You are quite correct in your accessment of Luke Cage and Black Lightning being Marvel and DC’s attempts to capitalize on the blaxploitation movement in film. However the reasons they failed had less to do with whether they were poor conceived or not as with the weird relationship blacks have to pop culture.

While blaxploitations films covered most genres, two were conspicuously absent from the movies made: science fiction and fantasy. And superhero comics are a mix of science fiction and fantasy, along with wish fulfillment. From my experience of the time, any black person who was into science fiction/fantasy during the 70s–Parliament-Funkadelic and Sun Ra don’t count–was treated as som kind of crazy cuckoo. Or worse, called an oreo.

Reading comics was the most rebellious thing I could do as a kid. Whereas going to a blaxploitation flick was a communal experience.

Not to argue, but I would categorize EASY RIDER as more “anti-establishment” than youth as a phenomenon. I would classify the “BIKINI BEACH” type pictures as more indicative of “youth pictures.”

And to be fair all around, we can look at these pictures with the 20/20 clarity of their being our history, but there was a lot of “movements” and “genres” that overlapped one another.

David Walker, film critic: “At the very least, the blaxploitation movies played a very integral role in keeping a lot of production companies afloat or solvent. When you look at how many movies were produced from 1970 to 1979 and the amount of money those movies made, there’s no denying that this was one of the bread-and-butter genres of the film industry.”

As for some of those numbers, from the same interview with David Walker:
Sweet Sweetback’s BaadAsssss Song, estimated production cost $150,000, box office gross $15,180,000.
Shaft, estimated production cost $1.2 million, box office gross $23,250,000.
Cotton Comes to Harlem, estimated production cost $2.2 million, box office gross $15,375,000.
Superfly, estimated production cost $149,000, box office gross $18,900,000.
Coffy, estimated production cost $600,000, box office gross $12,944,000.

— St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture

“Sweetback brought the weight of the Black Power movement to the screen as a counterpoint to the depiction of white hegemony. Sweetback was nearly a complete black production. Writer, director and star Melvin Van Peebles made the film by claiming it was a porn production so as to escape hiring a union crew (Bogle 238). On a budget of $500,000 ($50,000 of which came from Bill Cosby), Van Peebles shot the film in nineteen days with Cinemation picking it up for distribution (Bogle 238). By the end of 1971, Sweetback had grossed $10 million, a huge success for the era (Guerrero 86).

It is important to note that blaxploitation arose at a critical juncture for the Hollywood film industry. From the late 1960s, mainstream Hollywood was in financial peril. The major studios were losing between $15 and $145 million leading many studios to face the distinct prospect of bankruptcy (Guerrero, 82-3). The success of Sweetback came as Hollywood fully realized the power of the black ticket buying public which accounted for more than 30 percent of the box office in major cities (Guerrero, 83). Hollywood quickly seized onto the seeming profitability of the Sweetback formula and spawned, what Guerrero calls, “the sons of Sweetback.” For this discussion we should include the “daughters of Sweetback” as well.

— Images Journal

Also here: http://tinyurl.com/ysu8cw

I’d actually love to see a comic like Black Bomber, if it were done as snarky, self-aware social commentary or complete absurdism. There wouldn’t even have to be a lesson in every story for the white guy.

Somehow I doubt that’s what they were going for. Let me guess: when he’s angry, the white guy becomes, big, muscly, mean, brown, and violent, like a different shade of Hulk? And with a great big ‘fro?

Their accounting records….

Historically, blaxploitation films were notoriously cheap to produce and made millions for the studio who only had to foot distribution costs. Studios like AIP and others picked up these independent productions and fed an eager audience.

It was these movies, and other exploitation cinema of the time that fed the distribution coffers of the studios allowing them to blow money on huge budgeted movies with narrower profit margins.

It has been stated on record that AIP – back in the 50’s – saved the theatrical movie business with cheap scifi/horror movies for teens. Other audiences were at home all the time watching that newfangled device called a television.

Doomed though any attempt at an exchange on a blog may be–

What evidence shows that the major studios were saved by blaxploitation pictures?

Were books and characters like Luke Cage, Black Goliath, and Black Lightning Marvel and DC’s attempts at blaxploitation? Yes, most definitely.

Why then didn’t these books lead to a massive influx of other black books and black creators? A number of factors come into play. Whereas blaxploitation helped to save a near death Hollywood, in terms of generating massive box office numbers for low costs, the number of black comics didn’t increase black readers. Since there wasn’t an increase in black readers, there wasn’t an increase in black titles, and therefore black creators. A number of black creators did come into the industry at this point–like Billy Graham, Keith Pollard, James Owsley, and others–but never in enough numbers to do what happened in Hollywood.

Is it part of some natural resistence to black or other voices in comics? Maybe, maybe not.

But I do think the true story of Black Lightining sheds some light on the mindset at DC at the time. That an idea called the Black Bomber about a white racist who turned into a black man when he became angry made its way up the editorial approval process all the way to script form until Tony Isabella came along and pointed out just how racist the concept was and offered to replace it with a new idea is very telling.

A lot of black and hispanic people do read comics. But until the Big Two and others actively reach out to that audience through advertising and promotion first, and then through characters that speak to them, that readership will remain small.

Oh, okay, you can forget them.

And Milestone was not a “line of black characters”, it was a black-inclusive line. It also included hispanic, asian, and non-hispanic white characters. And some damn fine comics.

Was there a “blaxploitation movement” in comics? Possibly.

Was it aimed at expanding the reader base amongst minorities? Probably not.

It was more likely a reflection of the overall culture of the time – films, music and television which was slowly becoming more diverse. I think an analogy “might” be the proliferation of martial arts comics that came after the breakout of Bruce Lee and Sonny Chiba movies.