From your description of the new plug's electrode looking black, sounds like either no spark is actually getting to the plug or maybe your piston rings are shot in that cylinder, fouling the plug with oil, but bad rings in just one cylinder would be quite odd. In the good old days, you could just unplug the spark plug wire boot off the plug, unbend a paper clip to make an "S", and stick the paper clip into the spark plug wire boot, hold the boot so the paper clip is about 1/4" from metal, crank the engine and watch for spark on the spark plug, but with all the electronic stuff now, I don't know if that would be a good idea.