Review:
The core story from the 2009 DC Comics mega-crossover event Blackest Night is collected into this handsome hardcover book. With loads of special features - variant cover gallery, director's commentary, loads of sketches, even a silver black-ring logo hiding under the dust jacket - it is an impressive collection.
If only the story inside lived up to the packaging.
Written by highly regarded author Geoff Johns and pencilled by Ivan Reis, Blackest Night follows a series of seismic storylines in the Green Lantern books of the day. It draws together the seven Corps with their rings of different colours and fueled by different emotions and even mines historical Green Lantern lore as far back as Alan Moore's writing of a 1986 Green Lantern Corps tale.
Nekron, the personification of death itself, has found a way to use Black Hand in a scheme to extinguish the light of life and all emotion from the universe. But first he must corrupt and capture or kill the Guardians.
While that storyline unfolds mostly in the background, our attention is focused on the experiences of several heroes, many of whom find key deceased heroes or villains resurrected by the power of a black ring. Their emotional connection to these lost loved ones - from Ralph and Sue Dibney to Aquaman, from the JSA and Freedom Fighters to even Batman - only serves to make these reanimated corpses even more powerful.
When even the combined might of all seven corps fails to stop Nekron, they discover they can magically divide and delegate their rings for a limited time, a deus ex machina that gives the reader the opportunity to see how Lex Luthor, Mera or even Scarecrow would wield a power ring attuned to their own strongest emotion.
In the end, Johns rewrites some foundational Green Lantern and DC Comics mythology - such as the Guardians working to hide the fact that life began on Earth, not Oa - and undoes recent DC history of killing off characters by resurrecting some key ones. Although no attempt is made to explain why some but not others are so treated - Maxwell Lord rises to life again, not merely as a Black Ring zombie but fully alive again, although Ted Kord / Blue Beetle whom he killed, is not. (Look for more adventures of the alive-again Maxwell Lord in the follow-up Brightest Day / Justice League Generation Lost story)
While Johns gives us a tale worthy of the classic mega-crossovers, with globe-shaking events and universe-level threats, loads of cameos and changes to the larger comics landscape, it all ultimately falls flat. Combining all the colours of light is supposed to give white light, but here the overall impression is just muddy brown. Reader emotional connections to the characters and situations fail to materialize and it all just blurs together.
Ivan Reis and his rotation of inkers do well at rendering the walking dead and flying dead, portraying them as desiccated and half-decomposed undead monsters, loads of sharp teeth, missing bits of flesh, tentacles and tongues. It is not pretty to look at, but it does the job of evoking horror at the state of the combatants.
They also give us loads of full-page and two-page spreads, packing in as many characters and shafts of coloured light as possible. Just about every time the seven corps work as one, it gets a double-page spread.
In all, it is a reasonable addition to the historical crossover events, although the art is grotesque and unpleasant and the story fails, ironically, to find its emotional core in the midst of all those emotion-powered Lantern Corps.
Description:
Comics' hottest writer Geoff Johns (GREEN LANTERN: SINESTRO CORPS WAR, THE FLASH, ACTION COMICS, JSA) and superstar artist Ivan Reis raise the dead in this hardcover collection of the most anticipated comics event of the year!
Throughout the decades, death has plagued the DC Universe and taken the lives of heroes and villains alike. But to what end? As the War between the different colored Lantern Corps rages on, the prophecy of the Blackest Night descends and it's up to Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps to lead DC's greatest champions in a battle to save the Universe from an army of undead Black Lanterns made up of fallen Green Lanterns and DC's deceased heroes and villains.
This collection of the best-selling epic is the culmination of the events that Geoff Johns has been leading to since he relaunched the Green Lantern franchise in 2006!
Collects: BLACKEST NIGHT #0-8
Authors: Geoff Johns
Artists: Ivan Reis
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: July 13, 2010
Parental Rating: Teen
ISBN: 978-1401226930
Pages: 264 pages
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