For a character that's been around since the 1970s, Black Lightning doesn't have the deepest bench for a rogues gallery. (On the other hand, he's got an incredibly sturdy supporting cast, thanks to Tony Isabella, and later, Judd Winick.)
But judging from the first two episodes, the series could be introducing a lot of metahumans using kids who were given powers from the drug Green Light (or given powers from the government experiments in the 80s, and have been stuck in the pods ever since). This looks to be a full-length season, as opposed to the tight 13 episodes of season 1, so a lot of new characters could be introduced to create complications for an episode or two. (S2 E2 has Wendy Hernandez, a girl who has wind powers--"everyone knows it's Wendy!"--and Issa Williams, a boy who can cause you to tell the truth by looking at you.)
There will be plenty of chances for a character introduced on the TV show to show up in the comics, like Jimmy Olsen did when he appeared on the Superman radio show in the 40s. Or, for that matter, Inspector Henderson...who also first appeared on the Superman radio show, before migrating to Superman comics...before becoming a lasting part of Black Lightning's supporting cast.
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The aerokinetic girl has appeared in comics, as Wendy "Windfall" Jones, in The Outsiders. That's interesting, don't you think? There are rumors about Looker coming to the show, too, and I imagine she'd be ethnic-ized as well.
I don't know about the Issa character. He may be original to the show.
I was wondering if she might've been Windfall! Nice catch! And with Mike Barr's love of puns, it's no wonder she's Wendy.
Now I'm going to have that Association song in my head all day. (Although they spelled it "Windy".)
The Green Light pods certainly make the odds of more recognizable super-characters a certainty. I don't see a full-blown Outsiders thing happening, because the FX for characters like Metamorpho would be too expensive, and we're sure not going to see Batman! But some of the pose-and-pointers could work, like Geo-Force or Halo. And Looker, as I said, has been rumored. (But would she be a vampire?)
I don't think it a stretch that the showrunner, who has kept his show separate from the Arrowverse, is thinking about his own Black Lightning-verse. That's what I would do. Joining the Arrowverse means taking a back seat to Greg Berlanti, and why would he want to surrender his autonomy like that?
Yeah, the effects seem to be less prominent in Black Lightning than the other CW shows -- in part, I think, because there are so many more dramatic wheels spinning than catching villains. So there's less need for wall-to-wall effects.
Also, the show has a MUCH higher music budget than the other CW shows, and uses it well. So something's gotta give. But even with their more limited use, the effects look better than Season Supergirl (also probably a function of having most of the heroic scenes be at night), rather than the broad daylight of National City.
Halo would probably be easy to create -- all you really need are glow effects and wirework -- and we've seen Geo-Force style powers on Agents of Sheild last season, so that's doable too. And who knows about Looker! But yeah, I'd steer clear of Metamorho -- he doesn't really fit the tone of the show, anyway.