Jenny Blake Isabella

As Tony Isabella, she created and wrote Black Lighting, Misty Knight and Tigra. She also wrote Captain America, the Champions, Daredevil, Dracula, Ghost Rider, Grim Ghost, Hawkman, Iron Fist, Justice Machine, The Living Mummy, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Star Trek and many others.

Isabella has been working in the comics industry for 54 years. She was an editor and writer at Marvel Comics and other publishers. At DC, she created Black Lightning, the company’s first prominent African-American super-hero. She co-wrote the prose novels Captain America: Liberty’s Torch and Star Trek: The Case of the Colonist’s Corpse. She’s the author of 1000 Comic Books You Must Read and the odd-but-wondrous July 1963: A Pivotal Month in the Comic-Book Life of Tony Isabella. She’s received an Inkpot Award from Comic-Con International in San Diego and a Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award from ECBACC. Cleveland Magazine named her one of that city’s most interesting people of 2018. She was the second inductee to the Hall of Heroes Museum’s Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana. Her most recent comics work was the six-issue Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands and an autobiographical story for the DC Pride 2025 anthology. She’s currently writing gags for the syndicated feature Last Kiss and is working on other cool projects. These include a new trans super-hero comic and a full-length graphic novel featuring true stories from his career and life.

Black Lightning was a weekly, live-action series on the CW for four years. The show drew its inspiration from Isabella’s own work on her proudest creation. She made a cameo appearance on the third season finale, playing a federal judge.
Isabella began her gender-affirming therapy in December of 2023 and HRT in April of 2024. She is married to her wife Barb and they have two adult children, Eddie and Kelly.