Blackest Night Disussion Thread (Spoilers)

And read this link as well. Pretty much proves Nekron is behind the whole thing.

 

Sue and Ralph I don't think have been since their Ghost Detective stints. Geoff has explained a little in interviews over the last few weeks the nature of the Black Lanterns. It's still a little confusing to me as well how the whole thing works.

 

Thanks Laser Beam. I got a chance to read the original Nekron story and I really like the cover of Issue #5. In the original story, Nekron was pretty badass but he looked sort of lame, but now he looks badass. Hopefully GJ will have his powers and actions fit his makeover.

Question for BN readers, I was browsing through one of the books and there was a great scene with John Stewart confronting I think the spirit of the dead of the world he destroyed? Has that plotline been advanced or concluded? If so, could someone spoil me? There just seem to be so many Blackest Night books out there it's hard to keep track of them. I wish they would go to a numbering system like the Superman books have.

 

*bump* So how are people enjoying Blackest Night so far, now at the halfway point? I'm only buying the primary mini-series and not the tie-ins, I'll get those in trade form. I'm enjoying the series but I'm surprised and disappointed that the main mini is basically "Barry and Hal and C Listers fight zombies" for the entire first half. The lead-up was all about the different Corps of color and they haven't appeared at all outside of the Indigoes so far. Are they in the GL and GLC issues? I don't know anything about Nekron at all so his shocking return doesn't do much for me, but we'll see how it goes.

 

The book does seem really slow. And while I'm not a big fan of "force every title to tie into the big event story," I think Blackest Night is being hurt by being (somewhat) isolated. A lot of what happened in the mini could have been covered in individual titles, leaving the mini open for the War of Light

 

Most of the various color corps stuff is indeed being covered in the 2 Green Lantern books. Sinestro and his corps have just teamed up with the GLC and the Star Sapphires in the latest issue of GREEN LANTERN.

And the Blackest Night is beginning to spill over into the other DC books as of last week's issue of DOOM PATROL. It's only getting bigger from here on out.

I've been really enjoying it so far. I love that we're seeing someone other than the Big Three taking center stage.

However, I do think the big climactic reveal in issue #4 had a bit of the wind taken out of it's sails by being spoiled in the press a few months back.

 

My feelings haven't changed at all. It's moving too slow, has been predictable in every conceivable way, and I'm just sick of the way the Hal and Barry bromance is being shoved down everyone's throat and then some. Sorry Geoff, I read these guys as kids and you're not going to convince me they're the end all be all of comic characters, especially since their replacements had more character in one year than they did in thirty some odd years of publication. They still do.

And what should have been a relatively contained series is now becoming a big bloated mess. Doom Patrol apparently was still on my pull list from the Byrne days (ugh) and it adds nothing to either story and feels like the forced story that most crossovers do.

As for the "reveal" at the end of issue 4......again, having read the original series that this is basically a remake of......my first thought upon reading the first BN related article was that it was going to be Nekron. Mainly because Geoff Johns went from being an excellent writer who was forward looking, when he was writing Flash and JSA, to an Event Writer who wallows in nostalgic bullshit with a heavy dose of fan wank (see Legion Of Three Worlds) It's getting older and staler by the minute.

 

I'm waiting until the trades come out. We're fast closing on the month long gap...I can't remember when DiDio said it was going to be.

 

According to Amazon, which is often wrong about when the title is actually available (they tend to post a date a month AFTER it comes out), Blackest Night is coming out on July 6th. http://www.amazon.com/Blackest-Nigh...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257770827&sr=1-1

 

That is when I thought it would be out. I love the cover to Superman: Secret Origin too.

 

Man - July 6th is a looong time to wait on this.

The Trade for Green Lantern: Agent Orange (one of the new-color lanterns - I think Orange represents Greed) is coming out later this month. I hope my library gets it soon.

Re how do I like it so far - I haven't read any of it except checking up on some of the preview pages that get released at ign.com or comicbookresources.com. But I'm very glad that they addressed what was an "ugh"-factor to me from the Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns trade where it
is revealed that ...

Spoiler: Ysmault denizens

Qull and Roixeaume - two of the Ysmault inhabitants from Alan Moore's story on the end of Abin Sur were killed by Atrocitus in Rage of the Red Lanterns. I like the fact that Qull and Roixeaume might be coming back - although as black lanterns. Should *hopefully* be interesting. Qull (of the five inversions) Rocks! Tho' I hate that Geoff Johns has made it so that "The Five Inversions" is the name of the terrorist group. From the Alan Moore story, I thought the five inversions piece was referring to how there might be five inversions whenever Qull is revealing a "prophecy".

 

So why, after all these countless millenia that the Green Lanterns have existed, have all these different colored rings and batteries cropped up within a couple of years? Especially ones with dubiously linked emotions. I mean greed? Really?

Yellow made a lot of sense overall, sure, but all these others? I realize there was a split by the Guardians and there's apparently some chick Guardians out there, but why now? And why so many goofy concepts? I mean seriously, this greed one is just baffling me alone.

And if the Guardians were so uber-powerful as to create the universe's most uber-powerful weapon, why are these solo renegade types able to do the same and become a viable threat?

 

Good questions all.

According to Geoff Johns' explanation - Most of it stems from the history of the corps. eg. A long time back there was split with some of the Blueskins leaving to become Zamorans and the "Guardians" for the star sapphire etc. The Red stem from the the previous version of the Green Lanterns (the Manhunters) getting a glitch and committing a massacre in sector 666. Then there are the psions of Vega (or something) that the Guardians have had a no-intrusion pact with (which of course gets broken multiple times) and they both hate each other. And all the colors are supposed to "represent emotions" (Love - Violet, Yellow- Fear, Hope - Blue, Indigo - Compassion (I don't know who's supposed to be their guardian) and so on). The weak point of course is that the original Lantern color of green (will-power) is not an emotion by itself.

So, the Violet color has an old off-shoot from the Oans as their guardian, the Blue color has a couple of guardians themselves (Ganthet and Sayd) who've left Oa to form their own corps and so on...

 

You're baffled by greed? Hell, I'm baffled at how "will power" is considered an emotion!!

Also, when Black Lanterns scan people, you see an aura around them with a word that describes an emotion. This is done inconsistently as well. Is it the emotion they're feeling at the moment? Is it the emotion they're most capable of generating in others? What? It seems to be the first option as that's why the BL's are tormenting their victims.

But when they scan Sinestro, it shows him yellow and says "fear". Except Sinestro, especially after all the ass kicking he's done, doesn't look like anyone who's even remotely afraid. He's the most confident guy in the damn book!

Sadly, for Hal, Sinestro is a far far far more interesting character and I'm reading Hal's book mainly to see what Sinestro's doing.

 

If I may say so - while Sinestro does several "cool" bad things - he just looks lame as a great super-villain. I think it's not just the moustache but that he has them "waxed" so that they are standing out as straight lines and pointed or whatever. How can you take somebody whose moustaches are waxed/pointy that seriously?

I noticed the "Fear" thing actually starting out with the Red Lanterns where there would be several captions in a red background with the word "RAGE." in them. Before that, I don't seem to recall a "Fear" caption being used much.

Also re Sinestro being afraid, it could be that he's "afraid" of chaos and that is why he believes in such rigorous dictatorial order (that pretty much had his entire planet Korugar be enslaved). However, having said that, I don't think the Yellow Ring Corps is a model of "order", at all. Quite the opposite. While Sinestro always has a plan and such and the Yellow Lanterns probably do fulfill those (including sacrificing their life in certain cases for him), I still think it's not a very organized corps. Also, while he uses the Yellow Lanterns, Sinestro has made noises that makes it seem as if his real goal is to be the leader of the Green corps and not the Yellow corps.

 

The yellow rings are definitely about inspiring fear in others. That's the main reason one of them tried to recruit Batman; because he inspires so much fear in his enemies.

 

Well most of the Corps are takes on pre-existing concepts so it's not so bad. Yellow was always there (yellow impurity, Parallax). Blue is a splinter of Green. Red is taken from the 1980s Alan Moore stories. Purple has been around forever (Star Sapphire). Orange is from the Vega Sector right where they've been forbidden to enter for decades of continuity. So really Indigo is the only one out of scratch, right?

 

Just read Issue Five.

Spoiler: Issue Five

Bruce Wayne came back as a Black Lantern...! For thirty seconds anyway. What a tease. And he made all the resurrected super-heroes (Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow) into Black Lanterns too! Damn. Now what was up with all seven colored leaders being together at the start? I guess this happened in "Green Lantern" which I'm waiting on the trade for. And Scar finally got her just deserts. Sweet.

By a happy coincidence I just received GL "Agent Orange" and GLC "Emerald Twilight" in the mail today as well! I've already read Orange and it was solid as always. I'm loving these three/four way fights between the different colors. Very cool. Larfleeze was a hoot. And Hal fighting his green and blue ring was cool. I also loved the one Guardian who kept bitching to the rest of them, LOL. "I want my protest written into the Book of Oa".

 

Indigo are also nomads that have wandered around the stars. So it is no wonder they haven't ran into them

 

I have lost some of my excitement on Blackest Night since I'm waiting for the Hardcover next summer, sigh, but that spoiler Mr. Light has me geeked out! I am going to get Agent Orange and Emerald Twilight at Christmas time along with the Star Sapphire Hardcover.