Jenny Blake Isabella

Jenny Blake Isabella is an American comic book writer and editor with over fifty years in the industry, best known as the co-creator of Black Lightning — DC Comics' first major African American superhero to headline his own series — with artist Trevor Von Eeden in 1977. She is also the creator of Marvel Comics' Black Goliath, and is credited with co-creating Misty Knight and Tigra at Marvel. Born December 22, 1951 in Cleveland, Ohio, she entered comics fandom as a teenager and was hired by Marvel editor Roy Thomas in 1972 as an editorial assistant. During the 1980s she operated Cosmic Comics, a comic book shop in the Colonial Arcade in Downtown Cleveland. Her writing credits span Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Captain America, Luke Cage, Black Lightning, Justice Machine, and many others across Marvel, DC, Comico, and Innovation Comics.

She wrote the Comics Buyer's Guide column 'Tony's Tips' for over a decade, and has localized foreign-language Disney comics for the U.S. market. In 2020 she cameoed as Judge Isabella on the CW television series Black Lightning. In February 2025, Isabella came out as a transgender woman, announcing her preferred name as Jenny Blake Isabella. She has stated she will continue writing under both Jenny Blake Isabella and her birth name. DC Comics offered to update her credits to reflect her new name. Her first story published under the Jenny Blake Isabella name appeared in DC Pride 2025, an autobiographical piece about her path to coming out. She has announced she is developing a new comic series featuring an original transgender superhero, which she has described as a contemporary take for queer and straight kids alike.

In April 2026, Isabella publicly noted that despite working in the industry for over half a century and having created characters that appeared in a four-year television series, no publisher had reached out about her new project and she had not been invited to a single convention that year — with convention promoters and editors falsely telling fans she had retired or no longer attended shows. Her story is a sharp illustration of the systemic marginalization rampant throughout the industry. A creator of her stature and legacy, still active and still creating, being made invisible by an industry that should be celebrating her.