Editing DC Comics (section)

===Static===
Nerd Virgil Hawkins is pressured to go to an upcoming gang meet and shoot one of his tormentors. He rejects the temptation but the meet soon turns into a war and police deploy an experimental marker they believe will mark gang members to be tracked down later. This winds up giving a lot of people superpowers, Virgil included, or killing them instead. As a comic nerd granted electricity powers in a city that now has a bunch of superpowered criminals, he naturally becomes a superhero. Much like fellow teen hero Spider-Man, he enjoys mocking his enemies to throw them off guard.

One of the many, many black males with electric powers. Originally part of the Milestone imprint and its separate canon, Static proved to be ''by far'' to be the most interesting and popular character from the line. While it's not that big an accomplishment (note the distant second, Icon, managing to be an interesting ''person'' dragged down by horrifically bland powers), he managed get an animated series (originally in its own canon but later clumsily merged into the DCAU despite previously mentioning DC heroes as fictional characters) which propelled him to mainstream popularity.