Blackrock
27 years ago - Lucia Rojas is born in Columbia.
12 years ago - 15-year-old Lucia begins muling for the Columbian cartels.
8 years ago - 19-year-old Lucia creates her own ruthless smuggling cartel, forging exclusive partnerships with Bruno Mannheim's Intergang.
3 years ago - 24-year-old Lucia is caught smuggling by Superman. She meets Morgan Edge in prison. Recognizing the unutalized potential of the Blackrock, she kills him, becomes it's new host, and uses it to attack Superman. He survives with the help of Supergirl, and she is returned to prison.
1 year ago - 26-year-old Lucia is freed from prison by Gorilla Grodd to join the Legion of Doom.
There are a lot of examples across comics of specific character names that have proven to be popular with readers even when the name has never really applied to a singular character that people liked. Blackrock is one of the best examples; there really is no one version of the character that has caught on, it's just a name that applies to a variety of Superman villains. We've chosen one one of the later incarnations specifically because it manages to capture a certain style of comic character, even if that archetype can be a little rediculous. Comics are like that sometimes.
Blackrock's Comic HistoryThe very first version of Blackrock appeared for the first time in 1976. It was a different person every time, weilding powers that came from a tech suit, or from a piece of technology that looked like a black gem. Sometimes there was no one in the suit, and other times it was actually the inventor of the suit that had the power.
Later, after the Crisis of infinite Earths, the name settled on the black gem concept of the character, which was now being described as a symbiotic alien lifeform. The name now described the artifact itself, which moved from user to user through it's various incarnations. The particular user that we're interested in was bonded to the Blackrock in 2007; a South American drug smuggler named Lucia. She was depicted as being particularly adept at weilding the alien energy of the Blackrock thanks to her hatred of Superman, and was also the first time the character's look seemed to reflect it's nature as an alien gemstone, rather than just being a dude in a costume with a helmet holding a rock. Admittedly, her look was sexualized to a almost comical degree, but it actually worked within the character concept and even seemed influenced by characters like Star Saphire, while also being loosely reminiscient of some of the original characters from Superman's animated series like Volcana. This, then, seems like a solid version of the character we can get behind. |
Our Blackrock StoryDeciding to use the Lucia version of Blackrock means we have a little bit of work to do to flesh out her story. She really didn't have much of one when she was introduced. First of all, she needed a last name.
We've tied her into the existing organized crime world of Metropolis by making her the drug connection to Intergang, which gives us a reason for her paths to cross with Superman's in the first place. We also gave the Blackrock itself a slightly more Kryptonian origin, making it debris from the phantom zone after the escape of General Zod. This makes it more a part of Superman's world before it ever started empowering people to fight him. In order to reflect the Blackrock's history of moving between users we actually gave it briefly to longtime Superman sort-of-adversary Morgan Edge, just to introduce the idea that Lucia is actually extremely adept at weilding it's powers. Edge clearly didn't wind up encased in a crystal bikini, so she is obviously giving herself over as a host far more than he ever did. Lastly, to really play up the fact that Lucia is THE Blackrock and a real threat, we actually had Grodd go out of his way to free her and bring her into the Legion of Doom. This, hopefully, really establishes her as a credible threat not just to Superman but to the DC world at large. |