Posts Tagged ‘ Blackest Night ’

Blackest Night was so much better than it could have been once it was made into a line-wide crossover instead of a Green Lantern contained story.

April Fool!

Just kidding! By becoming a line-wide crossover, Blackest Night lost its focus and became less about character development and more about a(nother) threat to all reality and how to get some characters back that were dead but somebody decided should be used again.

Also, this may be nicely illustrated but it doesn’t half feel like an excuse to sell more action figures:

What irks me more than the fact that this ‘event’ fell short of its precursor Sinestro War in almost every way is the fact that the return to life of characters seems completely arbitrary. The fact that nobody explains why these specific characters are back (although it’s hinted that it will be touched on later) while others aren’t – especially ones like Ralph and Sue Dibny – adds to the feeling that most of the resurrections were simply editorially mandated or characters that Geoff Johns had plans for. It’s annoying.

Anyway, jut who came back, and which one of them just might be a White Lantern when all’s said and done? The issue is new enough that I’m putting it behind the cut…

I posted this on my Tumblr earlier, but since I have marginally more people coming here than I have following me there….

I do love me a good homage.

It’s been a damn brutal week in comics – and I mean really brutal.

Take Blackest Night: Titans #3.

Say what you will about Ed Benes art (such as ‘cheesecake’ and ‘posed’) but the man can draw some pretty powerful stuff when he puts his mind to it. I’m not talking about ‘punching the heart out of your dead ex-husband’ powerful…

No, I’m talking about crushing your zombiefied son to death.

Benes wisely concentrated not on gore, but instead on Donna’s reactions to the act. It’s pretty horrifying, and certainly the most emotionally compelling moment we’ve had in Blackest Night so far.

Of all the books to step above being a simple ‘zombie-attack’ style tie-in, I admit that Titans was the least expected, but it’s by far been the best of the BN mini-series.

And Donna seems to be coming out – finally – as a character worth watching. After Dove saves the day by having her peace sever the connection between the dead and the black rings (and after a visit from Don Hall, it seems that scene earlier has a lot of resonance), Donna is determined to take her to the front lines of the battle with her not only to save the day, but to take care of her if her infection spreads.

The issue closes with the revelation that Donna can already see people’s emotional spectrum – a sign that the Black Lantern Zombie Vision is already spreading; but it’s the moment where she kills her dead child that stays with you.

Brutal.

In the last ish of Green Lantern, the power source for the Zamorans’ Violet Lantern was revealed to be the corpses of Khufu and Chay-Ara of Earth…better known as the original Hawkman and Hawkwoman.

DC has managed to screw up Hawkman quite a bit since Geoff Johns last wiped the slate clean for the character and reintroduced confusion through some Jim Starlin-penned space-malarkey.

Even so, I can’t help but feel that, between this little titbit and the recent death of the current Hawks in the main Blackest Night series, there may be plans afoot for Hawkman and Hawkwoman/girl – and once again it seems like Johns is the one pushing ahead with those plans.

Hawkman: Rebirth, anyone?

The new solicits for DC (and an IGN interview with Geoff Johns last week) identify the villain behind Blackest Night to be D-list Green Lantern villain, Nekron.

“Who?” I hear you say?

Nekron’s a lord of the unliving who was exiled a while back by the Guardians. You have to ask yourself how these nearly omniscient beings keep on screwing up.

Embodiment of fear?

Lock it in the lantern.

Worst rogue Lantern ever?

Throw him in the lantern.

Lord of the dead?

Dimensional rift. That’ll show him.

Anyway, the thing is that Nekron historically been a bit of a lightweight. He created a Corps of undead GLs at one point when the Corps itself didn’t exist, and got repelled by Kyle Rayner who – and I can’t blame him here – couldn’t take ol’ Skull face seriously.

Later, he was accidentally summoned as part of Witchfire’s magic act.

Witchfire.

I mean, I love me some Power Company, but that’s a bit of a come down, isn’t it? It’s one thing to be summoned by Dr Fate or the Phantom Stranger, but Witchfire?

In all fairness, Witchfire had some help from Wonder Woman when she kicked Nekron’s ass back into his void, but it’s a bit of a comedown for the self-proclaimed lord of the unliving.

It’s interesting when you look at the cover of Blackest Night #5 and consider who seem to be the focus of Nekron’s interest – Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Ice, Kid Flash, Superboy, Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Arrow – because all of these characters have come back from the dead in recent (or I guess not so recent) years. I wonder if them coming back somehow left the door open for Nekron to get a toe hold.

The funny thing is, in spite of Nekron being a bit of a loser as demigods go (he’s not even a Mephisto, really) I thought that he would be behind Blackest Night – to the extent that I got a post ready to go about a month ago but didn’t get round to posting it. I do wonder though – is there someone behind Nekron?

I mean, revealing him to be the main villain at this stage is akin to saying Extant is behind Zero Hour in the solicits – and then you have Parallax behind the curtain waiting to say ‘boo’.

Ok, so in this week’s Blackest Night #2, something that will undoubtedly become some kind of key plot point is that the Black Lantern rings were unable to revive and co-opt Don Hall, the original Dove – because he was apparently resting in peace.

Apparently, Don had no such qualms when Brother Blood raised him from the dead, but…

…I can live with that; maybe the Black Rings ‘ask’ a little – but what about his brother Hank Hall, better known as Hawk?

Apparently, he’s not resting in peace…

But here’s where I get confused. Following Don’s death in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hank got a new Dove as a partner – Dawn Granger.

This was all well and good until Armageddon 2001, where the time-traveling despot from the future, Monarch, turned out to be Hank Hall himself.*

Later, Monarch kidnapped Hawk and Dove and killed Dove**, specifically so he could incite Hawk to kill him and become Monarch himself. What a plan.

So at this point, Hawk has become Monarch. Monarch then skipped around the timestream for a while, battling Captain Atom for a bit*** before eventually resurfacing in Zero Hour as Extant, having duplicated Waverider’s powers to add to his own. He killed a couple of JSA members, including the Atom…

…and years later showed up in JSA. Eventually, Atom Smasher managed to swap his mother (who had died in a plane crash) with Extant, saving his mother, avenging his father and finally killing Extant.

So: is the Hank Hall rising from the dead in Blackest Night the remains of the Hank Hall who became Monarch who became Extant who died on that plane? If so, does he still have Extant’s powers? Or just Hawk’s?

I’m confused!

*Yes, he was originally intended to be Captain Atom but lets not get into it now…

**Dove wasn’t dead; that was an illusion and she was secreted away by Mordru to carry Hank’s child who would eventually be aged to become the reincarnation of Hector Hall, Dr Fate. Or something like that.

***Even more confusing; along the way, Monarch ran into Nathaniel Adam in the timestream who, it turns out, never became Captain Atom at all, and the CA we know was just basically a copy made from the alien metal. Adam helped Monarch out, and in return he gave him his armor to get out of the timestream. Adam then became a second, heroic Monarch for a while- not to be confused with the third Monarch, who was apparently Captain Atom once again in Countdown. Maybe. Brain…exploding…