Black Lightning: Year One #6 - DC

This was another one where I like the book, I like the character, but I just don't think that this story-line necessarily did him any justice. It was all rather predictable. The stand-out even of this whole series is that we find out that Tobias Whale, the one in the current Bat-titles . . started out as just a common hood here. Yes he had aspirations of greatness, but he was defeated at every turn. We also find out that the 100 is actually some kind of mystical being that survives on human emotion. The more miserable or painful the experience, the more he feeds. Apparently he jumps from host to host, until he burns out their bodies, and has to move on to the next. That was really the point of this whole episode. When the 100 learns about Black Lightning, he thinks that he's found the perfect host. His body will last much longer than the others. However, at the end of this issue, the 100 thinks that he's got Jefferson on the ropes. He's about to try to jump into his body, but then . . Black Lightning makes a last ditch effort and short-circuits him. Which also severely drains the 100 and he has to pick a different host. So he jumps into his henchman . . Tobias. And that's how the character that's currently causing problems in Gotham came to be. Like I've said before, I really enjoyed Cully Hamner's pencils on this series. I normally don't. I'm not a big fan. But here . . he did something different, and it worked. Every issue of this series had a great feel to it. As far as Jen Van Meter's story? Really, I have 2 complaints. The first, I said earlier, is that it was a bit to predictable. The other was the way the story was written. There's dialogue throughout the book, this time Jefferson's, talking about his reasons for coming back to the South-side. Sometimes the dialogue coincides with the story . . sometimes it doesn't. But the whole thing was just distracting when trying to follow the story. I appreciate what was trying to be accomplished, but . . to me, it didn't work. But overall, I still enjoyed the book. It is what it is . . an origin story.