Adaptation of The American Way comics coming from John Ridley and Blumhouse Productions

The comic was published as a six-issue monthly miniseries last year by DC Entertainment’s Vertigo label. Ridley wrote the story will illustrator George Jeanty, and it was a follow-up to their  2007 graphic novel The American Way.

The original deals with the creation of a team of ’60s superheroes called The Civil Defense Corps, each with special powers but also a specific ethnic makeup designed to make segments of the American population feel safe and represented. There is also a group of supervillains pitted against the heroes, but the whole thing is partly a contrivance to pacify an American public growing increasingly inflamed with the times.

The film will be focused in 1972 and pick up that original story a decade later. Ridley has said his inspiration for the series was Ridley reading of LBJ’s desire to add a black astronaut to the space program. Jason Fisher is added to the superhero roster as The New American, a black man subjected to genetic manipulation to give him super strength but a limited pain threshold. His presence creates turmoil within the superhero crew, emblematic of the times, and when the government creates a new superhero called Hellbent to mask this strife, the superhero crew is devastated by the results.