Thoughts on Blackest Night August Releases

BLACKEST NIGHT: BATMAN #1 - Quite a few clues dropped here, as whatever is animating the dead superheroes is doing it without their souls/spirits/whatever Deadman is, as we see Deadman attempting to possess his own zombified body. And the interplay between Dick and Damien as the new Batman and Robin is nice for those of us who haven't been reading the Bat Books.

My one quibble with the set-up, as numerous dead Batman villains are resurrected over Gotham in-route to The Hall of Justice? I can understand wanting to keep the remains of dangerous metahumans like KGBeast hidden away from graverobbers seeking superhuman organs for transplant... but who the hell is going to want to steal the body of The Ventriloquist? It's not like he had superhuman vocal cords. At least, I don't think he did. But even if he did, how useful would that be?


BLACKEST NIGHT: SUPERMAN #1 -Now, THIS is the James Robinson we know and love. Though I'm a little confused as to why the Zombie Earth 2 Lois and Kal-L are harassing Ma Kent and Smallville as opposed to Power Girl and all of the New Krypton stuff with Supergirl was lost on me, this was still a good read if somewhat inaccessible. The coolest part? Unlike everyone else we've seen so far, Superman seems to radiate multiple emotional energies at once - at one point being a rainbow of Rage, Fear, Will, Hope and Love.


BLACKEST NIGHT: TITANS #1 - I'll admit to not being the greatest Titans scholar but a lot of the characterization in this one seemed off to me. Most of the issue features the current team of Titans and Teen Titans mourning/honoring the dead. A fight breaks out between Beast Boy and Cyborg/Starfire over why Terra has a statue when she was a traitor and why GeoForce mourns her. You'd think this issue would have been raised BEFORE the statue was put up in their Hall Of The Fallen or that at the very least Vic would - as Gar's best friend - be a little more tactful about dissing the guy's ex-girlfriend when Gar is feeling blue.

Given that, it's hard for me not to be rooting for the zombies in this one, especially since Lilith has returned. Lilith, you might remember, got royally shafted when she got killed, as it happened just before Donna Troy died(again) and everybody was too busy talking about how great Donna was to remember - oh, yeah... we lost another teammate too! And full creepy props for Donna Troy's son returning in a spectral baby carriage, even though I'm pretty sure he was out of diapers when he died.


BLACKEST NIGHT #2 - If you had told me a year ago that the best comic series I'd read all year would feature a scene where Aquaman comes back from the dead and starts killing his family, I'd have called you a damn liar. But damn me if that whole sequence isn't kind of awesome.

In fact, all the awesome action scenes - like where The Spectre himself is corrupted by The Black Power or where Barry Allen uses basic chemistry to take down a zombified Martian Manhunter - are eclipsed only by the nice little character touches, like Jim Gordon slyly talking about Batgirl as if she were a different person while talking to Barbara, because neither can be sure who is listening at that moment.


GREEN LANTERN CORPS #39 - Quite a lot of stuff here involving on-going plots. All of it pretty good. To sum up...

* When put under the influence of a Star Sapphire beam that was supposed to reveal his one true love, Kyle lied about who he saw as his true love. It was, in fact, dead girlfriend Jade rather than current girlfriend Soranik. Personally, I'm disappointed it wasn't Kyle's original dead girlfriend Alex. I'm also disappointed that we apparently won't see her in this storyline because bringing back the original Woman In A Refrigerator as a vengeful zombie would be awesome on so many levels.

* Guy, not surprisingly, radiates Rage rather than Will in a fight, even when using his ring.

* Arissa abandons Daxam to it's fate, cursing the death of her partner, Sodam Yat and how he sacrificed himself to save a world full of racist xenophobes who weren't worth saving.

* Mongul continues his coup of the Sinestro Corps.

* Everyone in the Green Lantern Corps crypts on Oa comes back. Hilarity ensues.


GREEN LANTERN #45 - This issue is wall-to-wall fighting. And thank goodness for it!

* The entire dead planet of Xanshi returns from the dead - as a big black ball with the Black Hand symbol on it, ala Mogo.

* Carol Ferris fights Sinestro, as the Loyal Sinestro Corps followers assault Zamoran, for what the Star Sapphires did/tried doing to convert many of their members into soldiers of Love. Then they get surrounded by Black Lanterns, recruited from the ranks of dead Sinestro Corps Members.

* Several Green Lanterns fight the Red Lanterns, on the Red Lantern base-world of Ysmault, only for both groups to be besieged by Black Lanterns, formed from the ranks of those killed by the Red Lanterns.

* The Orange Lantern assault on the Blue Lanterns ends, after Larfleeze is attacked by an army of Black Lanterns made up of... everyone he killed to create the Orange Lantern Corps.

* And in the middle of all this, everyone waits for the Indigo Power to show up...