By Sam Christopher
The penultimate chapter of the huge DCU event Blackest Night is Green Lantern #52, in which Sinestro appears to become Libra (remember that story from the JLA 100 Page Giants?) At least this time we don’t have to sit through Black Canary revamping Amazo’s costume next ish. More, we also see the beginning of every emotional tie of the spectrum, from willpower to compassion and we learn that the “White Lantern” is the catalyst for Brightest Day—the next event in the series, collect ‘em all. All of this while the GLC and company battle to save Earth from the onslaught of the Black Lantern planet Xanshi and Nekron kills Sinestro. Betcha didn’t see that one coming. Quite a shock, huh? Okay, maybe not as much of a shock as Nekron gets at the end of the book. Or maybe not. Surely, a cosmic being like Nekron saw that coming. Or maybe he thought he could keep the white power of life off balance by killing its avatars as they popped up. Either way, all of this leads directly into…
Blackest Night #8. Here we learn… well, I’m not really sure what we found out here. A lot of stuff happens, and it’s really cool—especially the “All-Life League” Hal calls into formation and the slew of characters brought back to life, at least one of which was a real surprise. I mean, bringing characters back to life is one of the oldest conventions in comics but bringing one back to life who’s never been known to be alive? Well, maybe it’s his “reward” for helping out so much through the years. I enjoyed this story, I can tell you, and I was really worried about this one. There just seemed to be so much at stake here; they’d thrown so much into the overall storyline. The only thing here I can truthfully say I had a hard time with was the very end, when we’re told that from here on out dead really means dead and gone. Yeah… right. I don’t mind the faulty logic that leads Hal to “deduce” that Bruce Wayne isn’t really dead because Bruce isn’t dead—as I told you back when he “died”—but telling me that no one in the DCU will ever be brought back to life after dying is like telling me there’s only one Earth and there’ll never be any more. How long was it before we saw “hypertime”? Not trying to impugn Mr. Johns here—I’m sure he means well—but when they brought back Bucky (he was dead 40 years. Four… DECADES!) and Jason Todd (I was disenfranchised!) they lost all credibility with me on this issue. Irrespective of all this whining on my part, I loved this event and am looking forward to The Brightest Day, in which I’m guessing the Force of All Life, having put down the Force of Death, will remind us all what “Survival of the Fittest” is all about.
And then, of course, we have Brightest Day #0. Now there are several other Brightest Day “tie-ins” out—meaning that there are comics out with “Brightest Day” emblazoned across the top of the cover—but they don’t seem to have much to do with this event yet. This is a story of bare beginnings. Boston Brand, the recently brought back to life Deadman, goes around with the White Ring of Power looking in on the various folks brought back at the end of the Blackest Night event. And it’s a little odd here because one of his main things as Deadman was being invisible and undetectable—and this seems to be the main power the White Ring gives him here. Not sure what my favorite vignette here is, although seeing the Martian Manhunter back on Mars talking about bringing it back to life (how different the DCU is from our universe) was very cool. As is the Hawks’ discussion of their past lives and… like I said, not sure what my favorite scene in this setup ish is. The whole thing looks good, though.
