DC Comics Review: Blackest Night #4

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: ***

I’m a bit disappointed in this issue. After the first three issues blew me away and I proclaimed that this series was a future classic in the making, writer Geoff Johns stumbles a bit with this month’s issue of Blackest Night. For me, some of Black Lantern Firestorm’s dialogue was written poorly in the opening pages. We also jump to Gotham City for no reason other to see Jean Paul Valley aka Azrael resurrected as a Black Lantern while The Scarecrow whines about admiring the fear that the Black Lanterns are able to invoke (he can’t get scared because he’s used too much of his fear gas). Poor baby. He does have one fear of course - The Batman (cue dramatic Batman music).

This issue mostly focuses on Barry Allen - the Flash and his quest to take the reigns and try to “hold down the fort” here on Earth against the Black Lanterns. He’s with the Atom and Mera of Atlantis and he gives them a good pep talk to try to get them to step up and fight back against the Black Lanterns. The Flash then runs across the Earth continuing his pep talk and informing the other heroes of the situation. He tells them that Green Lantern is off trying to destroy the source of the Black Lanterns’ power and they have to keep fighting until that happens. 

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DC Comics Review: Blackest Night: Superman #3

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: *** 1/2*

Blackest Night comes to end for Superman this week - at least for now. Issue three of Blackest Night: Superman is a lot of fun - this whole series has been fun. As I mentioned in a previous issue, sometimes the most simple plots can be the most fun. All you need to know is that the Black Lanterns are resurrecting the dead in the DC Universe, and they are attacking the living. It’s Night of the Living Dead meets the world of superheroes - what more can you ask for?

Writer James Robinson did a very good job with this one. Behind the story of the Black Lanterns attacking Smallville and New Krypton is the story of a family - the Superman family. I like the dynamic between Martha Kent and her sons Superman and Superboy (and of course the family dog Krypto); on the flip side, we see the difficult family relationship between Supergirl and her mother as they tackle their father/husband who has been resurrected as a Black Lantern. Great drama.

Our story jumps back and forth between the events happening in Smallville to the events on New Krypton. Kara is sad and angry over this thing that she has to fight, this thing that looks and sounds like her father. Meanwhile, Superman and Superboy fight off the Black Lanterns of Earth 2 Superman and the Psycho Pirate. The Psycho Pirate has been able to take over Superboy and make him fight Superman, but Superboy is then able to regain control of his senses use his tactile telekinesis to fight off Earth 2 Superman. Conner wants to be more like Superman, but he hasn’t been using this power because Superman lacks his own. Superman tells Conner that he must use all of his powers and be himself, to not worry about being more like Superman.

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DC Comics Review: Justice League of America #38

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: ***
has had its share of ups and downs over the years.
The Justice League has had its share of ups and downs over the years.  Over the past ten years we’ve seen the resurrection of the JLA under the guidance of Grant Morrison with great success.  That title went the way of the dodo a few years ago and was relaunched under the helm of writer Brad Meltzer.  His year run on the title was okay, but not as good as I would hope it would have been.  I haven’t collected the title since Meltzer left, but I decided to pick this issue up as I’ve been reading James Robinson’s Justice League: Cry for Justice.  This series has also had its share of ups and downs, but I wanted to give Robinson a shot and see what he could do with the regular series.  I’m glad I did.

The Justice League is falling apart.  Batman, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter are dead.  Superman is on New Krypton and Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Flash are off doing their own thing.  The League consists now of mostly second-tier characters with Vixen at the helm.  Our story begins with the character Blue Jay being chased by an unknown assailant.  He’s looking to warn the Justice League of impending danger.  Unfortunately he doesn’t make it and he’s killed. 

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DC Comics Review: Green Lantern #46

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: *** 1/2*

Another great issue by Geoff Johns and artist Doug Mahnke.  We pick up where we left off in the last issue with Sinestro and Carol Ferris being confronted by a bunch of Black Lanterns.  Sinestro narrates our story and talks about his friend the Green Lantern, Abin Sur, and his obsession with the prophecy of the darkness that would sweep across the universe - The Blackest Night.  The Guardians and Sinestro himself thought Abin was insane and Sinestro confesses that his biggest regret is not believing in his friend.  This is a much more sympathetic Sinestro than I’m used to.  I have a love/hate feeling when a villain is shown to have reasons behind his villainy.  I think some people are just bad and there’s no reason.  Still the back story is interesting.

The group of Black Lanterns that are attacking are lead by Abin’s brother Amon and they battle it out with Sinestro and Carol until Hal Jordan and the Indigo Lanterns arrive to assist in the fight.  Hal is upset because Indigo 1, the leader of the Indigo Lanterns, took Hal away from the other JLA heroes in their fight against another group of Black Lanterns.  Being long-time enemies, Hal and Sinestro of course end up fighting each other.  Indigo 1 interrupts their fight and talks to Sinestro about her past meeting with Abin Sur.  Sinestro wants to know what she knows of Abin, but more Black Lantern rings arrive and resurrect more of the dead.

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DC Comics Review: Blackest Night #3

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: ****

Wow!  Blackest Night may be Geoff Johns’ best work yet and along with artist Ivan Reis, it makes the story that much better.  In the two previous issues we had a lot of fighting and an establishing of the situation, but with this issue we get a firm direction of where this series will be headed and what needs to be done to stop the Black Lanterns.

Our story opens up with the new Firestorm, Jason Rusch.  As we know from the previous Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond, Firestorm is not just one person.  It took the combination of Ronnie Raymond and Professor Mark Stein to form the Firestorm matrix.  Currently Jason’s other half of the Firestorm matrix is his girlfriend Gehenna whom he calls Gen.  The two are discussing their relationship.  Jason is able to read the thoughts of Gen when they are merged together as Firestorm and realizes Gen wants to get married.  Jason isn’t ready and Gen says that maybe they shouldn’t be Firestorm together.  But before Jason can answer that, his Justice League comm link goes off alerting him to some trouble.

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DC Comics Review: Blackest Night: Batman #2

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: *** 1/2

Blackest Night: Batman continues this week as Batman, Robin, and Deadman battle the Black Lanterns in Gotham City.  I really like what Peter Tomasi is doing with this story.  My only problem is again the way he writes Damian.  Compared to the way Grant Morrison is writing Damian it’s like they are two different people.  If you get past that, it’s a fun story.

Batman and Robin break into the Gotham National Guard Armory to get some weapons to battle the Black Lanterns.  At first Damian wants to grab a gun, but Dick tells him no and that they have to honor Bruce’s memory to not use a gun.  Not sure why in this case since everyone they’ll be fighting is dead already, but it’s the thought that counts I guess.

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DC Comics Review: Blackest Night: Superman #1

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: *** 1/2*

The Blackest Night makes its way to Smallville in this first issue of Blackest Night: Superman as Black Lanterns resurrect the deceased Earth 2 Superman and Lois Lane. Our story begins with Pete Ross and some local Smallville townsfolk talking amongst themselves when they notice something flying in the sky. Being a Superman comic, someone is guaranteed to utter the famous “Is that a bird?” quote. Well it’s not a bird of course, but it’s instead the resurrected body of Kal-L, the Superman of Earth 2 as a Black Lantern. He arrives in Smallville and makes his way to the Kent farm where Superman, Superboy, and Krypto are sitting down for coffee with Martha Kent. 

I love that Conner is back and Superman has a “brother” of sorts; I love the little family that DC is developing here. I would have Supergirl start to develop a yearning to become a part of this family and have her mother become jealous—this would cause a big rift between them, resulting in a throw down with Superman and Allura with Supergirl caught in between. Speaking of which, we see Zor-El become a Black Lantern on New Krypton later in the issue. 

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DC Comics Review: Blackest Night: Batman #1

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: ***

The Blackest Night storyline continues in this separate three issue mini-series entitled Blackest Night: Batman.  This series will focus on the Black Lanterns going after the deceased relatives a various Bat-family members.  As I mentioned in my review for Blackest Night #2 , this first issue also focuses on Boston Brand - Deadman and his physical body being resurrected into a Black Lantern.  Writer Peter Tomasi does a good job here, but I have to give him some negative points on this one because of the way he writes the character of Damian Wayne - Robin.  If you’ve been reading Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin, Morrison portrays Damian as a major jerk.  Judd Winick follows Morrison’s lead, but has toned it down a bit over in his stories in Batman, but the jerk personality of Damian is thrown completely out the window here in Tomasi’s version of the character.  There’s no arrogance; no snide comments about Dick not being the real Batman, nothing.  Instead we get a character who if you picked up this issue without knowing what has happened over the past few months, you would think that this new Robin is more along the lines of Tim Drake.

With that being said, the story is still very good in my opinion.  It opens up with Batman (Dick Grayson) and Robin at the graves of Bruce Wayne and his parents, Thomas and Martha.  As we all know, Black Hand went to Bruce’s grave and took his skull for some unknown reason.  The caskets of Thomas and Martha have also been dug up, but their remains have not been resurrected into Black Lanterns.  In this scene, Tomasi’s makes his first mistake of writing Damian out of character as Damian shows genuine feeling of sadness as he sees the bodies of his grandparents.  He’s so distraught that he can’t bear to pick up their bodies as Dick decides to remove them from their graves to a safer location.  The Damian that we see in Batman and Robin probably wouldn’t care much for the bodies of people he didn’t know - even if they are related to him.  He’d probably say something like let’s toss ‘em back in the hole and let’s go.

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DC Comics Review: Blackest Night #1 - Dave’s Take

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: *** 1/2*

I’m not a huge Green Lantern fan.  As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I was a Marvel Zombie for a long time.  Even when I started reading DC Comics it was just Batman and nothing else.  It wasn’t until the early 90s with the Death of Superman that I started reading other DC books.  For the majority of the time I’ve been reading DC, Kyle Rayner was the Green Lantern, not Hal Jordan.  I liked Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern: Reborn, but I wasn’t crazy about his regular ongoing work on the new GL title.  I can appreciate why many people like it and the art has been amazing, but I preferred other titles. 

I liked the Sinestro Corps storyline and I’ve been reading the lead up to this month’s big event: Blackest Night.  This first issue was very good.  The GL issues have been a bit hard for me to follow because I know very little about GL history and its been hard to connect with these characters.  I also don’t really understand all of the multicolor lantern corps that are popping up and what is the purpose of the Black Lantern Corps which at the center of this storyline the Blackest Night.  All I know and understand is whoever or whatever is behind all this is recruiting the bodies of deceased super-heroes and super-villains.  The Black Hand who is a long standing GL villain, killed himself only to be resurrected as a Black Lantern and he’s become the unofficial squad leader of the corps.

Our story begins on the anniversary of Superman’s “death”.  When it was believed that Superman was dead, the government declared it a day of national mourning.  When he was resurrected, the day became a day to honor the deceased super-heroes who’ve fallen in the line of duty.  In Coast City, the day takes a special meaning as they honor the dead civilians who died at the hands of Mongul and the Cyborg Superman. 

In the beginning of the issue we see Black Hand unearthing Bruce Wayne’s body and talking to his skull.  In a perverse homage to Hamlet, Black Hand speaks and then licks Bruce’s skull and says that he is connected to them all.  Does Black Hand know that Bruce is really alive? 

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