This June, Detective Comics is getting a shakeup. When James Tynion IV leaves at the end of the current "Batmen Eternal" arc, the creative team will have a href="https://www.cbr.com/bryan-hill-detective-comics-batman-black-lightning/"Bryan Hill taking over writing duties and Miguel Mendonca doing the art, and their inaugural arc will have the Dark Knight come face to face with Black Lightning.

With the Gotham Knights seemingly separated after Batwoman's murder of Clayface, Batman brings Black Lightning on to get involved in the lives of his young partners such as the Signal and Orphan. No other details have been given on the arc itself, though it does sound like the real problem won't be what Jefferson Pierce does, but what he says to Batman's young charges.

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Black Lightning and Batman have a storied history together as members of the superhero team known as the Outsiders. Though the prelude to Dark Nights: Metal alludes to their stint as teammates, this will be the first time in Rebirth history that we've seen the two of them working together. Judging by the arc's title, it appears that this arc will bring the Outsiders back into the DC Universe in some capacity, and that's all well and good. But this is also a great opportunity to bring back Jefferson Pierce's daughters, Anissa and Jennifer, aka fellow superheroes Thunder and Lightning.

The most obvious reason for this would be that by the time this arc begins in June and stretches out into early August, the CW's Black Lightning series will have wrapped up its debut season. While not all of them have fully embraced their superhero personas on the show -- Anissa is definitely going to go full Thunder soon, and Jen can't be that far behind -- the three of them are now aware that they share superpowers. One of the things fans love about the show is that it's taking the right amount of time to build up Anissa and Jen's eventual turns as heroes and showing their vastly different approaches to coming into their newfound abilities.

After a brief appearance in the New 52's Teen Titans series, the two heroes basically vanished off the face of the Earth. The last time the two of them were really acknowledged by DC before their live-action debut was in a pair of well-received animated shorts, so their return to comics would be both welcome and incredibly smart. Given how Marvel has gotten so many to fall in love with Black Panther's Nakia, the Dora Milaje and Shuri, it would behoove DC to follow suit now that audiences have grown to love Nafessa Williams and China Anne McClain's performances as the two daughters on television.

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Beyond the obvious benefits of cross-media promotion, bringing Thunder and Lightning back into the DC Universe, via Detective Comics specifically, would be a fun move. As beloved a character as Batman is, and the many members of the Batfamily that there are, it can't be denied that he sort of, well, sucks at the whole "family" aspect. The four Robins have all left him to some degree or another, with Jason and Damian in particular sometimes doing things just to spite him. He's been repeatedly called out for his lack of communicating important matters to the other members of his family, and he's more often than not the cause of their disagreements. For all that he's done to acknowledge his faults, one could argue that he hasn't really done enough to change his ways.

Jefferson has his own problems with Anissa and Jen, as his CW show has shown us, but he's also proof that having a family comprised of superheroes can be stable. He's the best kind of person to show Batman how a superhero family should work, and since he's grown up having to learn how to be a hero as well as a father, he's more than capable of communicating important lessons to Orphan and Signal that Batman himself can't.

In their own ways, Thunder and Lightning can form interesting relationships with Signal and Orphan as well. Whether that means Cass mimicking the sisters' physical actions, as she has done in the past, or Duke discussing his feelings as one of the few black members of the Batfamily. The point of an interconnected universe is having characters bounce off one another, and Jen and Anissa are in a perfect position to return for the first time in years, and bringing with them a sense of history that Rebirth has given to other characters.

Rebirth has been taking its time bringing back characters and relationships that suddenly vanished from DC back when the New 52 began. The Pierce family is something of a package deal, and it's hard to think that this upcoming arc for Detective won't bring them up or feature them in some way. With such an emphasis on family in books like Green Arrow, Super Sons, Flash, and Superman, the Pierce family most certainly needs to join their ranks.