DC Universe Presents #13: Black Lightning and Blue Devil

I bet their team-up name becomes Delightning!

Blue Devil may have been one of the very first comics I began reading with the first issue. I don't know how the comic holds up today but as a young kid, I enjoyed the humor. But even back then, I felt the reluctant hero thing got old fairly quickly. I don't a person suddenly given super powers (in his case, a stunt suit fused to him) not feeling he must become a super hero. But if you've got your own title, just get on with it already! I'm not reading Blue Devil #5 to see how his day goes shopping at the local convenience store. Although that would be (or was?!) probably entertaining. He was a giant blue demon!

One of my other favorite comics which began my career of reading comics (can that be labeled a career? Am I wrong about that?) was Batman and the Outsiders which eventually became Adventures of the Outsiders as it republished stories from The Outsiders, except on shittier paper and lousier color. If any of that history is wrong, you have the option of shoving your actually straight up your ass. I'm probably nearly as accurate as any random Wikipedia entry!

That being said, I have no idea what Black Lightning and Blue Devil have been up to in the years before the Reboot. Looks like Blue Devil is an actual demon now. I know I've seen him working with Shadowpact that I know nothing about but sounds like I comic I would have been all over. Reading it! Not humping it. And possibly Black Lightning had a daughter? He may have had a daughter back in The Outsiders but I'll be fucked if I can remember much of those stories. I remember a Nuclear Family!

Why are these guys teaming up? Probably for no better reason than to be called Black and Blue. I hope there is a better reason though. Also, I prefer Delightning.

The story takes place in Los Angeles. You can tell it's Los Angeles because some kind of nefarious deal is going down in an empty, graffiti-filled concrete canal with a bunch of hot rods surrounding some guys saying, "Ese" and "Jesu Cristo." Also, the Location Box says Downtown Los Angeles.

I'd like an upside down Black Widow tattooed on the top of my head too!

Blue Devil is here to stop a drug deal and shut down some guy named Tobias Whale. Black Lightning shows up with the same plan in mind but he doesn't realize Blue Devil is on his side, so he gets aggressive.

I'm such a fucking optimist. I really thought Blue Devil was going to nip this good guy battle in the bud here.

But of course they fight each other while the drug dealers all get away Scott Free. How badly do you want to see Mister Miracle in DC Universe Presents? Yeah, me neither. Big Barda, however, is a story I'd love to read. Without her pansy husband.

The two trade mediocre quips and then Black Lightning makes a smurf joke. I have to say he's reaching here. Blue Devil is a big blue creature! You can't make a smurf joke against a guy who's over seven feet tall! Now if he had made a penis joke that involved smurfs, I would have found it acceptable. Or if he was from Oa.

Thankfully, the LAPD show up. I wonder if anybody has ever said that before? They break up the fight by threatening to shoot the shit out of them. Now I know that's been said before! But both Black Lightning and Blue Devil run off in separate directions. I wonder how many issues before their team-up actually becomes a team-up?

The next day, Black Lightning is reading a newspaper article asking if Blue Devil and Black Lightning are "heroes or psychos." Why can't they be both? He's a teacher for a school system that obviously needs a cash infusion.

What kind of cheap, knock-off American Flag is this?

His father stops by and for a brief moment, I expect this Black Lightning to be one of those new generational ones following in his dad's footsteps. But his dad calls him Jefferson, so he's the original. At least he's the original I grew up with!

Fuck you! What am I supposed to do? "At least he's the original with which I grew up"? Fuck! (That joke was for all the language lovers. You're welcome!)

I'll leave the arguing about ending sentences with prepositions to people who constantly feel the need to correct others about things that don't matter at all and get back to the story.

Meanwhile, Tobias Whale is a disgusting freak! Now, now. Don't all the freaks out there get up in arms about that sentence! It's obvious by clarifying "freak" with the adjective "disgusting" that I generally find freaks other than that. Some freaks are so fucking sensitive!

He kind of looks like J. Jonah Jameson if Jonah had drowned in a pool and was fished out two weeks later.

Tobias Whale's plan is to find out who these heroes are and have his men kill them. That sounds like a pretty solid plan. The first part is to lure them out and tag them. It's successful and Blue Devil gets a tracer stuck to him. I mean, stuck to his suit.

Oh! I guess it is still a suit and Dan is just a stuntman that feels it's okay to use the studio's property on his own time.

Some thugs follow him to the movie studio, break in, and kill Blue Devil's grandfather. Blue Devil comes out and holds him as he dies (and it seems perhaps his grandfather did something to Dan and the costume just before he dies?) and calls him "Grandpa Liam." At the same time, Black Lightning's father is out on the streets trying to find some leads on a story against Tobias Whale when a bunch of thugs pull some guns on him. Black Lightning is watching over him and jumps off the building to save him, yelling, "DAD!" I hope neither of these guys give a shit about keeping their identities secret.

DC Universe Presents #13: Black Lightning & Blue Devil Rating: +1 Ranking. This issue is a gigantic improvement over the Kid Flash story and a marked improvement over Issue #0. It's about two characters I've been interested since the beginning of my journey into comics. The humor wasn't great, just some spastic one-liners that barely made sense in the context of the fight. But I'm definitely intrigued and I wanted more! Stupid twenty page comics.