A Disturbing Realization...

The Star Sapphires are powered by The Power Of Love.

They each have a ring that lets them focus this power.

This gives them some vaguely define abilities regarding reading the hearts of others.

So basically, all Star Sapphires have The Power of Heart?

One Good Thing And One Bad Thing About Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2

GOOD THING: Beautiful, poster-worthy Nicola Scott artwork throughout.

BAD THING: It's all a dream. Seriously. The whole issue is a frelling dream sequence!

This is probably for the best as it directly contradicts the events of Blackest Night #6 but also a bit of a problem... since IT'S MEANT TO BE TAKING PLACE DURING THE MIDDLE OF A FIGHT SCENE IN BLACKEST NIGHT #6!

I can summarize the whole book in six lines.

ZOMBIE DIANA: I will kill everyone you love and respect!

REAL DIANA (Inside Zombie Diana's Head): No! Please! Stop! Don't!

BATMAN: Diana, I love you!

ZOMBIE DIANA: Huh? But Bruce is dead! This doesn't make any sense.

APHRODITE: Yes, daughter! It was all a dream I put you in so that you wouldn't really hurt anyone. Now here is a Violet Ring so that you may share the Power of Love with everyone!

Cue Huey Lewis And The News' 'Power Of Love' as Star Sapphire Diana flies into the clouds.


Food For Thought: Am I the only one disturbed that apparently Aphrodite will intervene to stop Diana from senseless hurting her friends but she doesn't give two swift-kicks-to-the-rump about the equally-zombie-fied, equally Amazon and equally dangerous Donna Troy?



The Final Verdict: A completely pointless issue all around.

In a single issue, Greg Rucka has embodied the greatest problem with most tie-in books. There is no emotional investment, since we already know how it is going to end thanks to Blackest Night #6. The action of this book doesn't relate or connect to the events of Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #1. And this book is meant to be a tie-in to Blackest Night but it fails to tie-in to the events of the story it is meant to be taking place during (Blackest Night #6). And I still think Diana is a much more complicated character than Rucka ever gave her credit for and that citing Diana as "the most loving person on the planet" is inaccurate and a serious underestimation of Wonder Woman as a character.

At least it's pretty to look at.

Comic reviews Later. First, some serious business.

This week, I've heard a lot of... well, I hesitate to call them people, so let us follow the example of Craig Ferguson and call them personalities. Personalities who have not only discouraged their readers and listeners and viewers from doing something - anything - that might help their fellow man in a time of crisis but cast suspicion upon the motives of all those who would help orsay that the victims of Haiti somehow deserve what has happened to them.

Edmund Burke once said "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." I wouldn't presume to call myself a good man but know evil talk when I hear it. And I can't sit here with what little influence and soapbox I have and do nothing.

So if you can afford it, please, find an organization on this list which suits you and give them a little. Even if it's just a dollar, every little bit helps.

http://haitiearthquake.yahoo.com/networkforgood/index.html

2009 Starry Awards?

There aren't going to be any.

Yes, I know. Many of you have come to love my annual "Year In Review" columns and me taking the worst books of the year to task.

The problem is I haven't read most of the worst books of the year.

One of the few things I don't miss about writing for Comics Nexus on a regular basis is having to answer to an editor who can ask that I go review some wretched new series or an X-Men book that I'd normally never waste my money on.

Since most of what I review now is books that I enjoy... well, I can't imagine that anybody would want to read about my scathing review of that one Blackest Night mini-series that was "okay, but not quite as awesome as the main series." It just not as amusing as when I tear apart the likes of Liberality For All or ZEROES.

So... yeah. No big awards show this year. Probably not next year either unless I get a huge number of e-mails or replies demanding that I do the awards anyway and give negative awards to the books I merely heard were awful. And even then, I'm not saying anything until I actually read the comics in question.

Several Good Things And Bad Things About Blackest Night #6

GOOD THINGS

1. This. Just... this.

2. John Stewart just barely outrunning the tidal wave of zombies approaching Earth.

3. Actually getting to see Saint Barry admit that he's unsure about something. This moment did a lot more to endear Barry to me than anything else Johns has done with the character since bringing him back.

4. We asked about it during Sinestro Corps Wars. We got a brief nod to it afterward. But now... now we finally get to see Scarecrow with a Yellow Fear ring.

BAD THINGS

1. As I noted in my review of Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #1, the idea of Wonder Woman as Love Incarnate just doesn't work at all for me. To my mind, Diana is much more complex than that.

2. While I love the reference to the old Green Lantern story where Hal was selling copies of his ring off on the street as a clever way of creating a small force of Lanterns on Earth to fight some crisis or another when The Corps couldn't get to him in time, I see nothing but missed opportunities in the idea that Ganthet triggers the color rings to seek out JUST ONE temporary deputy on Earth for 24 hours. Why just one deputy for each Corps when we know darn well the rings can duplicate more or less endlessly if the wielder has sufficient power? And that's assuming Ganthet can't - as A Guardian - override the programming to begin with.

3. For that matter, if the color rings are capable of latching on to a Black Lantern and shorting out the ring if that person normally conveys a particularly dominant emotion, why not try and take out some of the more powerful Black Lanterns? Assuming the rings zoom in on the greatest local source of emotion, why did the Blue Ring choose Barry Allen over Superman? You really think Barry is a better avatar of Hope than Clark? Bulltish!

4. Along those lines... I just would love to see hordes of common people get the rings rather than established heroes, ala Grant Morrison's World War III and some of the other heroes temporarily empowered. At the very least, I'd love to see Ollie Queen with an Indigo staff retrofitted into a bow. :) Cool as it is to see Ray Palmer in his Sword of the Atom tribal outfit again.



The Final Verdict: An awesome issue, though there's a lot of potential that went untapped if you think about it. The whole bit where Ganthet creates a cavalry to "double their efforts" is cool... until you realize that with Ganthet present, there's no reason why they couldn't start deputizing the whole planet.