When it comes to The CW‘s comic book heroes and their supporting casts, Grace Choi may not be the most obvious choice to depict as a comic book nerd, but the folks behind Black Lightning have hidden enough Easter eggs in her apartment to show that, yeah, she reads a bit.
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And — here’s something that might be a little more surprising — it isn’t just DC books. Grace has a pretty well-rounded comics collection which, while it skews heavily toward DC, features trade paperbacks and single issue magazine-format comics from a variety of publishers, including Image and Marvel.
During a recent visit to the set of Black Lightning, ComicBook.com had a little bit of time to peruse the shelves, and here is what we spotted in Grace’s living room.
…And we don’t have time to delve into all of them, so feel free to pore over what we don’t mention and drop your thought sinto the comments below.
Black Lightning airs on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT, following episodes of The Flash on The CW.
The Outsiders
Judd Winick’s run on The Outsiders is heavily featured in Grace’s collection — ironic, since this is the easiest way to suggest that she might be, y’know, fictional.
Grace was created by Winick and Tom Raney in the first issue of this run, and there are at least five trade paperbacks of that era of The Outsiders on her coffee table and bookshelf.
This is similar to all those Archie comics you can find hanging around the Riverdale set if you look hard enough.
Licensed Comics
Grace also has a number of licensed comics based on video games and tabletop games, suggesting that her geeky interests expand beyond just comic books.
Among the titles spotted on her shelves are a Warhammer adaptation, at least two trade paperbacks based on Mortal Kombat X, and some of Silent Hill comics.
Hack/Slash
One of a number of indie books represented, many of those gracing Grace’s shelves have a little something in common: they are by creators who would later work at DC.
Tim Seeley’s creator-owned Hack/Slash is a popular, acerbic, and fun genre mash-up that has been in and out of development for TV and film a few times already. And with Seeley currently writing a number of projects for DC, it makes sense that the series might make a cameo on Black Lightning.
Wolverine and Havok
The only prominently-placed Marvel Comic seen in the place, Walter and Louise Simonson’s Havok & Wolverine miniseries sits perched atop a stack of comics we didn’t dare movie, lest we somehow upset the continuity of the series when they started shooting again.
That the Simonsons have moved pretty freely back and forth between DC, Marvel, and indie publishers during their long and prestigious careers makes this as likely a candidate as any to represent the X-Men offices.
Brian Michael Bendis
Speaking of things with a long history at Marvel, Brian Michael Bendis’s Jinxworld titles are pretty well-represented on the shelves here.
Bendis, who recently signed a years-long deal with DC and is creating new content for them including Superman, Batman, and Jinxworld titles, seems to be one of the creators most prominently featured on Grace’s shelves, since a number of his titles — which have similar trade dress and prominently feature his name — are all grouped together right around the middle of the shelf.
WildStorm
DC’s WildStorm is an imprint featuring characters developed while Jim Lee was at Image, and often written with a ’90s-and-after vibe. Grim, gritty, violent, sexy — these are the watchwords for WildStorm.
And so it kind of makes sense that they are grouped right near Alan Moore on a shelf not far from Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar. There aren’t many “older” titles here, and it may suggest that, unlike the nostalgia of The Flash and other shows, Black Lightning leans into being heavily influenced by modern comics.
Convergence
DC’s Convergence crossover took heroes from various worlds of the multiverse and crammed them together in a battle royale to determine which of their worlds would be allowed to live.
It was a Crisis crossover that happened after Final Crisis, and so did not actually feature the word “Crisis” anywhere in its title.
By the end of the story, though, they did reinstate DC’s infinite multiverse (as opposed to the 52 earths idea introduced at the end of 52 a few years before), although it is debatable whether that stuck, especially post-Rebirth.
Extra points for one of the trade paperbacks pictured above featuring the face of Geo-Force, Brion Markov, whose family and homeland were referenced in last week’s episode of Black Lightning.
Dylan Dog
Could this be considered a stealth crossover with DC’s Legends of Tomorrow? After all, Brandon Routh appeared in the critically-panned film adaptation of Dylan Dog.
…No, probably not.
Maybe if you combine it with Waverider (the character, not the ship) making an appearance on the spine of one of those Convergence trades…!
Watchmen
One of Time Magazine’s 100 greatest novels of the 20th Century, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is that graphic novel that people own, even if they don’t own graphic novels. So of course it’s here; for such an esoteric and mature collection not to feature Watchmen would be weirder.
Rick Remender
Next to Watchmen is Rick Remender’s Strange Girl, not one of his better known comics, but something that is worth mentioning not only because it is a female-led series like much of Bendis’s work or Hack/Slash — but because Remender is getting a bigger and bigger profile on TV right now with projects like Deadly Class and The Last Days of American Crime in the works.
Elseworlds
While Black Lightning will not be part of the “Elseworlds” crossover that kicks off in two weeks, there are some alternate-universe DC titles that are represented in the stacks here.
Besides the Elseworlds-populated Convergence, we get one of DC’s fist post-Elseworlds alternate Earth stories in Justice League: The New Frontier.
Big Image Hits
Even aside from the ones already mentioned, some of Image Comics’s biggest and best-selling recent hits are represented on the shelves.
No, The Walking Dead isn’t there, and neither is Powers (which is Jinxworld anyway), but you can see trades of Saga, Sex Criminals, and more hanging out on Grace’s mantel.
Robert Venditti
Before he built a career doing clever takes on long-running franchises at Valiant and DC, Robert Venditti was best known for his creator-owned comics, The Surrogates, which were eventually adapted into a film starring Bruce Willis.
You can see those comics on the shelf here, representing another familiar DC face’s prior work.
