanna Barbara just didn’t want to pay Tony royalties

Know what I didn't realize that the only one would probably be John Stewart

Truth be told I didn't know Black Manta was black until Young Justice.

Great video! 👊🏾

Power Man, or Luke Cage as he's better known and Storm, are possibly two the best examples where comic heroes of colour never had *"black"* in their names from the off. And to cap it off, Monica Rambeau, who is Black, is the first female superhero to carry the code name Captain Marvel in the 80s.

**LOOKS AT BLADE. STATIC. MILES MORALES SPIDERMAN. VIXEN. LUKE CAGE... GREEN LANTERN.**

Black Goliath added the "black" to his name because, before him, Hank Pym and Clint Barton went by the name Goliath. So when he took on the mantle, he was like "you're getting it different now! You gotta deal with BLACK Goliath! Most of these characters are from a certain era and, honestly, I feel it gives them a pass on most of these. Especially in the case of Black Racer because "racer" by itself feels boring or incomplete. Speed Racer and Racer X are both examples of this point. What's annoying is in modern days when they race swap a character into being black because their code name has "black" in it (I'm looking at you, Black Canary!).

I never notice until you point it out

This reminds me of the episode of Harvey Birdman when Black Vulcan said Aquaman should be called “White Fish.”

This reminds me of the Key and Peele Power Falcons episode. "Relax Black Falcon." "Why you saying Black Falcon? I'm Green Falcon." 😂😂

I’m pretty sure Bast itself is a White Panther in the comics

Alright I'm Teejay LeCapois but you can call me Black Commentator X. 😁

"Always bet on black." - Wesley Snipes (Passenger 57)

That outro tho 🤣🤣

Black Lightning not appearing in the 1970s cartoon was because DC did not want to pay the creator royalties and the creator did not want it to happen for free. DC and marvel to this day are notorious for not wanting ot pay creators and give them credit

i mean early naming convention was kinda off. Like just the fantastic 4. Mr Fantastic, Invisible woman, The human torch and the Thing.

The channel should be called black comic power 😂😂

The fact that these characters were all created by white men should tell you right there why the word Black was in their name. There job was to introduce a black superheros to predominantly white audiences. Thankfully times have changed. However my real reason for commenting was Black Manta's original origin. Talk about DECADES before his time. As a black man he found it difficult for his people to survive and thrive in the white man's world so he wanted to conquer Atlantis and take their technology for black people so they could live better. While his intention admirable conquering a country to oppress them was only perpetuating the crime that had been done to him. What would he do if he found a mountain of vibranium in his ancestral homeland in Africa in the DC Universe?

Ngl, I was expecting a deep dive into the characters, writers and the inspirations behind these characters, utilizing old interviews to find out why they used “Black” instead of some other prefix to make the names less generic… Still a decent video with some information I didn’t know before, just had high expectations.

Black Lightning didn't show up in Super Friends because the author would have received royalties due to the nature of his contract. HB didn't use him to cut costs.

Luke Cage and Blade always deliver still kicking ass , but Morpheus needs his own movie !

I honestly think comic creators can just get lazy, especially back in the 60's when they were creating a new character every day. So you end up with Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Black Canary, Black Adam, Black Cat, Black Lighting, Green Goblin, Blue Beetle, Grey Ghost, and more lazily named heroes and villains. That's just my opinion

Good video, but I think think it's clear the reason why they did this was simply because it was popular back then. I love Blaxploitation movies and they do it all the time in those, "Black Caesar" being one of the best and "Blacula" being one of the funniest.

To be fair, Black Widow, Black Bolt, Black Canary… But then on that last one.

Blade Spawn Blue marvel sitting in the corner :🥲

Oh man, the title killed me. How else would we know they're black?

SideBar: Someone else brought up the point that by the time Super Friends came out the creator of Black Lightening no longer worked for DC but still owned all the rights to BL..so when they wanted to add the black character to the show they created one to avoid running him his coins (either he quick before the show or quit after, partially due to that reason..I have to go back and check)

Here in Brazil, Hawkman is called Black Hawk... He's gonna be played by a black actor in Black Adam.

I did not know about the highest grossing for black panther. That is amazing 🎉 rip to Chadwick

honestly id say it makes sense for black racer to be called "Black" racer bc he's meant to be one of DC's Grim Reapers and black is often associated with death especially in DC where the Black lantern corp is based around death death the characters wears black and so on

A lot of them do have black in there names and also a black costume.

When I was a kid I loved black Panther, he was a good Batman (iPhone caps bats but not the king of wakanda?) and I had a copy of black lightning I read and read over and over

“I’m black y’all and I’m black y’all,I’m blacker than black and I’m black y’all” - Dead Mike

You have some fair points points but then again there’s Black Widow, Black Cat, Black Bolt and a few other’s that aren’t related to the skin color and there’s many characters that do have the skin color but don’t have black in their superhero name like Power Man, Storm, Falcon, or War Machine and I think a few of them are extremely bad coincidences like how Black Panther is from Africa because the animal is prominent in Africa but a few of them might been on purpose and I don’t know anything about Dc Comics so there are lots of characters that I don’t know about or never knew the names of

Black Canary, Black Adam, Manchester Black, Black Widow, Black Bolt, Blackheart, etc. All ain't black. Lol

Great video!

They knew the internet was coming

Honestly, I never knew Black Manta was black lol. Just thought he was Black Manta. Had no idea a human was under the weird helmet even.

Fun fact: there are far more known non-black characters having black in their names: Black bol, black widdow, black alice, black adam, black hand, black heart, black canary, black knight etc. Don‘t want to diminish anything that was said in this vid. Just thought that that was a fun fact

Funny thing is I brought up the same point to a group of people and got labeled as “racist” for it

Before Watching: Falcon, War Machine, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Spiderman (Miles Morales), Bishop, Storm, Blade, Spawn, Static Shock, Live Wire, Iron Heart, Luke Cage (Power Man), Bulletproof, Kwame (Earth Ring), Edison Crane, Hancock, Agent J, Morpheus, Huey and Riley Freeman, Mother's Milk, Cyborg. Thats about as far as I got. this is so I can get some context around the observation you are about to reveal to us. here we go...

They didn’t want to pay the creator of black lighting for every appearance so he was barely used

Some do, some don't, if you have a problem with it, make your own like Eric July

I think saying The Racer sounds like eraser, so a word needed to be in front of Racer.

Makes sense why he is called black lightning. It is not about his name but powers

ICON, Hardware, Spawn, Static, Spider-Man, Photon, Mr. Terrific I think those characters names just were due to a sign of the times. Not so much anymore.

this reminds me of tiger from the spinnerette webcomic. yes his a black man but he wears mainly orange and everyone calls him black tiger much to his chagrin

Laughs in Kamen Rider Black

5:06 lucky they aint call him The Racist lmaooo

In Volume 2 of Black Lightning, BL explained that he was on his way to Superman's funeral and his car broke down...lol. I'm not making this up.

It's like putting man, woman, girl, she, and he in names 🤔 also the entire ThunderCats names. 😂

I think it was important ALL these characters were called 'Black Something' and you're not looking at it from the historical angle. I was there when these were first on the comic stands. 'Black' was very hip at the time; we had Black people in the news (for good and bad), Shaft, Blaxploitation and Black characters were a unique selling point. Comics were usually stacked vertically, so only the title was showing... therefore 'Black Something' denotes it's a new, hip, Black character. I didn't see a Black person with my own eyes until I was 11, so it was a real novelty to see them as action heroes in comics and on film, so it was basically a ploy to sell comics. Luckily most of the Black characters did not disappoint. Although Blade should have been called 'Black Helsing'. Perhaps not...

white batman, super whiteman, iron white man, white america, white widow, white torch, white woman, white lantern

The vast majority don't. John Stewart Green Lantern, Mr Terrific, Static Shock, Falcon, War Machine, Luke Cage Power Man, Misty Knight, Storm, Blade, Spawn, Bishop, Deathlok, Doctor Voodoo, Papa Midnight, Bumblebee, Cyborg, Night Thrasher, Steel, Firestorm, Amazing Man, Bloodsport, just to name a few. In fact, very few use Black in their name

I actually think Black Panther’s name is clever. Because a Panther is simply a black Leopard. So basically his name is Black Black Leopard.

Black Manta's motivations originally were HILARIOUS!! His goal was to conquer the sea so black people could live there. LOL!

I'll give Black Lightning a yes since I always assumed Black Lightning was a reference to the whole "Black Power" phrase since... y'know... electricity. Corny I know, but we're talking about a dude who dresses up as a member of Parliment-Funkadelic... And I do love me some Bootsy.