Brightest Day: Volume 1

The DC Blackest Night event and its prologues were filled with interesting characters and events, setting the stage for massive changes in the DC Universe that almost demanded an epic follow-up. How does the beginning of the sequel event, Brightest Day fare?

If the first two issues of Blackest Night had a lot of setup, then the first 8-issue volume of Brightest Day is the very definition. Every event that takes place in Brightest Day Volume 1 is setup; even when things happen, it’s only to set the characters into position for setup to take place. Not sure how this can be?

Brightest Day follows the story of Deadman, the formerly dead hero now forced to wander at the mercy of the Entity, the embodiment of life in the universe awakened by beings with similar intent and now carrying out its own agenda, to ends as yet unknown to the world’s heroes. Following the events of Blackest Night, Deadman found himself unwillingly among the living and being warped from place to place, witnessing the lives of his fellow resurrected.

Notice something missing? For those who didn’t much appreciate the emphasis that Blackest Night placed on Geoff Johns’s star heroes, the Silver Age Green Lantern and Flash, rejoice! For the rest of us… not so much. Hal and Barry barely play a role here, mostly to exposit information as they did in the beginning of Blackest Night, in this case by visiting the resurrected with Deadman playing the role of an invisible witness. They visit just a handful of the twelve main characters of this series before stepping off the screen.

Other than Deadman, the only one to retain his white ring, the White Lantern draftees go on with their lives in varyious ways. Several of the resurrected are immediately incarcerated by the Justice League, while others register with the Justice League only to take some alone time. The Martian Manhunter takes to life as a botanist on his homeworld, while Hawkman and Hawkgirl set out to permanently end the source of the curse that it seems the white light has freed them from, at least temporarily. Ronnie Raymond, the former Firestorm, faces the fallout from his actions as a Black Lantern- actions that he doesn’t even remember, let alone have control over- and finds himself part of Firestorm once more, this time, with three minds instead of two. And remember, three’s a crowd.

But I can’t focus on that too much, now. Remember, there are twelve potential plots (eleven, if you consider Hawkman and Hawkgirl as a single plot and ten if you consider Deadman as just storytelling adhesive, although he does face his own challenges brought on by the Entity demanding that he embrace life) and each one must be touched upon in almost every issue.

I’ve got to admit, as somebody who’s barely familiar with most of these characters (Atom, the Hawks) and not familiar at all in some cases (Osiris, who appears to be Black Adam-lite and even uses Black Adam’s name in place of “Shazam!”), this just drags. And drags. I can’t say Blackest Night had the same problem. Yes, I had some base familiarity with Aquaman, but he was already dead, and I knew absolutely nothing about Mera. Jason of the new Firestorm has transformed from a college student who just doesn’t want to think too hard about the future into an angry kid who blames his fellow victims for his misfortunes, something that Black Lantern Firestorm is particularly keen on assisting him with.

Why the sudden changes in the characters? Why is the plot so much harder to focus on all of a sudden, and the characters so much more difficult to follow? I assume part of the reason to be the noble cause of trying to connect readers with more obscure heroes, once with less ties to what we know and with less standard story arcs. The other reason? This one’s not hard to see. In fact, if you walk into the bookstore and look on the shelf, you can see it.

On Blackest Night, the name takes up less than half of the binding, leaving space for the name of the writer and one of the artists on its binding. Why? DC was obviously promoting the best of the best, expecting names such as that of popular writer Geoff Johns to sell the book to those that Blackest Night didn’t already hook.

Brightest Day by contrast, leaves room for nothing but the title on the binding. Is it a lack of talent involved? I look in the book and no, Geoff Johns’s name still appears in the credits, as does a number of the artistic skill involved in Blackest Night. The colors don’t seem any worse for wear. But as I browse the rest of the credits, I realize that while more than half of the creative team behind Blackest Night returned for Brightest Day, the familiar names are still a minority. Geoff Johns is no longer the solo (nor, I assume, primary) writer, and several artists have been added. What results is a book pulled in too many directions, the art dumbed down so that many characters that appeared particularly striking in Blackest Night are much less distinct or compelling visually here.

For an example of how simplified these characters were, in her first scene I wouldn’t have recognized Mera had she not been sleeping with Aquaman. The Martian Manhunter faces a similar makeover, as do many of the humans. As somebody who grew up drawing on a daily basis, I can tell you how hard it is to make human faces of similar complexion, gender, build and emotion distinct. The artistic team behind Blackest Night had the knack. The artistic team behind Brightest Day, more often than not, do not.

Now that I’ve compared this book to one of the best comic events I’ve read in recent years, how does it stand on its own? Well, several of the stories have potential. I’m genuinely interested in this serial killing Martian that J’on J’onzz is investigating, just as I’m somewhat interested in this world that Hawkman and Hawkgirl find themselves on- given the assumption that portals to other worlds created of rituals involving doorways of bones are something that needs little explanation in their world, which is a huge assumption if I’ve ever made one. I’m not entirely apathetic to the whole point behind the Brightest Day plot either, even if some aspects seem entirely contrived (why is the Entity telling one man their purpose is to attempt to kill someone, and somebody else that their purpose is to prevent it when that happens?).

The thing is, each of these plots are just barely starting- save those that are only given a cursory glance and then ignored till near the end of the volume, when The Entity explains their purpose for being resurrected- meaning that, after potentially having spent thirty dollars on this book, I’m barely invested in any of the characters or plots. In fact, if I were to find out that the plot threads featured in such spin-offs as Brightest Day: Green Lantern were not to feature at all in the remaining volumes of Brightest Day (as I believe they don’t), I probably would not be anywhere near as willing to spend money on them as I was this one. In fact, I’ll need to hear pretty good things to buy the next one, even with all I’ve put into this series myself.

And that’s where it really comes down to it: recommendation. Was there a compelling story? Yes… and no. There were literally a dozen stories, and each has the potential to be compelling. Is the art good? The art is okay… but it’s nothing to recommend the book for on its own, unlike Blackest Night. Are the characters interesting? Well, the character dynamics are sometimes worth watching, and J’onn J’onzz has been known to feature in some interesting stories, but so far we haven’t seen enough of any one character to recommend it for them. Do the events pertain to readers of DC? I don’t even think the events in this novel are entirely necessary for readers of Brightest Day. This entire volume is setup, with many plots in the same place they were in the beginning at the end, with a small amount of character development covered. The Martian Manhunter’s plot and the Hawks’ plots are by far the ones with the most development, and each of these features in few enough pages that they’d be hard pressed to collect them all and call them a single issue. It’s not out yet, but I have a feeling most readers could pick up Brightest Day Volume 2, ignore a few small questions (or even better, have editor’s explanation boxes like they used to) and jump right into the story without having to sit through 256 pages of setup. Unless you’re a huge fan of Deadman, Dove and Hawk, Martian Hunter or Hawkman and Hawkgirl, that’s my recommendation.









The Man in Black is a weekly review at Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin' News & Reviews. For more of his reviews, you can visit his home page at www.MiBreviews.com

Graphic Novel Review: Blackest Night

Since 2004, when Geoff Johns ostensibly finished work on The Flash and became the writer for Green Lantern, DC comics have been building toward one point: Blackest Night, 2009 and 2010′s event that became the next DC Crisis, mainly because you can’t call a Crisis two years after Final Crisis a Crisis.

With all of the Crises DC has had, it makes sense that much of the first part of this omnibus details exposition about Final Crisis. For many comic readers like me, characters like the Justice League of America seem to live in a constant limbo, their lives unchanging with events due to rarely reading about a single character in a linear manner and television shows that seem to be focused on the early 90s (as well they should be). Not knowing the precise nature of how modern comic events worked, the first time I read Blackest Night #0, I was operating under the impression that the mountains of dead were killed just for the opening of Blackest Night the way they might be in an Infinities one-shot (and I don’t mean just because Final Crisis knew Blackest Night was going to follow up). Over time, I realized this was not the case.

If you look at these pages, though, you might understand why. Blackest Nights #0 and #1 are like a DC obituary. Most of this is exposition, and if this weren’t a nine-issue omnibus, it would get pretty tedious. And it’s all relevant for this volume (and would have been awkward anywhere else). If you really want to see how much exposition is just skipped over, take a look at this image:

The setup issues aren’t all backstory, however, as they bring us into the current plots as well. Mera, one of the main characters of the saga, discusses the fallen Aquaman with Garth, while the new Firestorm attends a memorial for the old (one of my favorite DC heroes). Green Lantern Hal Jordan and original Flash Barry Allen share much of the page time as the stars of the book, and the Atom narrowly misses being part of the deaths of Hawkman and Hawkgirl. More characters are involved, more setup takes place; this issue is the foundation for both Blackest Night and Brightest Day.

Without spending too much time on each issue’s plot, I do want to address how the tone for the series is set here. We see the undead Black Hand licking a skull, acid rain at a funeral, memorials and crypts, defiled graves, cursed lovers being slain by their dead friends, a multi-species horde of zombies the likes of which Star Wars: Death Troopers and Red Harvest should have sported, and bloody hearts being pulled out of still-screaming bodies for a feast of the dead. Pretty much the only thing that’s not black in this issue is the light of green rings, which sets the tone in a different way.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, as far as DC-wide events go, this is pretty much a Green Lantern/Flash event. The Atom and Mera feature prominently, and there are other, smaller plots with other heroes, but the alpha and omega of this miniseries are Hal and Barry. I don’t mind this- Hal Jordan has long been one of my favorite heroes, and when I’ve read about Wally West emulating Barry the Flash seems like a hero worth learning about. Those more focused on the Supermans and the Batmans, you might be a little out of luck here.

Blackest Night continues by following through with its premise: super-powered zombies that feed on the emotional spectrum. And you know what? This is definitely a worthwhile take on zombies. The undead have a single personality, all designed toward drawing out an emotional response in their victims so that they can eat their hearts and use it to power their central power battery. By the way, the battery is at zero power when these super-powered monstrosities start killing their friends. Imagine what it could do at full power.

As the general story unfolds, you get the impression that scenes are being skipped. Why is this? Well, as a main DC event, Blackest Night had several spin-off series, in addition to touching close to every main title that DC carries. So while the most relevant things are explained as part of this series, sometimes you get things like groups of Lanterns leaving or returning to Earth for unexplained reasons.

Another focus of this book is on splash pages and two-page spreads. Every issue has at least one of these. Many of these exist to focus on the drama of the unfolding zombie apocalypse (in a very real sense- Black Hand and his Corps seek nothing less than the end of all life), with the rest giving Alex Sinclair space to show off his coloring for the other seven Corps. Thankfully, all of the visuals in this volume are phenomenal, from the pencils and inking to the colors and lettering. If you buy comics for eye candy, these splash pages will sell the whole book to you.

The heroes of Earth can’t do much, as Hal Jordan leaves to collect the people that actually have a chance against the black rings, and they fight a war of attrition with the unkillable until the black Central Power Battery, which has been brought to Earth, reaches 100% power.

More new characters are introduced to the Saga. We get Nekron (insert “because poor literacy is cool” joke here), the disembodied voice that’s been guiding Black Hand throughout the miniseries. Despite the patronage of former Guardian Scar, Nekron is the Black Lantern Corps’ true Guardian- or if not, he’s potentially their version of Parallax (which makes him death incarnate and the avatar of the black lanterns). He closes off an issue with a semi-dramatic appearance, ordering the non super-powered dead of Coast City to rise.

As the next issue begins, Blackest Night is introduced to Saint Walker of the Blue Lanterns, Sinestro of the Sinestro Corps, Carol Ferris of the Star Sapphires, and Larfleeze, aka Agent Orange along with the returned Hal Jordan and Indigo-1 (who appeared earlier to bid Hal join her in finding these… characters) of the Indigo Tribe. Together, they represent the seven Corps of the emotional spectrum, often with cartoony caricatures to distinguish their emotion of choice. We have only a few pages’ montage to introduce these characters to those who have not been following the past few years, making them behave more cartoonishly than normal.

The Lanterns are on Ryut in Sector 666 (where all the bad things in Green Lantern come from), where the Black Lantern had spent its time charging ever since the Sinestro Corps War, but is not now. We therefore cut back to dramatic goings-on on Earth which are obviously waiting for the main characters to show up before explaining Nekron’s deal, and the cavalry arrives. Scar mentions that she considers Nekron her Lord, which potentially makes her just another Black Lantern, despite the role she’s played in events, and the Lanterns show off their combined powers by destroying her.

Carol Ferris, the Star Sapphire, makes a Captain Planet joke when they combine their beams to attempt to destroy the Black Power Battery; neither of these have much impact. Bruce Wayne is raised from the dead, causing an emotional link to the members of the Justice League that allows Nekron to send black rings after those who have been resurrected in the past and kill them while Nekron narrates that all they’ve accomplished in the past (at least as far as beating death) has been according to his will. Sort of like when you’ve been beaten time and again in a video game and when you get your rematch claiming that it’s because you’ve let them win a dozen times in the past, despite not having any good reason to have ever let them win.

“Bruce Wayne” (quotes being Nekron’s, not mine, and you can guess what that means) is dismissed as The Flash helps Hal Jordan escape their two rings by running several seconds into the future. Nekron summons his reinforcements from across the universe, which prompts the other six Corps (not counting Larfleeze, whose entire corps lives in his ring) to call for reinforcements. Before they can arrive, however, Ganthet, fallen Guardian-turned-Blue Lantern leader, commands each of the seven rings to duplicate for the sole purpose of giving fans a chance to see such things as a Star Sapphire Wonder Woman, Blue Lantern Flash, Orange Lantern Lex Luthor, and so on.

Unfortunate angle for any member of the Indigo Tribe

Other than the unique looks and comments on each hero and villain’s personality, there are two comments I have to make on this. The first is that the Star Sapphire ring would not pick anyone other than Wonder Woman because “nobody loves this planet more than her”, which is as close as they’ve come so far to saying that only women can be Star Sapphires (Superman’s name wasn’t even brought up). The second is that we don’t really get to see the benefit of this. Scarecrow turns into a powerful Yellow Lantern, sure, but otherwise the only real outcome is demonstrating the downsides of each ring, such as stopping Mera’s heart and overwhelming Luthor with power lust. I understand that each ring requires training and experience, but the whole point was that they would be of more use in the fight, not to make them useless.

As part of Nekron’s final solution, Black Hand uses the heart of a Guardian that Nekron killed to summon The Entity (known to Nekron as The Intruder), the embodiment of white light and life itself. The idea is to kill it, but it’s sort of like when a mage summons a demon in order to take its power and is slaughtered by the emerging demon. While the “Blackest Night” prophecy is almost proven to be true by the existence of this series, what happens next proves it impossible: it’s impossible to kill Life itself, even for Nekron.

Sinestro takes the Entity into itself, much as he had forced Parallax, the embodiment of fear, into Hal Jordan, and kills Nekron. For a moment. Just like a few other baddies Star Wars fans might know (and others, I’m sure), Nekron takes the body of one of his servants to return himself to life, pulling the Entity out of Sinestro. Hal gives a Patrick Stewart speech about life and resurrection before taking the Entity into himself and using it to turn all of the heroes turned into Black Lanterns two issues ago into White Lanterns, who target Nekron.

While all this was going on, it was decided that Black Hand was Nekron’s link to the world of the living, and returning him to life would end Nekron’s cycle of reanimation. The Entity knows this too, apparently, and leaves Hal so that it can lean over Hand dramatically and resurrect him. At the same time, it resurrects the freaking Anti-Monitor, trapped within and powering Nekron’s Central Power Battery.

This is one of the weakest moments of the series. I understand this is halfway through the finale and time is short, but you don’t resurrect the most deadly villain in the history of DC Comics and then have Nekron dismiss him with a hand wave. Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. No epic battle? None of the heroes even react to this? It’s a cool looking two pages, sure, but ultimately, it was forgotten.

The Entity destroys Nekron with a badass “LET THERE BE LIGHT”, and then resurrects twelve heroes and villains to set up for Brightest Day. Among these is Deadman, who was seen earlier begging to stay dead before Nekron made his corpse into a Black Lantern, causing there to be two Deadmans for the duration of the miniseries. From here, we go into closure. Everybody is returned to their normal state, except for the resurrected, who are either alive where they were dead before or, in the case of the Hawks- are un-cursed where they were cursed before.

We get a hint of the drama to come in Brightest Day, such as Gen, the second half of the new Firestorm, still being dead, and several deadly supervillains having been returned to life. Deadman laments over being forced back to life, the fact that the real Bruce Wayne was apparently not dead to be reanimated is discussed, and a white lantern appears in a crater. But as they say, it is now tomorrow, which means the Blackest Night is over.

It is time for Brightest Day. And if it’s anything near as good as Blackest Night, we’re in for a good ride.

The Man in Black is a weekly review at Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin' News & Reviews. For more of his reviews, you can visit his home page at www.MiBreviews.com

Graphic Novel Review: Green Lantern: Rebirth

When the Man Without Fear becomes the darkest villain his allies have faced- and been defeated by- in centuries, what does it take to redeem him and save them all?

For somebody who never owned more than three issues of Green Lantern before 2011, I'm about as big a fan as you're likely to find. This winter, I spent a lot of time reading comics at the Borders Cafe, and what kind of comic nerd would I be if I spent all my time reading Dark Horse? One of the first DC novels I had to get my hands on was Green Lantern: Rebirth.

The only issue of Green Lantern I own featuring Hal Jordan is from 1983. At least, I thought it was. I also thought that was the issue in which Hal Jordan destroys the Green Lantern Corps. So either that happened twice, the comic had a startling moment of prescience, I had an incredibly realistic dream, or a very strange mismemory. I can’t find that comic, though, so I can’t check.

Anyway.

Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns is the story of Hal Jordan’s return to the Green Lantern Corps, and as such the return of the relevance of Green Lantern. Not to be cynical, it’s just that the GLC being relevant to DC without Hal would be like a friend of Peter Parker’s putting on the Spiderman suit and maintaining his pre-eminence. Never mind that I hear that’s what they’re doing with Captain America? According to Gutters. Anyway, I would hope that with a title like Rebirth, what I just said wasn’t a spoiler.

Rebirth is, on top of all that, one of the greatest examples of retcons that fans like. Without having read the past decade of Green Lantern, from my understanding none of the revelations in Rebirth existed before this volume was written. Everything in it comes completely out of left field- however, when fans demand it, is it really out of left field?*

I’m aiming for a brief review, but sometimes, you’ve just gotta talk. If you know the deal with Parallax, you can skip most of this. Anyway, in 1993, during the events leading to the return of Superman, Coast City, the hometown of Green Lantern Hal Jordan, was destroyed. The story, as the grapevine describes it, is that he lost it, went crazy, effectively destroyed the GLC, the Guardians, and the central power battery himself. He snapped his long-time foe Sinestro’s neck in a fit of rage, and became the villain Parallax. As Parallax, Jordan went on a reign of terror before finally sacrificing his life to save the sun.

But Hal Jordan isn’t dead- he lives on in the ghastly Specter, who took him on in the hopes of destroying… Parallax. Parallax is revealed to be an independent sentient, and one of incredible power. Sort of like if Return of the Jedi ended with a battle between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. Yet, with how Rebirth explains it all, Hal Jordan’s fall and redemption comes across as more realistic than the falls of Anakin Skywalker and Arthas Menethil’s best points put together.

This is one of the best written comics I’ve ever seen. While characters can be disagreeable, there are no moments that I would consider poorly characterized- the biggest “what the hell?” moments that I encountered were the sudden appearances of characters such as Kilowog where they hadn’t been before. It’s sort of sequential, but sometimes the use of first-person narration in Kyle Raynar’s scenes caused me to question whether certain things were flashbacks or not. It’s possible to read this scene and not be confused- that’s not the way it happened for me, though.

Ethan Vans Sciver’s art (not to mention the work of the rest of the art team) is phenomenal. I’ve seen well done comics, although the truly impressive ones are relatively limited. Many are either cheesy or simply sufficient; only Star Wars: Legacy really stands out in my mind as a comic that I’ve read in the past few years and the art really impressed me, as sequential art goes. Rebirth surpassed that. I think the defining moment of the art in this comic is where Kilowog appears, steaming with rage and under the influence of fear.

I’ve always loved ‘Wog’s appearances, mostly as an example of ridiculous character design combined with a serious character in serious situations. He just combines cheesyness and awesomeness in every panel he’s in. Not here. There is nothing cheesy about this Kilowog. At least, if you don’t automatically see the humanoid equivalent of an angry pink hippo or rhino as amusing. The detail on this guy leaves me awestruck. For the first time, I could envision Kilowog as a live action character.

Oh, and let me not forget Parallax. I’ll let the character design speak for itself here.

What to say about the story itself? Well, it’s about as poignant and emotional as a story that declares itself a retcon over and over again can be. And apparently, that’s pretty damn emotional.

Coming into this as I did, after reading Blackest Night, there’s a ton of foreshadowing here. (That’s not to mention the unintentional parody of naming individual issues “Blackest Night” and “Brightest Day”, just going to show how overused those terms are in Jordan’s saga, and with good reason.) Black Hand’s appearance, for instance… I imagine maybe people saw it as nothing more than a cameo, and presumed that the character would vanish from continuity for a few years. Yeah.

But as for this story… well, we have Batman, Green Arrow, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Hal Jordan and Sinestro. In classic dramatized comic style, every character’s strengths are up-played and there are a ton of hardcore finishing moves (and lots of cameos). Sinestro is brought into play as badass as he possibly can be, in league with the embodiment of fear itself, facing off against the old and new Green Lanterns.

Green Lantern: Rebirth is a must for any fan of Green Lantern or comics in general. It might be a little confusing for anybody not familiar with the backstory, but a token effort is made to explain Hal’s fall and return, which I think was handled fairly well for its position as a minor detail to the story. If you’re the type of reader who enjoys seeing iconic characters return to their glory (not just Jordan!) or seeing things like a Guardian of the Universe laying a smackdown or even younger heroes officially accepted by the great legends of their time, this is a story you might want to check out.

*If it’s not, it’s certainly written as it is. I did include all necessary disclaimers.

The Man in Black is a weekly review at Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin' News & Reviews. For more of his reviews, you can visit his home page at www.MiBreviews.com