Reilly2040's Blog

As a counterpoint to Green Lantern, this month’s Green Lantern Corps was very much an epilogue to Blackest Night.  And after an event that big, this worked better for me, allowing the characters to process what’s happened, rather than just moving straight onto the next storylines (helped by the fact that the new creative team isn’t taking over until next month, no doubt).

In true Tomasi style, he manages to work in nice moments for most of the incredibly large cast in this book.   The Kyle and Guy scenes make for a nice backbone, with them reflecting on the recent chaos in the DCU after the central power battery is restored, and then picking over the remains of Warriors bar.  I loved Guy’s exposition as to just how crazy a place the DCU has been recently.   Looking at the timeline, Final Crisis, Flash Rebirth and Blackest Night have all happened within an incredibly short time of one another.

The new tribute to the fallen Lanterns on Mogo made for a nice scene, and raised the issue of Sodam Yat’s status nicely, which led to the great scene with Arisia actually punching out one of the Guardians, in possibly the best moment of the comic.  The Guardians have had more than that coming to them, but to have Guy, Kyle, Arisia face down the Guardians in that way was very satisfying.

Likewise, Kilowog stepping down as the main training sergeant was a good moment.  Obviously, it sets up Kilowog as a sector Lantern ready for the new Emerald Warriors book, but it does also give the sense of recent events having real repercussions for the Corps.  Likewise Salaak shouting down the Guardians.  He’s been their chief agent since the series started, so to have him turn on them carries more power than even the Guy, Kyle and Arisia confrontation.  I’ve said this before, but what happens with the Guardians over the next year or so in the wake of Blackest Night should be very interesting.

There wasn’t much tie-in with the events of Green Lantern, other than a reference to Guardian becoming Green Lantern, but presumably the Guy/Ganthet stuff will be followed up later once GLC splits to form the new Emerald Warriors title).

Overall, I really enjoyed this issue.  With how crazy things have been in the book with the War of Light and Blackest Night, to take the time for an issue to let the characters reflect on what’s happened was really needed.  And given we know that the book is about to split into two separate titles, with Peter Tomasi moving to the new book, and a new creative team coming to GLC, this served as a nice epilogue for not just Blackest Night, but also the GLC title in its current form.

I can’t help but think there’s something I’ve forgotten to blog about.  Oh yeah, Blackest Night #8

Over the last few years, big comic book event mini-series have been a bit of a mixed bag.  Infinite Crisis flagged towards the end, and parts didn’t really make sense without the tie ins.  Civil War basically turned Tony Stark into Marvel’s most successful supervillain, and had some big inconsistencies in how the registration act was portrayed.  Final Crisis flopped badly having a slow pace and delays, and again really needed one of its tie-ins to make sense at the end (even though I enjoyed it), Secret Invasion suffered from a lot of padding as most of the heroes mucked about in the Savage Land for about 5 issues doing very little.

Blackest Night has bucked the trend though.   There was some definite padding around the middle (after Nekron appeared he didn’t really do much, and I remain unconvinced by the Deputies and suspect they could’ve been removed without changing things), however despite this it still maintained its pace well throughout the run.  Johns crafted an exciting story, and Ivan Reis art shone in every issue.

The final issue didn’t really provide much in the way of surprises, save for maybe a couple of the resurrections.    I’d speculated that the white entity wasn’t quite the solution to everything, and that turned out to be the case.  Instead harnessing its power to form a White Lantern Corps (with Hal at the lead obviously) formed from the (alive) heroes that had been turned into Black Lanterns.  Deadman turns out to be pivotal, identifying Black Hand as key to Nekron’s plans (and explaining why previous attempts to destroy the battery or Nekron failed).  The White Lanterns turn their power on Black Hand restoring him to life.  Black Hand then starts generating white rings, which firstly defeat Nekron and return the Anti-Monitor to life (severing Nekron’s power source).   Further white rings follow, resurrecting some of the surrounding Black Lanterns, giving us the characters we knew would be coming back.

Of course, Aquaman, the Hawks, Firestorm and J’onn weren’t much of a surprise.  Likewise Professor Zoom, who was guaranteed as coming back after Rebirth.  However a few twists were thrown in with Jade, Maxwell Lord and Deadman being brought back.  Maxwell Lord will be the focus of the upcoming JLI fortnightly series, and it’ll be interesting to see how Jade/Kyle/Soranik is addressed (although given we know she’s joining Robinson’s JLA I imagine that’ll quickly be done and dusted).

Deadman remains more interesting though.  He’s the only resurrected character shown wearing a white ring at the end, and with a white lantern turning up on Earth, its a safe bet he’s going to remain a pivotal character.

Of course, this is the nature of events these days, with quite a few things in the conclusion in fact setting up future storylines, be it Green Lantern or Brightest Day (which promises to follow the resurrected characters and explore the reason they were brought back and no one else).  However whereas in Flash: Rebirth this felt quite jarring in the final issue, here it still felt like we were getting a strong finale to the Blackest Night storyline.

I especially liked the comments from Hal that Nekron’s claims to be behind their resurrections weren’t entirely the truth.  It tied events in better with what we’d seen in the likes of Green Lantern: Rebirth and Green Arrow: Quiver (given that in both we see Hal and Ollie respectively have to decide to return to the land of the living).

Overall, this was a great conclusion to what was undoubtedly the strongest event from DC in some time.  The impact this will have on the DCU remains to be seen (dead being dead I don’t expect to last, as with the white power battery out there, I suspect that aspect of the story is still being played out), however as a mini-series it maintained a strong pace throughout, and kept up a high level of quality with the same creative team all the way through.  DC are obviously proud of the success of this series, and rightly so.

The last Blackest Night issue of Green Lantern picks up straight after the reveals in Blackest Night #7, with Hal and co standing with the new White Lantern: Sinestro.

Backstory is the name of the game in this issue. With the white entity revealed in Blackest Night, this issue takes the opportunity to tie it into what we’ve been finding out about the emotional spectrum.

We discover that the entity emerged into the darkness of the universe, and created all the galaxies and stars (life effectively), creating Earth around the spot where it entered into our universe.   As life evolved on Earth, eventually one creature willed itself to move, becoming Ion.  From that point on, as various emotions were first felt, those creatures become the various entities of the emotional spectrum we’ve met, explaining their similarity in appearance to creatures found on Earth.

I’m still unsure how I feel about all this though.   Earth being the originator of all life doesn’t feel to me like it gells with some of the established facts of the DCU (like Maltus being the oldest planet, the Guardians the oldest beings etc).  Granted I guess life on Earth could be continually reinvented, with humanity only the most recent and successful dominant species, whereas other planets settled on a dominant species earlier.  Maltus has always been stated as being much older than Earth as a planet, but we could assume that DCU Earth is much, much older than the real life Earth.  Did the Guardians somehow cover up Earth’s true age along with everything else?

The other interesting thing, is the religous allegories Johns uses when giving us the origins of the other entities.  The avarice entity is revealed as a snake, pictured next to an apple, a clear reference to the Garden of Eden.  This has led to speculation that the blood shown for the rage entity is linked to Cain and Abel.  This is interesting, as we know that God exists in the DCU (the Spectre being proof enough, but we also saw Heaven during Kevin Smith’s Quiver storyline in Green Arrow).  That being said however, I’m not sure how well I think that links in with the previously cosmic stuff being used with this storyline.  It just feels like a bit of a jump in direction (sort of the reverse of Indiana Jones/Crystal Skull I guess).  Its an interesting idea though, to try and tie together the cosmic and religous sides of the DCU.  I’m just not sure how well it works (if that is indeed Geoff’s intent – I daresay this topic will turn up during the next round of convention panels).

However, with the entities being kidnapped by some unknown force, I’m assuming their nature is definitely something Geoff will be coming back to and expanding on soon.  I’m willing to keep an open mind as to what he’s doing here, but for now it seemed a little jarring.

That being said, it was nice to see the reveal of the various entities.   We’ve been teased by them for a while, and again I’ll be intrigued to see how they get dealt with in future issues.  That we now know they’re closely linked to Earth (and being captured by someone/thing) makes me assume that they’re the reason the New Guardians remain on Earth after Blackest Night, to try and track them down.

Nekron also steps up a bit more, in a shock move splitting Sinestro in two early into the issue.  It was a really effective shock moment.  Of course by the end of the issue, Sinestro’s back to normal, having been healed via his new powers, but it made for an effective moment.   And talking of Sinestro, its interesting to see the effect the White Entity has over him.  Previously we’ve only really seen possessions by Ion and Parallax.  Parallax, of course, capable to completely take over its host, while Ion merely compliments the host’s willpower, leaving them in control.  We also know the Zamarrons were afraid of the Predator getting loose, so I’m guessing if it joins with someone it could be bad news for them, although the Zamarrons seemed to have hope that Carol might be able to control it.

Sinestro meanwhile seems to be definitely affected by the White Entity.  At times it feels more like it speaking than him, as his whole attitude has changed, and it completely overwhelms his perspective of events, as he finds himself oblivious to the chaos going on around him as he gets sucked into the entity’s story of its existence and the creation of the other entities (resulting in Nekron getting the drop on him mentioned above).  Sinestro’s usually so much in control of things that its interesting to see him overwhelmed like this.

The stage is definitely set, not just for the conclusion to Blackest Night, but also for events to come afterwards.  With the Green Lantern portion of the story concluded, its a safe bet that further reveals about the entities, and longer-standing mysteries, like the backstory to the Indigo Tribe are being kept for future story arcs in Blackest Night.  Geoff Johns has said that this is just the conclusion to the first of the trilogy of trilogies he has planned, and I can believe that.  The emotional spectrum is well established now, allowing Geoff to explore it more fully over the next few years.  We’ve seen brief looks at some of the Corps, and glimpses at their powers via the Deputies in the spin-offs, but I’m really hoping we get a proper Blue Lantern focused storyline, in addition to finding out about the Indigos.  And what will the Star Sapphires do with their central battery destroyed and the Predator on the loose?  I think at this point, its clear Blackest Night is just the beginning of the story.

Now this was a packed issue.  Representing the last entry into Blackest Night for the Green Lantern Corps title, this issue, if anything, felt a little rushed, as a lot was crammed in before the final Blackest Night #8.

The various Lantern Corps in orbit (as seen in the preview) manage to thin out the numbers with a large Tholin Web-style tactic.  The idea that Guy’s a Trekkie adds a nice bit of humour into proceedings, and it provides a great visual with the various Lanterns working together.  However, from there, we delve into the character pieces of the issue, as Guy and Kyle’s situations become mirrored, with Guy facing off against Black Lantern Ice, while Kyle is found by Black Lantern Alex (complete with Black Lantern Fridge).

I must admit, I’m a little torn on the Black Lantern Alex scenes.  At this stage in the storyline “loved one returns as killer zombie” is played out, especially with us having gone through this with Kyle and Jade previously.  Alex also maintains one of those aspects of Kyle’s backstory that’s continually trotted out ever couple of years so he can get over her death again.

That said, I liked the way Tomasi approached it, incorporating the fridge added an over-the-top aspect to the appearance the prevented it becoming too schmaltzy, and by having the fairly trippy sequence where Kyle is sucked into the fridge it also added something new to the regular Black Lantern confrontation.

Guy’s fight against Tora was more straightforward in comparison, although was helped by us knowing that Tora is one of the resurrected Black Lanterns, so we’re left wondering if Guy will somehow manage to free her (as we’ve seen elsewhere).  As it turned out, I was quite surprised by how brutally the confrontation ended up, with Tora frozen, and then left shattered into pieces.

As a Black Lantern, I guess we can assume she reforms shortly after Guy leaves (and maybe we’ll see her catch up to him again in Blackest Night #8) but it was still a surprise as I’d really expected her to be either saved, or disabled in some way (like Green Arrow: frozen, but still intact).  The fact she was actually shattered was what surprised me.

That all alone would probably be enough to fill a regular issue, but not so here.  When last we saw in Blackest Night #7, the Anti Monitor had woken up within the Black Battery.

Here again, we see the series picking up on that plot point from the Titans tie-in, in that Dove is somehow channeling the white light and can disconnect the Black Lanterns.  The (temporary?) solution to the Anti-Monitor may be done quickly, but I loved how it brought together various threads.  We see the various Lanterns working together to hold back the Anti-Monitor.  We get Bedovian’s sniper skills brought into play again (as seen in the Sinestro Corps War), and Dove’s powers are captured by using her as the bullet to shoot the Anti-Monitor.  Its a nice tying together of various bits and pieces, even though the result is the Anti-Monitor back in the battery where he started (it’ll be interesting to see if this gets mentioned at all in Blackest Night #8).

As I say, an enjoyable issue, but it definitely felt like they were trying to do too much here.  Between dealing with the Black Lanterns in orbit, Alex, Ice, and then finally the Anti-Monitor it really felt like this could’ve used a second issue in which to breath.  Granted the storytelling is constrained by having to take place in between the events of Blackest Night #7 and #8, so that’s not really Tomasi’s fault.

Sadly, Green Lantern Corps has been pushed back a week.  Not sure why, but in the meantime, IGN have put up a preview to tide us over.

Its certainly full of the same kind of manic, character-filled action we’ve come to expect from the GLC title during this event (and event before with the riot on Oa).  Taking place slap bang in the middle of Blackest Night #7, the action picks up just after the various Corps teleport in and the result is chaos as the 7 Corps attack the Black Lanterns, and each other.

Its nice to see John featured in the action.  Its a nice way of working towards his move to permanent cast member of GLC.  It looks like the Xanshi plotline could well be resolved in GLC though, which is a bit jarring, since all its other development was in the Green Lantern title.  Its a similar situation to Peter Tomasi’s Mongul storyline being resolved by Johns over in GL.  Its a bit of a shame the plot threads get picked up in a different book.  Although given the events of Blackest Night, it follows well enough, and I imagine that most readers will be picking up both books at the moment anyway.

The cover shows Ice versus Guy which should be interesting.  Quite a few of these tie-ins have seen these “living” Black Lanterns dealt with in some way, be it freed completely like Connor and Bart, or simply incapacitated like Ollie.  So I have to wonder if Guy (with the help of some of the other Lanterns) will be able to break Nekron’s control of Ice.   My immediate thought is a Star Sapphire tether may be able to help Guy get through to her.  Although using the rings on Ice without severing the connection could be dodgy (although we haven’t seen what effect that would actually have on one of these Black Lanterns).

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens here.  Not forgetting that the variant cover has the Anti-Monitor turning up.  I’m guessing this’ll actually play out as a tease for a larger appearance in Blackest Night #8 (or even picked up in the next issue of Green Lantern), but it’ll be interesting to see what actually happens in this issue.  I’m hoping Ice comes out of it ok.  Her relationship with Guy is a good one, but sadly one that’s been tricky to use due to the characters being in different franchises lately (although I’m not exactly sure where else Ice has been turning up in the DCU).

With the Black Lanterns on Oa dealt with by Mogo, and the GLC due to make the leap to Earth in time for Blackest Night #7, its no surprise that the focus of this issue is dealing with Guy’s red ring infection.

And again, its ultimately Mogo that comes to the rescue, as he forces Guy to face his demons, before finally purging Guy of the red ring, albeit not completely.  In the meantime Kyle and the others try their best to help out, but there’s not really a lot they can do.  There’s a nice nod to the Green Lantern arc, where Munk tells Kyle the only real way to get rid of a red ring, is with a Blue Lantern, but Munk’s low on power and unable to teleport one to them, and the red energy makes holding Guy down long enough to take him to a Blue lantern nearly impossible.

There’s been some criticism of padding in the GL titles over the last month or two, undoubtedly caused by the January skip month introduced in the main Blackest Night miniseries.  Certainly the Spectre/Parallax storyline felt a bit out of place in the main Green Lantern title, and here, while the story does flow well, its noticeable that very little actually happens, beyond Guy’s red ring infection being dealt with.  The use of Mogo for the second time in two issues to fix things jumps out as well, and you can’t help but wonder if initially this would’ve all happened in one issue, with Mogo absorbing the Black Lanterns and Guy at the same time, only to then spit out the cured Guy.

Mogo does make the point though that he’s unable to completely purge the red lantern energy from Guy’s system.  What this actually means is unclear (let’s be honest, Guy’s not known for his calm temperament at the best of times), but with Peter Tomasi taking Guy over to the new Emerald Warriors title, I imagine we’re seeing something being dropped in that’ll be picked up there as presumably it’ll become a problem that needs Guy to seek out a Blue Lantern for help purging the red energy completely.

The end of the issue ties in neatly to the main events in Blackest Night, with some new Indigo Lanterns turning up to teleport everyone to Earth (just in time to save John Stewart).

Overall a good issue, but with Peter Tomasi dedicating a whole issue to Kyle’s resurrection only a few issues ago, this felt a little like a repeat of that same trick, only focused on Guy.  Its slightly less satisfying too, as there the combined efforts of the various Lanterns paid off with them able to resurrect Kyle.  Here’s the Lanterns are actually powerless to do anything, until Mogo steps in.

There is some nice character work, with Kyle’s desperation to save Guy echoing Guy’s when Kyle was about to be claimed by the Black Rings, although with the two characters getting split into different books in two issues, I don’t think it really added much to their relationship at this stage.  As I say, you have to wonder if this was all originally planned to happen in one issue, rather than the two we ended up with.  It was still an enjoyable read as I’d expect from Peter Tomasi, and jarred me less than the Parallax stuff, but  there was a definite feeling of repetition to the events here.

I must admit, I was very glad to finally have this issue in my hands.  The January skip month’s effects have really been hitting the event for me, as its really felt in a holding pattern with nothing particularly happening to move the story forward for the last couple of months.

And very nicely, a lot did happen in this issue.  The deputy Lanterns get a little page time, with Luthor getting out of control, showing how deputising him was a bad idea.  These scenes flowed on nicely to those in Green Lantern #51, so they worked really well I thought.

The focus though, was on some big reveals, which I was very glad to see.  There’s an interesting reveal regarding the Guardians, as Nekron taunts one before killing him.  A really nice touch was the Guardian being so old that he couldn’t even remember why they were guarding the universe anymore.

The fact that the insides of the Guardian reflected the colours of the emotional spectrum, and Nekron’s comments about how the Guardians are closest to the spectrum of all the races was interesting.  It also possibly helps explain how Ganthet and Sayd were able to switch Corps so easily.  Perhaps the Guardians naturally have the ability to use power from any of the lights, but over the eons they’ve repressed those abilities so much that now they can only access willpower.  By opening themselves to Hope, perhaps Ganthet and Sayd simply rediscovered their natural ability to wield the blue light.

I’m really intrigued to see where Geoff’s planning on going with the Guardians after the dust settles on all this.  Its been clear to the reader for a while that they’d lost their way (which the Guardians do an awful lot throughout the history of Green Lantern, you’d have thought they’d have learned by now), but this issue gives us insight into perhaps just how far that goes, and for how long.  I hope this is something Geoff’s planning on exploring post Blackest Night.  Or at least gives some pointers to Tony Bedard or Peter Tomasi to pick up on.

We also discover the big secret that the Guardians have kept hidden.  That infact, Earth is where all life started, and over the millennia they’ve tried to hide this fact and divert attention to Oa.  I do wonder what kinds of problems this throws up (why does life seem less evolved on Earth than on other worlds? Why is life more plentiful on Maltus than Earth?).  As a revelation I can’t help but think this opens up a lot of questions, so again, I’ll be interested to see where Johns takes this (I wonder if the fact the New Guardians stay on Earth will be related?).

As a direct spin-off of this revelation, its revealed that the secret the Guardians had buried on Earth was the existence of the White Entity, as Nekron raises it from the ground and starts attacking it, and by extension all life.   Hal quickly realises that someone needs to host the entity but is blocked in his attempt by Sinestro who claims it for himself, becoming the much-rumoured White Lantern.

The White Lantern has been a topic of some controversy ever since the Black Lantern first appeared at the end of Sinestro Corps War. I must admit to being against the idea, but that was back when I assumed Hal would end up in the role. However, as always Geoff proves he should be trusted. Sinestro being the White Lantern is a great move, and more importantly a natural one. Granted, its a natural move given his characterisation since Sinestro Corps War, so the readers of this series who aren’t reading it as a Green Lantern payoff may get a lot less from it.

Throughout Geoff’s Green Lantern run, rather than Hal, its always been emphasised that Sinestro was the greatest Green Lantern.  We’ve seen since Sinestro Corps War how all of Sinestro’s plans were meant to prepare the GLC for the upcoming Blackest Night.  He long ago realised that Abin Sur had indeed been onto something, and his rage when the white Entity is discovered, and he realises the scope of the Guardians lies is a powerful scene.  He realises that Abin Sur hadn’t targetted Earth by accident as he’d been onto the truth, and yet the Guardians covered it up and cast his friend as someone who’d lost his mind.  Sinestro being the one to pick up Abin Sur’s mission and claim the White Entity makes so much sense.  Geoff even teased it back in the build up to the Sinestro Corps War, when Lyssandra Drak mentioned that Sinestro would be the greatest (Green admittedly) Lantern once again.  Theres also a nice callout to the recent events of Green Lantern, where Sinestro blocks Hal, the same way that Hal prevented Sinestro joining with Parallax (also interesting as its an event that was completely confined to Green Lantern, so the reference here will perhaps confuse those not following that book).

However, again it’ll be interesting to see how Geoff continues this plot thread.  Presumably Sinestro will lose the entity at the end of Blackest Night reverting back to being a yellow lantern once again as part of the New Guardians.  There’s also the element of how unstable Sinestro can be.  While some of the events that drove him into what he became are understandable, and a tribute to Geoff’s making him such a multi-layered character, there’s still no denying all the horror he’s responsible for.   Now that he’s in possession of the White Entity of life, will he ironically become similar to Hal as Parallax?  Responsible for so many deaths, yet attempting to make amends for everything he’s done and justify them by trying to set things right?  That might be interesting, but I doubt it.  Sinestro sees himself as a big picture kind of guy and I doubt he shares Hal’s remorse over his actions.  As a move for the character though, there’s no denying that making him the White Lantern is an interesting one, and certainly far preferable to it being Hal.

A couple of nice side events from this issue as well.  Dove appears on the battlefield disconnecting Black Lanterns all around her.  So it appears that the power she was tapping was that of the white Entity.  And interestingly when she tries to affect the Black Lantern, it seems to wake up the Anti-Monitor inside, which should lead into the next issue of GLC, going by its variant cover.

Building on my comments from GL #51 as well, it was nice to see Black Hand and Nekron enter the action once again.  They’ve felt a little sidelined in this series, so seeing Nekron’s plans come round as he killed the Guardian and raised the entity to kill it (and all life) was nice.   Of course, when you think about it, the plan is pretty simple (raise dead, get 100% power to raise Nekron, Nekron kills Guardian to raise Entity and kills it) so I guess fitting that over the three issues since Nekron rose is a bit tricky.  With all the speculation that Blackest Night #8 will see a mass resurrection, I can’t help but wonder about Black Hand’s fate after all this.  Will he suffer (for him) the unimaginable torment of being returned to life?  Or, since he’s currently the black entity, or at least its host, will that allow him to remain, in effect the sole Black Lantern once all this is said and done?

One little nod I loved was when all the Corps appeared in space to help John.  I’m not sure how the maths works out  in terms of the number of Lanterns, but I loved the nod to Rebirth with Kilowog’s ring being the only one to make a noise, and then Kilowog snorting.  That was a great little touch.  In general the big arrival of all the Corps double splash page brought a big smile to my face.

A great issue, and nice to see the story move along again after two months.  I’m excited for the conclusion now, and it’ll be interesting to see how everyone reacts to Sinestro hosting the white entity.  There’s a lot of questions still standing regarding the fate of the Guardians and the entities, although now I’m thinking these will be dealt with in Green Lantern post-Blackest Night.  And of course the big thing we’re all waiting to see is what form the big resurrection will take.  We know that Professor Zoom and Aquaman at least are going to be back, so who else will join them?

I must admit, I think the initial run of three mini-series that tied into Blackest Night had an advantage over these later entries.  With the first 4 issues concerned only with Black Lanterns attacking and building up to Nekron’s return, they were freer to tell a story within themselves, unshackled by any other events in the main series.

However, of these later series, Flash and Wonder Woman are directly impacted by the main series, and so each issue ends up reflecting a different part of the status quo (for example, in Wonder Woman #1 she’s just battling Max Lord, in #2 she’s a Black Lantern, while in #3 she’s a Star Sapphire).  Granted, this allows them to expand on these events in more detail, but I’m not sure if it makes those miniseries more satisfying within themselves.

Blackest Night: Flash I found to be a bit of a conflicted story.  There were two main strands: Barry during Blackest Night, sounding the alarm and learning to be a Blue Lantern, and the Rogues, travelling to Iron Heights to do battle against the Black Lantern versions of their fallen comrades.

Really, the Rogue story could’ve been a mini-series within itself.  Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge was well received, and made for a good read, and I’m convinced the same could’ve been done here.  However as the story was sharing pages with the Flash tale, I felt it ended up a bit more rushed when it could’ve easily supported three issues on its own.

The Barry Allen story I was less fond of.  With Barry being a major figure in the main Blackest Night series, my immediate feeling was that it might’ve been interesting to use the tie-in to focus more on the Flash family, so we could see what was happening with Bart and Wally.  We finally got this in the third issue, and for my mind that was part of what made the third issue the most satisfying to read of the three.

Issue 2 however was more focused on Barry and the Blue Ring.  Now in fairness, this is an obvious choice to make.  Given the Blackest Night #6 cliffhanger, ignoring the opportunity to expand on those events would’ve seemed odd.  However my problem is that I’m not really buying into the idea of Blue Lantern Barry.  I find the Flash interesting enough on his own, and with Barry only recently returned I was enjoying his spotlight and seeing him using his speed powers in creative ways.  Given a blue ring, he feels like he becomes just another ring slinger, and less interesting as a result.  The constant (or at least it felt like it) repetition of the new Blue Lantern catchphrase “all will be well” throughout the issue started to grate as well.

Another aspect to Barry being a ring-slinger is that it seems to undermine being a Lantern somewhat.  Johns went to lengths to show in Rebirth and in the Sinestro Corps Wars that not just anyone can use a ring.  Sinestro had his recruits transported to Qward for extensive training, and Green Arrow struggled to make even a basic construct in Rebirth.  By having Barry running around, mastering his blue ring so easily it seems to devalue that power somewhat (more-so when you consider that Saint Walker had to sacrifice his entire family before being deemed hopeful enough to be able to handle a blue ring, although granted this is a ring issued under emergency circumstances).  I’ve found the Scarecrow and Luthor recruitment more successful as that seems more in tune with their characters, and is adding to them, although in fairness with at least Scarecrow you can also make the argument that he’s using the ring far too easily.

There’s some interesting events here as well.  We discover that Professor Zoom is locked up in Iron Heights (a disappointing scene given it slightly spoiled Zoom’s fate from Rebirth), and I liked the way the two Zooms confused the Black Lanterns.  I have to wonder what Geoff’s plans for Captain Boomerang are now though.  Owen as a character has always flitted between good and bad, but here he’s made pretty irredeemable, and then finally killed by his Black Lantern father.  I do wonder if this means we’re going to get an all-new Captain Boomerang?  If so it’ll be a shame that Owen was never fully capitalised on.  His origin as Bart’s half-brother was never explored, and the idea of him being a twist on a speedster supervillain likewise was never really used.  However given what he does in this issue, I can’t see him being brought back in any kind of sympathetic way.  Unless he gets brought back and set up as a (pardon the phrase) rogue element, with as big an axe to grind against the other Rogues as the Flash.  As a much darker character that’s after everyone, he could be interesting.

Overall, I found this series a bit of a mixed bag, but I did enjoy the last issue.  Its a pity we couldn’t have had more time donated to the Rogue story in a separate miniseries and more focus on the Flash family as a whole, but when we did get it, the story really kicked off.  I loved the scenes between Barry, Wally and Bart, and the way Barry brought back Bart worked well.  Its nice to see both Bart and Connor’s Black Lantern takeovers dealt with in tie-ins though.  Adds a bit more weight to them, and you can see that neither would really have affected the main series much (as its got a lot more going on).

So its part 2 of the Spectre/Parallax showdown. And after being unsure about it last issue, how did it pan out?

Well, quite a bit happened here.  The actual Spectre/Parallax confrontation was pretty short.  Its unclear to me whether or not Johns actually intended to show Parallax as powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with the Spectre.  There’s the implication that the Black Lantern Spectre is actually a fake-out, with Parallax freeing the actual Spectre from inside the Black Lantern.  Presumably Black Lantern Spectre didn’t posses any of the actual Spectre’s power at all, which could explain Parallax standing up to him as opposed to getting squashed in short order.  Its a little unclear though, and I can’t remember if it’d contradict the Phantom Stranger tie-in or not, but going by Rebirth, it wouldn’t really make sense for Parallax to be able to take on the Spectre unaided.

With the Spectre freed, things quickly turn to freeing Hal from Parallax.  Here we see the Star Sapphires’ tethering powers come to the fore again, as Carol’s love allows her to tether to Hal and rip him free from Parallax.  We’ve seen these kinds of powers used a few times over in GLC, so to see it done here is a nice touch and adds to the links between the books to see the Star Sapphires used consistently like this.

Most interesting was what happened to Parallax, as he promptly vanishes as if pulled away, and there’s a cut to Hector Hammond who comments that someone has managed to capture Parallax.  It sounds like there’s another party involved in things who’s after the entities (who we know will play a part in the story).  It’ll be interesting to see who this turns out to be.  With only two issues left, introducing another party into things may not flow that well (similar to Mandrakk suddenly turning up in Final Crisis #7).

Another thought is that with Sodam Yat and Ion currently in Daxam’s sun, will this turn of events mean that Ion is also brought back into things?  And will that presumably also mean the return of Sodam Yat and the Daxamites depowered once again (surely a good thing for everyone).  Personally I hope so, although I’d hope that Peter Tomasi gets to address it in GLC in some way.  Since we’ve seen Yat as the last Guardian in Legion of 3 Worlds, the current Daxam situation is one I find myself just sitting waiting to see the conclusion to.  To be honest, I’d expected Sodam to make a dramatic return to help defend Oa from the Black Lanterns, and I’m slightly surprised his situations not been addressed yet.

However before all this, came probably my favourite part of the book.  I’m still very much undecided on the “DC characters with power rings” concept.  The Flash as a blue Lantern has had a lot of focus, and its really not working for me.  However more successful I think are the villains.  So the opening of this issue focusing on Larfleeze and Luthor I really liked.  The pairing of them both with the orange light is quite a fun idea, with both desperate to possess it in its entirety.

It also provides a non-comedic moment for Larfleeze where he threatens Lex and points out that he gave up his birthright for the Orange light.  Firstly, I’m intrigued to know if that birthright is going to be significant, however its also nice as Larfleeze has frequently been the comedy relief since his initial Agent Orange arc, so its nice to see him being back to being portrayed as a threat briefly again.  There’s also though the nice character beat (and setup for the upcoming New Guardians arc) that sees Larfleeze realise that Earth can be quite a greedy place, and might be worth his interest.

The teasing doesn’t end there either.  Atrocitous decides the Spectre should be the new red entity, and attempts to convert him into a Red Lantern.  The Spectre shrugs this off however, but does point out that he’s met the red entity, and warns Atrocitous against trying to find it.  And interesting hint, and the Spectre’s warning echoes the fear of the Zamarrons that the Predator (also an entity from the far end of the emotional spectrum) would be freed.  With the way things are going, its surely only a matter of time before we see what the Spectre was talking about.

Also nice this issue was to see  Nekron step up.  Since he turned up, he hasn’t actually done an awful lot.  So to see him step in against the Spectre was very gratifying.  With all the buildup to 100% in the first half of Blackest Night, Nekron hasn’t really done much worth talking about.  Of course it can be argued that “Spectre jobs to the villain” is a bit of a cliche in DC Comics to establish a big threat, however I can overlook it here as it at least gave Nekron something to do.   However with Blackest Night #7 due out, I suspect Nekron is going to feature a lot more heavily in that.

So, despite my feeling unsure about Green Lantern #50, I thought this issue delivered well.  The story didn’t necessarily move on much (I think its arguable that Blackest Night hit a holding pattern due to the January skip month being introduced), however there are a few interesting pieces of groundwork in place for the main series, or future GL issues to pick up on.

Has it really been 25 issues since The Sinestro Corps War finished and Blackest Night was teased?  Time flies when you’re having fun

After John’s misadventures on Xanshi last issue, its straight back into the main action of Blackest Night here, with Hal and the rest of the New Guardians (as the group of Hal, Atrocitious, Sinestro, Carol etc are being called) as well as the new recruits (Wonder Woman, Barry etc) facing the hoards of Black Lanterns.

Things quickly take a turn for the worse (as impossible as that seems) when the Black Lantern Spectre turns up looking to judge Hal.  The Spectre’s power (currently contained by its Black Lantern host) is pretty vast, and Hal is almost transformed into a Black Lantern himself, before Ganthet and Sayd manage to free him (and he quickly returns the favour).

Thinking quickly and realising that they need something to give them an edge over the Spectre, Hal has Ganthet grab the Earth Lantern’s power batteries and releases Parallax from within them, rejoining with the fear entity to gain the edge they need to stand against the Spectre.

To be honest, I’m a little unsure about this issue.  Largely because the nature of Parallax and the power level of the Spectre.  As originally presented, Parallax had no real power of its own beyond corrupting its host.  Parallax originally had Hal absorb the power of the central battery, and then in Rebirth Parallax attempts to first get control of the Spectre’s power, and then later Ganthet’s (leading to the confusion about power levels above).  This all suggests Parallax’s own power levels aren’t really that brilliant.

Then comes Sinestro Corps War, and the Parallax-infected Kyle is shown to still possess powers.  Despite no longer having either his GL ring, or the powers of Ion.  So where did all that power come from?  Apparently Parallax.  So why did Parallax need to absorb the central power battery etc?

So this idea that Parallax is the only thing that can challenge the Spectre is not something I can entirely buy into.  I don’t see how Parallax is such a threat to something of the Spectre’s power levels.  I’m hoping it’ll be some variation of Parallax’s corrupting influence, capturing the Spectre’s fears somehow, rather than Parallax suddenly being some awesome powerhouse, so I’ll have to wait until next issue to see how this pays off.  But as it stands, in the midst of everything else going on, releasing Parallax again doesn’t seem like Hal’s best idea ever.

I’m quite surprised Parallax has been let out of the bag again so soon, although we have heard hints that the various entities will play into Blackest Night.  Another surprise was that this issue read very quickly.  As the 50th issue its oversized and $3.99, yet for some reason it didn’t really feel that the story was that dense to me.

Another thing I should mention is Carol kissing Hal.  Geoff has obviously been positioning Carol back as a major part of Hal’s love life since the initial Star Sapphire story and the reveal of her divorce.   While Hal and Carol are a classic DC couple, Geoff previously introduced Cowgirl at the start of volume 4 as an alternate love interest, and since the war of light kicked off, its really seemed like she’s been quietly dropped, which is a shame as I thought she was an interesting character.  Hopefully once this is over, Hal will spend a bit more time on Earth and we’ll maybe see her again.  That’s not really a complaint against the events in this book though.  I hope that Johns is actually setting up a more tangled love life for Hal, with him being pulled between Cowgirl and Carol and the different aspects of his life as a pilot and a Green Lantern.

That all sounds a bit negative though.  I didn’t really dislike this issue.  The only real complaint I can make is that the Spectre/Parallax stuff just feels like a diversion from the main events of Blackest Night, and a throwback to Rebirth that I didn’t really feel was needed.  I’d have been happy if Parallax and Spectre were left in Hal’s past.  Saying that, freeing Parallax in this way plays into Johns’ take on Hal as being someone who’s overly (perhaps even dangerously) cocky and doesn’t always think through the results of his actions and that’s a take on the character I’ve actually been enjoying.

Much like Kyle’s death over in GLC I suspect this issue will be better viewed next month, once I have a better idea where this storyline is actually going.  Although that’s a bit of a shame in an oversized anniversary issue.

I will say though, I really love the Larfleeze/Luthor interactions.  Larfleeze trying to get the orange ring back from Lex is a great comedy moment