• 
  Comic Reviews: Blackest Night: Rise of the Black Lanterns hardcover/paperback (DC Co...
  2 Sep 2010 at 3:02pm
  In contrast to the second volume of Black Lantern Corps, where Geoff Johns's Blackest Night: Flash was the strongest of the stories collected there, his Atom and Hawkman chapter in Rise of the Black Lanterns is easily and surprisingly the weakest. Fortunately, a number of the other stories are quite good, including strong outings in the Catwoman and Question issues that bring about some of what I feel has been missing from other Blackest Night tie-ins.
  
  Rise of the Black Lanterns collects seven of the eight cancelled titles that DC comicbooks "resurrected" for one issue in the midst of Blackest Night (plus an issue of Green Arrow and Adventure comicbooks). With this premise, I hoped for fairly accurate "final issues" -- books that could actually read as the new last issue of the series.
  
  [Contains spoilers]
  
  I grant this is my (perhaps unrealistic) expectation, and not something DC necessarily promised; to this criteria, however, neither Atom nor Phantom Stranger served as true "final issues"; Catwoman, Starman, and The Question all succeeded; and while Power of the Shazam had little to do with that original series, it did serve well as a bridge to future storylines (as, potentially, does Weird Western Tales)
  
  Of these, I liked the Catwoman issue best of all. Writer Tony Bedard sets the story in the midst of Selina Kyle's current status quo in Gotham City Sirens, but the action is all about the old Catwoman series, and not just because of Selina's resurrected enemy Black Mask. Bedard focuses on one of the most emotional moments of Ed Brubaker's classic Catwoman run, when Black Mask tortured Selina's sister Maggie, and asks "What happened next?" The story is just as much about Maggie's anger and Selina's guilt as it is about Black Lantern zombies -- which, in my opinion, is how it should be -- and it makes for a fitting close to the Catwoman series in addition to functioning in Blackest Night.
  
  The Starman and Question issues take a similar tack. I'm not as familiar with the old Question series, but I know one long-standing issue was Tot secretly being Vic Sage's father; writer Greg Rucka had Vic he acknowledge he knew this as Vic died in 52, and in this issue, faced with a Black Lantern Question, Tot admits it, too, while new Question Renee Montoya fights Vic's old enemy Lady Shiva. Starman Jack Knight, rightly but a bit disappointingly, doesn't appear in writer James Robinson's Starman issue, but the story is a pleasant enough Shade story. Both of these issues speak to events of their previous series, occupied but not too occupied with Blackest Night, and accomplished what I expected from the resurrected titles.
  
  Surprisingly, Geoff Johns's Atom chapter is rather weak. This is a completely miss-able Atom story in which Ray Palmer basically gets knocked around by the Black Lantern version of his ex-wife Jean Loring, including being subjected to a gruesome recap of Identity Crisis and attacked by some former miniature allies. By stalling Jean, we're lead to believe, Ray saves the universe, but he's considerably more heroic in Blackest Night (and less of a punching bag) than he is here. Peter Tomasi's Phantom Stranger issue is more substantial but still struck me as filler; it's good to see Blue Devil here and I liked the idea of Blackest Night hits long-time DC Universe monastery Nanda Parbat, but given that this issue, like Atom, uses characters specifically involved in Blackest Night (here, Deadman), I expected more than this generally flat story that hardly affects the Stranger himself.
  
  The Power of Shazam and Weird Western Tales issues lead in to forthcoming stories in Titans and Outsiders respectively. The former is the more obvious; Eric Wallace, whose work I increasingly enjoy, writes about Osiris, soon to appear in Titans -- while this had little to do with Jerry Ordway's Power of Shazam series, I did like Wallace's take on how the Shazam magic interferes with the Black Lantern ring. DC comicbooks Publisher Dan DiDio writes Weird Western Tales, where both the art by Renato Arlem and an appearance by the Ray make this seem like a Freedom Fighters issue. The Ray, however, and Simon Stagg -- a long-time Metamorpho character -- both next appear in Outsiders, which DiDio writes, so consider this a lead-in to that. DiDio's issue is at its core a Jonah Hex story, and fans of the Justin Gray/ Jimmy Palmiotti series might want to glance at this part.
  
  The final two chapters, each from a "regular series," are the closing issue of Green Arrow by J. T. Krul (before he relaunches that series) and an Adventure comicbooks (Superboy) issue by Tony Bedard. I liked Krul's Blackest Night: Titans, and his Green Arrow story -- if essentially just crossover filler -- has some moving moments in Arrow's struggle against the Black Lantern ring's influence; as controversial as Green Arrow's new direction is, most everything I've read by Krul has been satisfactory so far. Bedard's Superboy story is wonderfully trippy, applying some unique time-travel issues to Blackest Night, and also taking a fond look back at previous incarnations of the Superboy Kon-El. Nothing Earth-shattering here, but at the same time each story displayed more emotion that some of the more uneven tie-in miniseries collected in the Black Lantern Corps volumes.
  
  [Contains full and variant covers, Black Lantern sketchbook section]
  
  Indeed, whereas the "resurrected issues" in Rise of the Black Lanterns are farther removed from Blackest Night than the specific three-issue tie-in miniseries collected in Black Lantern Corps, I enjoyed the former far more than the latter. Perhaps it's because Rise of the Black Lanterns, with its dual crossover and single-issue focus, is able to expand in character-focused ways more than the rather formulaic miniseries. If you were only reading one Blackest Night tie-in volume (and really, who's doing that?), I'd recommend this volume first.

  ---

  This post was syndicated from Collected Editions, the chronicles of a "wait-for-trade-er" -- the new breed of comic book book fans who forgo monthly "floppies" for trade paperbacks and collected editions -- reviews, commentaries, low price alerts, news, and the occasional scoop. Visit collectededitions.blogspot.com.

  

  
  

  
  
• 
  Comic Reviews: Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 2 hardcover/paperback (DC Co...
  30 Aug 2010 at 3:02pm
  Geoff Johns has an unfair advantage in that he conceived of the Blackest Night crossover, and therefore the tenets of the story are nearest to his imagination. It remains, however, that his Flash story rules the second volume of Black Lantern Corps; it achieves what I feel most Blackest Night stories (including Johns's own) have been lacking, letting alone that it includes fantastic art by Scott Kolins. I was rather hard on the first Black Lantern volume, and the Wonder Woman and JSA stories here are only slightly better, but the Flash story alone makes this book worth it.
  
  [Contains spoilers]
  
  The Black Lanterns, it's been established elsewhere, are not the loved ones of the DC Universe's heroes, they just look like them. This makes the Black Lanterns one-dimensional; once the hero figures out the trick, it's no different than fighting any other shapeshifter. What I've hoped for in Blackest Night are instances of real emotional resonance, where the fact that an entity arrives with all the deceased's memories actually has some bearing beyond a superficial fight scene -- something that actually builds upon the relationship between the living and dead characters. Batman fighting the Black Lantern Ventriloquist had no such resonance, while Mera revealing to the Black Lantern Aquaman that she never wanted children did.
  
  The Blackest Night: Flash chapters of this book also had that resonance. Even suspecting that the Black Lanterns are constructs, Captain Cold and the Rogues set out to find Cold's deceased sister and eliminate the Black Lantern Rogues because, of course, the Rogues take care of their own. At the same time, the new Captain Boomerang supplies his Black Lantern father with victims in an effort to bring him back to life.
  
  Johns bucks the typical Blackest Night tropes in two ways here: Cold hunts the Black Lanterns (instead of vice-versa) even though he knows they're constructs, and Boomerang falls under the thrall of a Black Lantern rather than just meeting and fighting it. What follows is another of Johns's trademark deep stories about the Rogues, as Cold must re-acknowledge that abandoning his sister predicated her death; though Cold pretends to be emotionless, we learn this isn't entirely the case. Cold's path crosses with Boomerang at the end of the night and in a horrifying scene, Boomerang's desperation to save his father costs him his life.
  
  The Flash Barry Allen is present, too. I'm enjoying Johns's take on him, though his part is less interesting mainly because it's mostly covered in Blackest Night itself. I did like experiencing the Blue Lantern "hope" ring from Barry's perspective, and experiencing Black Lantern possession through Wonder Woman's eyes later on.
  
  What's notable is that Johns explains Barry's character here perhaps better than in Flash: Rebirth (Barry's mom died, he was emotionless; he became the Flash, met his wife, and had emotions again; he died, came back, started out without emotions but then regained them) -- and that in this, Johns finds a way to make Cold and Barry foils much like Cold and Flash Wally West were; Barry's constant struggle is to express his emotions and "be in touch," while Cold's struggle is to bury his emotions and remain aloof.
  
  (Though why Johns avoided having Barry meet his resurrected Black Lantern mother, I don't know.)
  
  Regarding the other stories:
  
  As a fan of Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman run, I had high hopes for his Blackest Night: Wonder Woman. Yet, even with the promise of a face-off between Wonder Woman and Maxwell Lord, whom she killed, the story was surprisingly bland. The Black Lantern Lord is a laughing devil, far more like Dr. Psycho than Lord, and appears mainly in the first chapter; in the second and third, Wonder Woman fights Mera both as a Black Lantern and as a Star Sapphire.
  
  Ragnell can articulate far better than me why Wonder Woman as a Star Sapphire is a questionable choice; I was more puzzled by Rucka's proposal that Wonder Woman holds unrequited love for both Batman and Superman, which seems rather easy territory already well-mined by other writers. While again, Rucka's portrayal of Black Lantern possession from Wonder Woman's perspective is nicely terrifying, this story is for most part a fight scene, without the politics or moral ambiguity of Rucka's Wonder Woman work. Though Wonder Woman affirms her decision to have killed Maxwell Lord, there was none of the revisiting or re-examining of the event that I expected.
  
  I was pleasantly surprised to find that James Robinson's Blackest Night: JSA picks up from the end of his Blackest Night: Superman story; neither of these add much to the Blackest Night mythos, but the stories gain scope in duplicate. Even as we know all Black Lanterns are evil, Robinson turns this well in having the Black Lantern Damage do good for a bad purpose, and indeed Robinson had me half-believing he'd changed the rules before the story ended. Liberty Belle/Jesse Quick's emotion over the Black Lantern Damage and Johnny Quick is convincingly moving.
  
  This almost makes up for Blackest Night: JSA's end, where the Black Lantern-killing super-weapon that Mr. Terrific created, in a bit of comic book book ridiculousness, can only have worked that one single time. In addition, whereas Robison follows in great detail the life and deaths of the Golden Age Sandman, Mr. Terrific, and Dr. Mid-Nite at the beginning of the story, none of them ever really fight or interact with their counterparts; again, it's an instance of the Black Lanterns looking like familiar figures, but there being nothing to the story beyond the resemblance.
  
  [Contains full and variant covers, Black Lantern sketchbook]
  
  Still, inasmuch as I liked Francis Manapul's work on Superboy and I'm looking forward to Flash, I believe I'll always think of Scott Kolins as the definitive artist drawing Geoff Johns's Rogues, and that -- along with the demonstration of what a Blackest Night tie-in could be -- makes this volume worth it for me. With the seemingly more personal "cancelled issues" in Rise of the Black Lanterns coming up next, I hope that's more what I was looking for.

  ---

  This post was syndicated from Collected Editions, the chronicles of a "wait-for-trade-er" -- the new breed of comic book book fans who forgo monthly "floppies" for trade paperbacks and collected editions -- reviews, commentaries, low price alerts, news, and the occasional scoop. Visit collectededitions.blogspot.com.

  

  
  

  
  

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