Blackest Night

[Velorath]

As much as I like Green Lantern, the post-Sinestro Corps War build-up to Blackest Night felt a little rushed to me.  To get all the pieces into place, Geoff Johns had to introduce two Corps in Rage of the Red Lanterns, and then immediately follow up with introducing Agent Orange in a three issue arc immediately following.  The result is that none of these Corps have really had the time to be fully fleshed out, compared to the Sinestro Corps which made use of a number of already established villains.  In essence, much of the last year or two of Green Lantern, while enjoyable, has felt like Johns checking items off a list of everything he needed to establish prior to the start of Blackest Night last week.

But now we're finally here.  Green Lantern #43 released a couple weeks back and acted as the prologue.  With Green Lantern only appearing in flashback panels, this issue focuses on the Black Hand and his transformation into the first Black Lantern.  Tying in heavily with the Secret Origin arc, it's a fairly well done story that ends up being greatly elevated by the art on the last 6 or 7 pages.  All in all, this issue won't mean much for people who are just jumping in for Blackest Night, but for people who have been following Green Lantern there's a lot more character development for the villain here than there was in all of Rage of the Red Lanterns and Agent Orange.

Which brings us to Blackest Night #1.  While this is obviously required reading for GL fans, it has the tone of an "event" book.  The Green Lantern Corps get some face time in this book, but a lot of the focus is on various characters from around the DCU, including a couple of unexpected deaths.  Some of the scenes were a little too dialog heavy for my taste, and a lot of the first half jumps around too much without a strong narrative, instead doing a lot of scenes of heroes mourning other dead heroes.  Once the action kicks in though, things end up getting a hell of a lot better.

[gryeyes]

Dont really follow DC as a general rule so the appearance of all the colors really kinda saturated me. Are the guardians supposed to be complete fucking pussies? In the passed 3-4 months I don't believe i have read a comic in which they are not slaughtered easily or get their ass kicked. The correlated story is lost on me since i have little knowledge on who is what.

[Khaldun]

I see it's the Geoff Johns who likes over-the-top gore in his superhero comics who has come out to play in this storyline. Plus a lot of emo dialogue. I didn't care for this by comparison with the GL stories of the last few years leading up to it.

[AutomaticZen]

Is there another GL of Kilowog's race, or was that his corpse in the Black Lantern spread?

[Triforcer]

Who else thinks this will end with "everyone" who is a Black Lantern becoming alive again at the end?  It just suddenly struck me reading the second issue. 

[Velorath]

I think there's a good chance that everyone who dies during the course of Blackest Night may come back.  If they bring back everybody though, that would be a bit excessive.

[gryeyes]

Tons of people have already died, and the steady stream of deaths does not look like its going to stop. Some gimmick will play out when the black rings get to 100%.

[Khaldun]

I'm guessing that Nekron, a somewhat obscure uber-baddy from an old GL Corps series, is going to pop out of the netherworld when the rings are 100% charged. Obviously not everyone who has come back as a Black Lantern will be alive again at the end, but I'm guessing they'll use this to undo recent "stunt" deaths like the Martian Manhunter and storytelling mistakes like Sue Dibny's death. I'm also sure that it's going to take all the colors coming together to defeat Nekron because they're all a part of life yadda yadda yadda. I wonder if we'll still have the GL Corps at the end or if it'll be something like the Rainbow Emo Corps. Probably the former because I'm also sure it'll turn out that will is the "keystone" color, that without will, the emotions can't be channelled or controlled. Kind of predictable.

[Triforcer]

Almost correct, but the final panel will be Hal Jordan absorbing one ring from each color and emerging as the first White Lantern.  

EDIT:  or maybe even more fruitily, a Rainbow Lantern. 

[Khaldun]

The White Lantern Corps headquarters home page: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

[UnSub]

Almost correct, but the final panel will be Hal Jordan absorbing one ring from each color and emerging as the first White Lantern.  

EDIT:  or maybe even more fruitily, a Rainbow Lantern. 

I didn't think Hal Jordan could get more white... but it makes sense.

[Velorath]

Who else thinks this will end with "everyone" who is a Black Lantern becoming alive again at the end?  It just suddenly struck me reading the second issue. 

On the other hand, everybody that's died so far is minor enough to stay dead or has an easy way to come back later.

[NowhereMan]

Apparently some of them are going to come back and some of them aren't, which is wonderfully vague. Only interesting development so far is that it seems the Lords of Order have some sort of defence against the Black rings since the original Dove can't be raised and the present Dove wasn't just able to avoid the resurrected Hawk but showed up as white in Black ring-o-vision.

[Khaldun]

Well, Death is Entropy, so that makes sense. Again, I expect this is why the Green Lanterns will matter most out of the Rainbow Lanterns: emotions are life, but (in DC-ville) will is what gives life the motivation to keep on going in the face of entropy and death.

[Simond]

Green Lanterns use spiral energy.
Proof:

 

[AutomaticZen]

Green Lanterns use spiral energy.
Proof:

 

Which GL is that?  Kyle?

[Simond]

Yeah, think so.

[Velorath]

I'm guessing that Nekron, a somewhat obscure uber-baddy from an old GL Corps series, is going to pop out of the netherworld when the rings are 100% charged.

[gryeyes]

Apparently some of them are going to come back and some of them aren't, which is wonderfully vague. Only interesting development so far is that it seems the Lords of Order have some sort of defence against the Black rings since the original Dove can't be raised and the present Dove wasn't just able to avoid the resurrected Hawk but showed up as white in Black ring-o-vision.

I believe someone else showed up as "white" for a brief moment as well? I think thats why the zombies talk incessant shit to get an emotional response so they can harvest them?

[NowhereMan]

Only other one I've noticed was one of the Sinestro Corps guys who was a robot.

[Evildrider]

Supposedly they are gonna kill off Wonder Woman at the end of the series.

[LK]

Fuck. Can a death be something meaningful instead of a fucking marketing / advertising grab that means dick all to the narrative since it'll be undone in a few months anyway?

[Khaldun]

It's especially stupid since Gail Simone has finally been doing some work to develop a consistent tone for Wonder Woman. (Though the visual design for WW's version of Doomsday was pretty shit.)

[Velorath]

After reading Blackest Night #3, I can't imagine just reading Blackest Night 1-8 is going to make for a satisfying story to anybody who hasn't been following Green Lantern.  It just seemed like a really odd place to introduce the Indigo Lanterns.

[Khaldun]

An odd place, and also, I don't readily grok why the Compassion Lanterns should have been hiding in secret or why they don't have names and so on. You can feel the fatigue a bit as we've moved through the color spectrum: Johns had some very good theme ideas for Fear Lanterns, some slightly less worked out ideas for Rage Lanterns, some ideas for Love Lanterns (mostly, 'make them almost naked women!'). By the time he got to Greed Lanterns, he was down to having Gonzo the Muppet in a cave.

[Triforcer]

The Orange Lantern stuff was actually my favorite. 

[Khaldun]

In the end, it worked--after all, why would the Selfish Lantern make a whole *corps* or share power? But it's seemed to me that the back-end Lanterns are just less fully fleshed out, Indigo most of all.

[NowhereMan]

The Indigo lanterns seemed to be mostly about being mysterious, which is very easy to do so it comes off as 'half-assed and not thought out'. I also liked Larfleeze, he's a very base character and provides some decent amusement. Possibly the only thing that's weird is that greed seems to have as strong an influene on behaviour as rage when you'd have thought it'd leave someone somewhat more reasonable. Also promo art suggests

[gryeyes]

Except Larfleeze negotiates for what he wants before he tries to take it by force. He was content to sit in his own sector,only going aggro after his space was violated a few times and then was directly attacked by the controllers. And he still makes another deal for a blue ring (or rather its location) when presented with the offer. He created a corps for the very reason of not wanting to share his power,they are just ring constructs they don't have rings themselves or power of their own. Which is a far cry from seeking to eat and control everything which would be the equivalent of a rage lantern.