As the Civil Rights movement changed the face of America in the 1960s, DC Comics responded in the ’70s with its portrayal of its black characters.

The results, however, were misguided. And that’s being very kind.

A 1970 issue of Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane had the investigative reporter explore Metropolis’ Little Africa neighborhood by using a machine borrowed from the Man of Steel to temporarily transform her into a black woman. A year later, an issue of Superman explained the absence of black people on Krypton by saying they all lived on an island, self-segregated from the rest of planet’s population. That same idea was later retooled to explain why there was no human diversity in DC’s 30th century super team, the Legion of Superheroes, and was incorporated into the origin of Tyroc, the Legion’s first black member.

Then there was the Black Bomber, an almost-happened character that Reddit user mike_pants recently discovered and posted about in the Today I Learned community.

The Black Bomber, as conceived by DC editors in the late 1970s, was a white racist who unknowingly became a black superhero when he stressed out—a condition he acquired thanks to a military experiment with a camouflage chemical during the Vietnam War. In a 2000 column, Tony Isabella, the writer who was asked to script the Black Bomber’s adventures, described what it was like to point out to his bosses how bad their idea was:

“In each of the two completed Black Bomber scripts, the white bigot risks his own life to save another person whom he can’t see clearly (in one case, a baby in a stroller) and then reacts in racial slur disgust when he discovers that he risked his life to save a black person. He wasn’t aware that he had two identities, but each identity had a girlfriend and the ladies were aware of the change. To add final insult, the Bomber’s costume was little more than a glorified basketball uniform. “DC had wanted me to take over writing the book with the third issue. I convinced them to eat the two scripts and let me start over. To paraphrase my arguments… ” ‘Do you REALLY want DC’s first black super-hero to be a white bigot?’ “Okay, he wasn’t precisely their first black super-hero, but I made my point. The Black Bomber stories were deep-sixed and I went to work on my own creation.”

That creation turned into Black Lightning, DC’s first African-American superhero to star in his own series. It ran for 11 issues between 1977 and 1978, and Isabella wrote the first 10.

Surprisingly, the Black Bomber’s story didn’t end with disco and dreams of second presidential term for Jimmy Carter. The character concept was revived by the late Dwayne McDuffie in the pages of a 2008 issue of Justice League of America. The writer, who was African American, introduced the Brown Bomber, a member of an alternate Earth version of the JLA who could switch from white to black by saying certain magic words, á lá Captain Marvel (the DC version who now goes by Shazam and has a 2019 movie planned starring the Rock; not the Marvel version who now is a woman and has 2019 movie planned starring no one yet):

The Brown Bomber appearance is little more than a cameo, and it’s clear McDuffie intended the character to be a parody. In fact, McDuffie even gets in a shot at his employer’s unfortunate history with black representation, showing how good intentions don’t make racial tone deafness acceptable.