Technically, Black Vulcan was not an original comics character. He was stolen from one. Creators of botox afflicted animation, Hanna Barbera, asked for the rights to DC Comics Black Lightning(a hero to be focused on another day) but changed their minds and made their own knockoff: Black Vulcan.
It was the 70s. That long ago age when barbershops were shunned and cars lined up for miles to grab a cheap gallon of gas. In effort to make our Saturday mornings more identifiable(and by ‘our’ we mean Americans of other ethnicities) the Superfriends became multicultural. As we’ve mentioned before, The Suits tactic worked on Kid Groonk. The only excuse we have for accepting such blatant stereotyping is that we were young and very stupid. As opposed to being older and slightly less stupid today.
The Superfriends Black Vulcan trickled down into the 80s and kept entertaining the superhero addicted tykes on network TV until the early 90s. But old cartoons never die. Their cels are virtually immortal. To the delight of all Adult Swim’s Harvey Birdman saw fit to re-introduce Black Vulcan as a parody of his former self.
You lucky children of the 21st century don’t have to rely on nostalgia for our misplaced youth. For you, faithful readers, have You Tube.
Wonder Woman and Black Vulcan vs “VooDoo Vampires”
In the darkest depth of Africa sits a temple adorned in bats. From this temple comes Storm…er…I mean Vampiress: the VooDoo vampire. Her ultimate evil plan? To be a bat and flit about the jungle all threatening-like. When Vampiress bores of this she attacks random safari goers with LASERS from her FANGS. Apparently the drugs were very good back in the 70s.
The Timeline of a Great Catchphrase “In my pants”
Pure comedy genius…in his pants.
