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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.

Since the two are closely linked, I’ll start by covering Green Lantern #48 which finishes filling in the story of how the Corps leaders get together, as Atrocitus and Larfleeze are saved from the Black Lanterns on Okaraa by the timely arrival of Hal, Sinestro, Carol, Indigo-1 and Saint Walker (with Ganthet and Sayd along for the ride). There’s some interesting ground covered in this issue, which focuses entirely on the group getting together.  Particularly interesting is the idea that the Guardians are actually responsible for the War of Light.  Of course, we know that Scar pushed them into challenging Larfleeze directly, although it was the Guardians themselves who were willing to sell out Ganthet and his Blue Lanterns.  When Hal hears this he’s none-too-impressed, vowing that once the Blackest Night is over, he’ll never work for the Guardians again.  How Johns plans on tackling this post-Blackest Night will be interesting indeed.

I also enjoyed the way Larfleeze was convinced to join up with the group.  Seeing Ganthet and Sayd, he automatically gets jealous about how the other Corps have Guardians and his doesn’t.  This leads to Sayd making a deal whereby she’ll be the Orange Guardian if he helps them out.  Again it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the long term and whether Sayd will have to uphold her side of the deal (I can see her potentially getting out of it, as Larfleeze tends to be easily distracted by anything else new that turns up).

And with the leaders of the various Corps all together, they’re in place for the start of Blackest Night #5…

With last issue being focused on the Flash and co trying to keep their heads above water while Hal assembled the various Corps together, this issue brings all the Lanterns together in a big way.  Starting out straight away with a role call of all the main Lanterns reciting their oathes, the Lanterns are quickly teleported to Coast City having discovered the Black Battery is no longer on Ryut.

And its just in time to help the various assembled heroes.  I have to say, there’s some great dialogue in this issue.  The interactions between Hal and the various Corps (with Hal’s dialogue revelling in the inherent silliness of the multi-coloured Lanterns) and with the Flashes was great.  Line of the issue for me was undoubtedly Barry and Kid Flash’s exchange regarding Bart calling Barry “Grandpa”.  Although the Captain Planet wink to the readers from Carol comes very close.

It was nice to see Wally turn up in this issue having previously only been referred to in the series.  And in his new costume no less.  With the delays to Flash: Rebirth I have to wonder what would’ve happened to Blackest Night had Rebirth #5 had slipped any further.  Would Blackest Night also have slipped, or would DC just have accepted Wally’s new costume premiering in Blackest Night?  Also, I notice than Ivan Reis has also picked up Ethan’s version of Bart’s Kid Flash costume and is drawing the boots as the simplified Flash-style boots as opposed to Bart’s more stylised pair.  I wonder if this is another running change that will stick.  On one hand I hope not as they were part of what made Bart’s outfit distinctive, although realistically they’d probably be a pain to run in.

With all the players in place, Geoff then successfully turns everything on its head, as the Corps combine their rings to create the white light of life, only to find it actually makes Nekron more powerful, not destroying him as they’d thought.  And its here that the plot revelations start hitting, with Black Lantern Batman making a brief appearance, and Nekron’s use of “Bruce Wayne” in quotes adding fire to the theory that the skeleton isn’t actually Bruce’s (although the fact the heroes believe it to be is obviously enough for it to act as the emotional tether for the Black Lanterns).

Nekron then explains exactly why there’s been a revolving door to death in the DCU, as its actually been him preventing the heroes from moving on fully, and setting them up to be resurrected, and further along his preparation for the Blackest Night.

There’s a lot been made of how this series would address death and resurrection in the DCU and lay out the rules going forward, and this is obviously the start of that.  I must admit, I really like the idea that there’s been a wider explanation behind all the DCU resurrections.  Okay, so its being retrofitted in, but it does make all the resurrections easier to swallow.   The only thing I’m not entirely sure about is how this actually works.  For example, Ollie was clearly seen in heaven, having passed into the afterlife in the Quiver storyline.  Although so was Barry and we know he was also in the Speedforce (clearly there must be some overlap between the Speedforce and Heaven in the DCU, both are versions of the afterlife, so I think it kinda works if you squint at it for long enough).  How Ollie being happy in Heaven works alongside Nekron’s revelation that he was preventing the deceased characters being judged I’m not quite sure.  Although I guess there’s always the fact that Quiver was pre-New Earth as well.

That’s fanboy nitpicking though, and ignoring it, this explanation feels right.  With Nekron’s comments about souls being judged and moving on beyond his grasp as well, we’re perhaps seeing the wider hints for how death/resurrection will work post-Blackest Night.

And then the kicker.  As Nekron was the one who prevented them passing over, he still holds power over all the resurrected heroes, as he proves by sending the Black Rings to convert them fully into Black Lanterns.  Clearly Donna’s infection over in the Titans special was a tease that the resurrected heroes were still bound to Nekron, and the payoff here, with Diana, Donna, Clark etc all instantly turned into Black Lanterns is chilling.  The only two left trying to escape the Black Rings are Barry and Hal.

And that to me is something really nice about this mini series.  Its not about the “Trinity” of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman.  This is a Hal and Barry story that everyone else has just happened to get caught up in, and this cliff hanger positions the series to continue building on that partnership the way the first three issues did.  It does make sense, since this is the first big event since both Hal and Barry have been re-established in the DCU to put the focus on them working together again.  Of course it helps that they’re written so well by Geoff Johns, who’s clearly having the time of his life working with them both.

The next issue looks to be a real corker.  With the majority of the DCU’s heavy hitters now Black Lanterns, and Barry and Hal desperately trying to escape the same fate there’s a real “how will they get out of this one” been built up.  Interesting should be the development with Atom and Mera, who’ve been dragged into Black Lantern Damage’s ring by Black Lantern Jean Loring.  With Atom and Mera being the other significant pairing of this series, I can’t help but think that being shrunk down inside one of the rings is going to put them in a key position to help out in the next issue or two.

The War of Light’s impact starts to be felt in this month’s issue of Blackest Night.

Again, Johns anchors this issue around Barry and Hal, who’re dealing with the Black Lantern JLA from the end of last issue, and who find themselves saved at the last moment by the Indigo tribe in a surprise appearance.

Bringing the War of Light to the Blackest Night series, the leader of the Indigo tribe explains what’s been going on for those who haven’t been reading Green Lantern, but also helps fill in some of the general backstory as well.  The much-speculated white light gets a mention, but unlike the “White Lantern”, I’m more inclined to think what we’ll actually be seeing is a teamup of the lead Lantern from each Corps, forced to work together, rather than one special Lantern saving the day (Hal).

However, despite this being confirmed we’re still left with questions.  The Indigos obviously know more about what’s going on than potentially even the Guardians.  They’ve been in hiding, but I have to wonder how long for.  Are they as old as the Guardians, or older?  We also have Mera noting she was able to escape the Black Lanterns by controlling her emotions.  A balance related to the white light?  Or perhaps even peace such as we’ve seen with Dove?  Food for thought.

Really, the only misstep in the book probably comes about when Hal learns Carol is again a Star Sapphire and on Zamaron.  He’s ready to run off, until Barry stops him, as it’d leave Earth defenseless.  Without a Green Lantern (we learn their light combined with another Lantern can defeat a Black Lantern) Earth has no chance of stopping the Black Lanterns.  Hal’s response is to get in touch with Alan, or any of the light-weilding superheroes.   It really jarred for me, as Hal should be well aware that Alan’s ring is intrinsictly different to his (the status of the Yalan Gar origin of Alan’s battery not withstanding), and Hal’s been at the forefront of the emotional spectrum side of things.  He should know that light has very little to do with what’s going on.

While last month’s issue was all about Aquaman, this month its about Firestorm, as Jason is pushed to the forefront, and finds himself up against the Ronnie Raymond Firestorm, and it doesn’t end well.  Johns plays out the tragedy of Ghenna’s fate brilliantly.  What happens to her is horrific, with Jason an unwilling participant.  However I can’t help but wonder if Geoff is also teasing the future of Firestorm.   Should Ronnie be resurrected by the end of this series, we’ve been shown exactly how both Firestorms could work together as the lead role, with Jason moving into the Professor Stein role.   Its a tempting thought and a move that would potentially keep fans of both Firestorms happy.

An effective tease at the end of the issue as well .  100%.  Thanks to the solicits, we know exactly what this means.  But its still hugely effective.

There’s no doubt that Geoff is bringing his best to this series.  The War of Light’s impact finally being felt in this series was very welcome indeed and I look forward to seeing what exactly is going to happen next.

After a quiet couple of weeks, Blackest Night is back in a big way this week, with not only the previewed GLC and Batman issues, but also Blackest Night #2 itself.

Blackest Night #2 itself moves the story forward away from the main GL action, this time focusing on Aquaman and his immediate cast.  I must admit, most of these characters aren’t really known to me, so probably didn’t pull me in as much as the previous issue, which was GL-heavy, but there was still a good amount of horror in the way Aquaman brutally took down his fellow Atlanteans, culminating in Garth dying and rising as a Black Lantern, while Mera gets away.

A recurring theme with Johns books also hits here for me, with the Hal/Barry pages providing the strongest of the issue.  Ok, so I’m mainly a GL/Flash guy, so obviously these are the pages that’ll hook me the most, but again Johns writes these characters so well, with the logical extension of Barry’s scientific background being coupled with the familiarity Hal and Barry have for each other in setting up their (temporary) take down of J’onn.  Its a fun scene, but then gives way to some more horror, when its revealed to have failed and now the Black Lantern Dibneys and Hawks have joined the fight.

The spookiest scene though was probably right at the beginning, with Ray Palmer still trying to contact Hawkman to discuss Jean.  Ray ends up talking to who he thinks is Hawkman, but we get the shot of the Black Lantern Carter on the other end of the phone inviting Ray to come over.  Its a freaky shot of Carter at the phone, and Ray’s fate is left nicely ambiguous.

As in issue one, Ivan Reis is bringing his best art to this series.  He’s capturing the horror of what’s going on brilliantly, such as the Hawkman phonecall,  and the cover is just incredibly striking, with Hal as the sole light standing against the Black.

The fact the Spectre is taken down was a shocking scene, and reminded me very much of Rebirth.  Of course, the Spectre being taken down is somewhat of a cliche now.  We know he’s taken out of things because he’s so powerful, but honestly, he’s been taken out so much recently he doesn’t actually seem like that much of a threat anymore.

There was a nice Rebirth callback though, with Crispus becoming a Black Lantern, and so the Spectre being bound via his host.  Reminded me very much of Parallax using the Spectre’s power and infecting him via Hal.

This issue very much took the story out of the familiar GL territory into the wider DCU than issue 1 did, but it also kept up the quality.  Some recent events have peaked with their first issues, but it looks promising that Blackest Night will keep us on the edge of our seats for the next  6 issues.

After two years of buildup, Blackest Night has finally arrived.

As Ganthet predicted during the Sinestro Corps War, the other Corps have risen and the War of Light is now in full swing, with the Alpha Lanterns attacking the Red Lanterns on Ysmault, Ganthet’s own Blue Lanterns under seige from Larfleeze and the Orange Lanterns, and the Green Lanterns and Star Saphires fighting the Sinestro Corps on various fronts.  But now, the Black Lanterns are rising.

This is an exceptional first issue.  After two years of hype, and a PR blitz by DC over the last few months with previews, action figures and interviews, it would’ve been so easy for this issue to disappoint even if it had been good.  But it doesn’t.  Not by a long shot.  This is Geoff Johns finally being able to tell the story he’s been building to.   Unlike Final Crisis there’s no slow buildup here.  We’ve had the buildup, and now its straight into the main event as the black rings seek out various prominent characters from across the DCU.

There’s real horror in the reveal of the Black Lanterns who are rising, especially on Oa where the entire crypt of deceased Green Lanterns is brought back to confront the GLs.  Line of the issue has to be Guy’s “What the #@$%?”.

Ivan Reis is at the top of his game here as well.  He’s always been my favourite Green Lantern artist, but here he takes things to another level.  He’s dealing with some fairly horrific visuals which are apart from the space opera stuff we’ve usually seen him do, and he handles it beautifully.  There’s various splash pages throughout that just caused me to stop and actually look at the detail, and appreciate them fully, be it Hal showing Barry images of all the heroes who’ve died while he was gone, the Black Lantern reveal on Oa, or the reveal of Ralph and Sue as Black Lanterns.  Its astounding work.

And having mentioned Barry, here Ivan reinforces something I felt while reading the Blackest Night #0 preview, that Ivan draws one of the best interpretations of Barry I’ve seen.  He really captures the feel of speed in the character in a way I don’t think any other artist has done for me.  I just love it.

One of my big worries was when Blackest Night got moved from being a Green Lantern event to a DCU-wide event.  With it being the third part in Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern trilogy, and with all the build up to the War of Light being very Green Lantern-centric, I was really worried that this would prove to be a poor pay off to the dangling Green Lantern plot threads.  I needn’t have worried though, as Geoff manages to do a sterling job of making this feel like the natural continuation of the Green Lantern storylines while interweaving the larger DC universe.  He features the Green Lanterns, while also paying attention to other characters throughout the DCU, and it all gells together wonderfully.   My only worry would really be that anyone not following Green Lantern for a while may get a bit lost by some of what’s going on.

This was a cracking start to DC’s big summer event.  This felt like it had all the impact of Secret Invasion #1 and there promises to be a lot of good stuff to come.  Roll on the next issues of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps.

IGN has put up the solicits for September’s Blackest Night titles.

Interestingly the cover shown for Blackest Night #3 is the Firestorm-focused variant cover.  So it’ll be interesting to see what’s on the Ivan Reis main cover, but I’m guessing its considered spoilery (the main villain?).

Its also interesting that the Superman tie-in doesn’t mention the Earth-2 Superman, but does reveal that Psycho Pirate will be back as a Black Lantern.  I love how there’s a hole still in his head from where Black Adam punched him  (although it does raise the issue of how the Black Lanterns come back.  This lends itself towards them being the actual remains of the dead, but then we’ve got the question of how Black Lanterns come back where there aren’t any physical remains, such as Firestorm).  Given the prominance of Earth-2 Superman on the cover and in the solicit for August, it’ll be interesting to see where he’s gone, or if its just a natural shift of focus for this issue to Clark and Connor (speaking of which, its great seeing Connor on these solicits again.  I can’t wait for Adventure Comics).

Despite the firepower on display on the Batman cover, which I’m a bit dubious about, I love seeing Batman, Robin and Red Robin side by side on that cover.  I’m really hoping this is something that happens in the book, rather than the cover just reflecting the fact that all three of them are in the story, albeit separately.  I really want to see them team up, although it’ll be interesting to see how that jibes with the events of Red Robin #1, given Tim is currently globe-trotting.   And not a big fan of Richard.

Titans is still the book that’s highest on my “could skip” list, although the Donna focus of this issue grabs my attention.  Again, it wins the “most twisted cover” award of the month.  I’ve got a soft spot for Donna after the Kyle run, and realistically I’ll probably go all completist over this event anyway.

The Green Lantern solicits also cover a plot point I’d been wondering about, as the Green Lantern #46 solicit tells us this is the long-awaited Sinestro/Mongul confrontation.  I’m a bit surprised about this, as I’d really thought it would’ve happened by now (specifically by the end of Emerald Eclipse in GLC).  However its going to be great to finally see.  Its pretty much being taken as granted that Mongul is going to lose, but it’ll be interesting to see exactly what happens to him.  He’s been a great nemesis for the GLC and I hope Geoff resolves this conflict well and leaves Mongul open as a character for a new direction (ie, he doesn’t end up killed by Sinestro).

The cover of Green Lantern Corps #40 also provides us a tantalising image, with the various Black Lanterns appearing to absorb different aspects of the emotional spectrum from Guy, Arisia and Kyle.   It strikes me as something that could be quite amusing potentially.  Will we see the return of “nice” Guy from the JLI if he’s been drained of his hate?  And will Kyle without fear be roughly equivalent to Dave Lister in the episode Polymorph of Red Dwarf?

Ok, I joke, but it really does remind me of Polymorph, however I’ll be surprised if any aspect of this is played for laughs.  Its interesting as well that the cover is focused solely on the main/classic  Green Lanterns.   No Sodam Yat or Soranik Natu here.   Just Guy, Kyle and Arisia.  I wonder if this signals that the title will be very focused on these characters for the duration of this event, to ensure all the Guy and Kyle fans are left happy that they were properly involved in Blackest Night.  although I’ll still be annoyed if the four Musketeers aren’t playing a major role in the main mini series.  I’d rather have Hal, John, Kyle and Guy front and centre in Blackest Night and the GL series (albeit slanted towards Hal), allowing GLC to focus on the other Lanterns, much like happened in the Sinestro Corps War.

So the solicits are still looking very promising for this event.  And again, I think they’ve hit a good balance with the number of tie-ins for this event.  Presumably only Blackest Night, GL and GLC will be the “must-read” titles for the event, but the other tie-ins are restricted enough in number that I’ll be fairly happy to pick them up, without breaking the bank too badly.

IGN have released a first look at the cover to Blackest Night #2 and what a great cover it is

While they note this is just a pre-release look at the image and it’ll probably have an extra layer of polish and inking done before the final version is revealed, I think the cover’s incredibly striking the way it is, with Hal being overwhelmed by Black Lanterns, but lighting the whole cover with his ring, and not looking too bothered about his imminent death-by-zombie.  Very Hal

Its also nice to see Hal front-and-centre on the cover, hopefully showing how the Green Lanterns are still going to be very much and the fore-front of this event, despite its switch in focus from GL to DCU-wide.

It looks like there’s at least one other Black Lantern revealed as well.  We can see Earth-2 Superman, Aquaman and J’onn, however on the left that looks like Ke’Haan.  I wonder if the rest of the Lost Lanterns who’ve died will make an appearance.

IGN have put up the solicits for the first month (July) of Blackest Night, and its looking very, very good.

A very interesting aspect to these solicits its the two issues of GL in July. Hopefully this is a sign of Doug Mahnke having had a headstart on the art duties, and we know from final Crisis that he can produce good work in a hurry (something that’ll probably be key to GL during all this). I’m liking the look of his two covers a lot. He’ll probably not replace Ivan Reis as my favourite GL artist, but his artwork’s great, and he’s a fast worker, which will count for a lot given GL’s tendency to hit delays.

I’m guessing these issues pick up straight after what we’ve seen in Blackest Night #0, as that started with Barry and Hal at Bruce’s grave, and here we see them battling the Black Lantern J’onn by that same grave (and Black Hand there as well, although I’m guessing he escapes after issue #43 thanks to the arrival of the Zombie Martian Manhunter). I’m also interested to see that Peter Tomasi’s story arc with Mongul taking over the Sinestro Corps will be coming to a head in the main GL title, with the solicits teasing Sinestro vs Mongul.

 GLC meanwhile is the usual one issue that month (helps keep GL ahead in the numbering ) and its dealing with the aftermath of the Sciencell riots, with a new law being enacted (something that’s not as exciting as it used to be. I’m just sitting wondering what dumb decision the Guardians will make this time), and hints that its going to have serious implications for the Honour Guard Lanterns Kyle and Guy. The cover seems intriguing with Kilowog holding (offering?) a load of Green Lantern rings. Perhaps a sign of the heavy losses the GLC has taken recently, between the Sinestro Corps, Red Lanterns, and people quitting due to dumb laws?   Although given the blood on his hand, I’m guessing these Lanterns didn’t quit.  Despite the Guardian’s feelings towards Ganthet, with the hits their numbers have taken over the last year, they’re going to end up very glad of the Blue Lanterns help by the end of this.

Finally, and possibly what I’m looking forward to the most out of these solicits, is the Tales of the Corps specials. The solicits give us an idea of what stories to expect, and I’m really looking forward to seeing Saint Walker’s pilgrimage, and our first introduction to the Indigo Lanterns.