Rating: ***

The Black Night continues its reign of terror in Smallville in this issue of Blackest Night: Superman.  I really enjoyed the first issue of this series, but I felt a bit let down with this second one.  One of the things that I felt hurt the first issue of this series continues here and that’s bad dialogue.  As you know, Earth 2 Superman has risen from the dead as a Black Lantern and is fighting Superman and Superboy.  As they are fighting, Earth 2 Superman taunts Superman with this “amazing” piece of dialogue,“My world was better!  I was better!  Earth 2?  No, it was Earth mine!”  Bad.  Just bad.  I can’t believe that this is the same writer - James Robinson - who wrote one the best comics ever in Starman.  What the hell happened?

The story is still decent enough for me to have been entertained along with the solid artwork by Eddy Barrows.  This guy is great.  I look forward to seeing more of his work, hopefully on bigger projects for DC.

As I said, our story continues with the Earth 2 Superman as a Black Lantern battling it out with Superman and Superboy.  However, out of nowhere comes the Psycho Pirate who is also now a Black Lantern.  No real explanation of where he came from or why he’s here.  I guess characters connected to Crisis on Infinite Earths have to stick together.  The Psycho Pirate is “stealing the emotions” of the people of Smallville and switching them to feel what he wants.  He makes them angry, scared, or sexually aroused as he has a young man and an old woman make out.  Yuck!

The Psycho Pirate is able to switch the emotions of Superboy and have him turn on Superman.  So now Superman is all alone against the Black Lanterns and Superboy - or so he thinks.  Martha Kent is able to escape after being held hostage by the Black Lantern Earth 2 Lois Lane.  Martha is hiding in the cornfields, but she refuses to give in to the Black Lantern Lois and decides to fight back.  Look out Lois!

We also have Supergirl over on New Krypton fighting her Black Lantern father.  She punches him, but he keeps regenerating and promises to kill everyone in the city.

As I said,  pretty decent story, but some that dialogue is just awful. 

The owner of my local comic store said that all of the Blackest Night comics are the same.  Someone rises and becomes a Black Lantern and fights the superhero.  He has a point, but I think the simplicity of that concept works tremendously well and you almost don’t need anything else.  The main Blackest Night series is where the real story is going on and these off-shoots are simply filler with some fun comic book action with these zombie-type characters fighting our heroes.  It’s not rocket science, it’s just plain old fun. 

One more issue to go for this series.  Will the Superman family show up in the main Blackest Night series?  How will this story end?  We’ll find out soon enough.  Having a blast with this series in case you haven’t guessed yet.  Can’t wait for more!