Impulse comics lol
I refuse to read any other completed series until i finish impulse
this might be a pretty dumb idea… maybe even — pauses for dramatic effect — IMPULSIVE!!!
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Lol I’m ashamed to say this, but I’ve never read any of Impulse’s solo book, but as a fan of 90’s DC, I feel like I should change that soon.
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This is my first time reading it too! So far, I’m loving it! And impulse and max mercury’s relationship is the funniest thing ever
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Gonna hit some the tailend books, 300 to the finish line
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Not much last week, more quality over quantity. Those PROVIDENCE books are ALAN MOORE at his Alan Moore-ness, each takin a good hour to read. I just fall into that world and enjoy every bit. Then IMMORTAL HULK #50 was the big finale and what a big thick send off it was. No back-up filler, no reprints, totally worth it. AH! And another SCOTT SNYDER winner over at COMIXOLOGY, CLEAR. Big hopes that the premise holds throughout cause its a beaut, a MALTESE FALCON/BLADE RUNNER jam with FRANCIS MANAPUL. His two new books are worth the sub to Comixology only, and he’s got,like,2,3,?, books on the way…Anywhat, happy readin folks, WE ARE NOW ENTERING THE HOME STRETCH
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After reading that STAN LEE bio, which was about the most depressing book I’ve ever read, I all but swore off books involving “stories behind the scenes” of the funnybook biz, HOWEVER…DOUG WOLK has read every Marvel ever and he wrote a book. So far, awesome. Because he’s a funnybook-guy, he speaks off them with respect and calls out the bullcrap on the ones that maybe deserve it, you can feel his joy about gettin to discuss these books kinda like a group at a funnybook shop would sit around talkin about what’s goin on in any certain title. Thumbs up. And then ELVIRA put out a bio, so that’s next, because for some reason ELVIRA has suddenly been a person in my “life-sphere” of late. Vonnegut has a word for this, but my Bokononism is a bit rusty. Maybe, after the Elvira book, a CATS CRADLE reread is needed…
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I bought this and started it. I just need to continue reading it, which I often forget about because it’s on the Kindle app. From what I have read, it has been an enjoyable read.
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Ive accepted digital funnybooks, still read alot of print, but just haven’t gone for digital “book-books”. I tried, with a TWOMORROWS ALL-STAR SQUADRON compendium that i didnt wanna drop crazy money for on ebay, lots of zoomin in and out
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So, I’m still not dead, I’ve just been doing this:
Blackest Night and tie-ins: 77 issues from 2009
So, coming into this, this is weird: I read all of the tie-ins from the GL and GLC titles, but not the actual event mini. I think it wasn’t on DCU at the time because they hadn’t added the full library. So I got, like, fragments of the story, and at the time it seemed pretty good. That said, I have, at best, a fairly tumultuous relationship with events, and I certainly changed my mind for the worse about Tomasi’s GLC. I also still like Johns’ GL, so I’m not assuming I won’t like this.
And it is overall one of the more solid events I’ve read, but god is it long. Like, it’s mainly building off of Johns’ Green Lantern, but with tie-ins, the event itself is actually comprised of more issues than the entire 2005 Green Lantern title.
And I think the sheer number of tie-ins begins to hurt the event. They drag it out, make it repetitive since essentially the same thing happens in a lot of them, and expose flaws like inconsistencies in the Black Lanterns’ weaknesses, power level, and behavior that would not be nearly as obvious just reading through the event and the relevant Lantern books.
That said, the event miniseries itself basically holds up for the most part, and many of the tie-ins are good. While I’m going to be my usual critical self going issue by issue, I do want to say that I think this is up there with Crisis on Infinite Earths, Legends, and Underworld Unleashed on my shortlist of company-wide events that are actually good (and it is a very short list).
Issue-by-Issue Breakdown
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Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #1 by Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi: It’s hard to articulate what, but there’s something really disconcerting about the Blue Lanterns. The insistence that they’re, and I quote—in fact I quote the narration and not even a character who we might assume was merely being hyperbolic—“the most holy and righteous beings in the universe” is just… suspicious. Especially since it’s not really established what they’re actually doing that’s so righteous. The Sinestro one is not even remotely about Sinestro or his corps, it’s Tomasi fawning over his pet villain (complete with the same “dresses up in father’s clothes” scene he recycled for Damian – it’s extremely telling how blatantly the same character they are). The Indigos’ introduction doesn’t add much, though they come across a little overpowered with the imitating other corps’ abilities.
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Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #2 by Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi: … How do you get snuck up on by Ranx? Anyway, the Red Lanterns are… I guess some of the less nonsensical Lanterns, but god they are so over-the-top. The Star Sapphires, by contrast, are, like, the coolest in theory but are mostly played more for fanservice than the interesting character development and philosophy you could get into with a love corps. In the Orange Lantern story- Oh, damn it, Tomasi, would you stop with the song references? I mean, your taste in music is, ah, miles and miles better than your writing, but stahp. Anyway, the people on all the planets Blume visited were awfully… cooperative.
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Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #3 by Peter J. Tomasi: So, Kilowog became a drill sergeant because he had an even more generic drill sergeant for a sorta mentor or something (but lol, he’s named after R. Lee Ermey, get it). I have no clue why the Emerald Knights animated movie (which is great, by the way; I recommend it) decided to adapt this, but that at least cleaned it up a little to be less pointless. Arisia’s story is a little better, but the tone just rollercoasters all over the place from page to page.
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Titans #15 by J.T. Krul: Wait, they killed Dolphin and her and Garth’s kid?! Why?! Anyway, has Garth mentioned that he has purple eyes recently? He has purple eyes. His eyes are purple. His purple eyes, purple ones, are a distinctly purply shade of purplish purple. Nothing rhymes with “purple,” except maybe “whirlpool,” but “purples” sounds kind of like “porpoise.” How delightfully aquatic. In other news, an interesting bit of trivia I learned in this issue is that Garth’s eyes are green. That’s a joke; I’m kidding. They’re purple, in case you didn’t know. Why would you take a guy whose eyes are love-colored and kill his love interest, anyway? And… wait a second, when did she die? I was assuming it was in Our Worlds at War, but that was a long time before this issue and it seems like he’s just now figuring out that this happened, and I think OWW was while he was still part of the main cast of the 1998 Titans series. Was it Infinite Crisis? Were there two separate events in the 2000s where Atlantis was destroyed by monsters and Aquaman seemingly died? That’s just redundant.
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Green Lantern #43 by Geoff Johns: So… Black Hand was just always a weirdo from birth? Good, uh, good backstory there.
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Blackest Night #0 by Geoff Johns: I don’t always like how Johns writes Batman, but his Hal and Bruce dynamic is actually pretty interesting. Like, I wouldn’t pick him to write a main Batbook, but a Brave and the Bold teamup mini or something with those two would be cool.
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Blackest Night #1 by Geoff Johns: I was about to say “It’s nice to finally see some acknowledgement of all the characters who were gratuitously killed off in Infinite Crisis.” Honest, I was. It was nice. Then I remembered who wrote Infinite Crisis.
- There was apparently a Solomon Grundy series of all things, which had a tie-in, but it’s not digitized.
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Superman/Batman #66 by Scott Kolins: Wait, how does this series work without Bruce Wayne? … Apparently, Superman and Batman aren’t even in it. Did they just straight-up convert it into a Bizarro series? That’s… actually kind of amazing.
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Superman/Batman #67 by Scott Kolins: It’s… not terrible? Got kind of a rushed feel, like every page has some dramatic twist or emotional beat. Like… I wouldn’t say it needed more issues, I’d say it should’ve been a bit less complicated somehow. Like, how much are Frankenstein and S.H.A.D.E. really adding here, for example? They keep Francine Langstrom from dying a couple times, I guess, but I feel like most of the major plot points would still work without them.
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Green Lantern Corps #39 by Peter J. Tomasi: There’s a universe-wide zombie apocalypse, but what I’m really wondering is who Mongul is going to dismember this month.
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Green Lantern #44 by Geoff Johns: Decent fight scene issue, I guess.
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Blackest Night #2 by Geoff Johns: Usually even when I overall enjoyed reading an issue, I have something snarky or critical to say, but… this was actually just good? This was good.
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Phantom Stranger #42 by Peter J. Tomasi: So, at first I thought this was from an undigitized series and skipped it, but it’s just hidden in a weird corner of DCUI, stored with a couple other resurrected issues under “Rise of the Black Lanterns.” So I’m reading this later but sticking it back in reading-order sequence. Anyway, this is mostly boring, but I do notice that with some characters (Guy Gardner in GLC and Deadman here), Tomasi seems to shift wildly from stiff, boring dialogue to “Throw every possible ‘quirky’ turn of phrase at the wall no matter how cluttered it makes things.” Like, “My bag of bones is top priority, so your time’s mucho appreciated.” (In context, Deadman is acknowledging an ominous prediction by the Phantom Stranger that his body is important for mysterious reasons, and thanking someone for guarding it.) It’s an attempt at sounding distinctive, but there’s something off about it.
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Blackest Night: Batman #1 by Peter J. Tomasi: So, the mini was talking about having to lock up supervillain bodies because there’s a black market for metahuman body parts, and that was interesting. But here… goodness, who knows what nefarious things might be done with Arnold Wesker’s body? Or, heaven forbid, Magpie. Wow, I’ve gotten a surprising distance into a Tomasi Batman issue without insulting Damian. Let’s fix that: We’re supposed to feel bad that Damian is upset that his father is DEEAAAAAAD, but the fact that he seems more frustrated that he isn’t living out enough of his power fantasy makes it ring very hollow. See what I did there? “Power?” “Ring?” That actually wasn’t on purpose; I only noticed when I reread this. Anyway, then Deadman takes over Dick while he’s driving the Stupid Flying Batmobile™, and Damian’s first thought is to just start punching Dick until they crash. Nice… nice strategy there. And the cracked bat-signal is really funny after Blackest Night #2 because, while a later issue tries to suggest that the Black Lanterns are doing this as some kind of psychological tactic, the actual reason it’s damaged was just Hal landing on it.
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Blackest Night: Superman #1 by James Robinson: Wow, Robinson is really having fun spamming that Black Lantern emotion-vision.
Also, Friday the 13th is a good movie; you should try actually watching it. Or at least the opening of Scream. If you’ve seen either movie and read this, you’ll know why I say that.
Wait, ■■■■, are they watching the reboot?
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Blackest Night: Titans #1 by J.T. Krul: Actually gotta pause on the cover to say Jesus, Ed Benes. Was the loving detail on Black Lantern Terra’s decomposing butt entirely necessary? She died when she was sixteen, by the way. Anyway, Holly Granger is already more annoying than Hank Hall. How do you even do that?
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Green Lantern #45 by Geoff Johns:
Hey, wait a second, I don’t think there are any Green Lanterns in this issue after the first page. -
Green Lantern Corps #40 by Peter J. Tomasi: Wait, do Kyle’s female supporting characters tend to die a lot?! I never knew that! Thank you for informing me of this new development!
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Blackest Night: Batman #2 by Peter J. Tomasi: Thanks, Deadman, you sure… contributed??? Why did Babs need to be possessed for any of that to work? Anyway, I can’t believe nobody told the Lanterns that flamethrowers were so effective here. Would’ve saved a lot of trouble, you know?
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Blackest Night: Batman #3 by Peter J. Tomasi: Crap, why does the reading order have two issues of this in a row? Making somebody read this much uninterrupted Tomasi is just cruel. Ahem, I mean, did the Black Lanterns take time out to put up a circus tent in a cemetery? God, some of the sentences I have to type when I’m trying to figure out Tomasi’s plots make me wonder if this is how, like, autocompleter or chatbot programs feel, fumbling through nonsensical statements to grasp blindly at the futile task of imitating concepts they can never fully understand. And… and some kind of replica of Tim’s father’s apartment is also set up in this graveyard? When? Why? And something else that occurs to me: What happened to Tim’s stepmother Dana? She just vanished sometime after she and Tim moved to Blüdhaven after War Games. One might assume she got blown up in Infinite Crisis, but you’d think somebody would acknowledge this. And do people Deadman controls have super strength or something? Has that been a thing all along? Is it a thing now? Are there such things as things? Is this real? What is reality? Do you ever wonder why we’re here?
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Blackest Night #3 by Geoff Johns: OK, so you can’t very well have a zombie apocalypse where nobody dies, granted, but a lot of different things had to contrive themselves together to get Gen killed here. Seems unnecessary? I don’t know, I’ve never seen this character before, it’s not like I’m attached to her, it’s just fridgy is all.
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Blackest Night: Titans #2 by J.T. Krul: Wait, do Black Lanterns also spread by biting like normal zombies? That’s new. And people keep referencing that this happens, but it never happens to anyone but Donna, nor does the fact that Donna got infected ever become relevant.
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Blackest Night: Titans #3 by J.T. Krul: So I get that it’s gonna turn out Dove’s somehow connected to the White Light… but why? The Hawks seem to just be Ragey, but rage’s counterpart should be love or maybe will or hope if you look at it as a color wheel instead of a spectrum. Like, I don’t know why writers bother using Hawk and Dove when they insist on Dove being just all-around better and more useful than Hawk. It defeats the point. And, like, sure, yeah, war sucks. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’. Good god, y’all. But you’d think the avatar of war and chaos would at least be more useful in a fight than the avatar of peace and order, you know? And, like, I feel like in theory they’re supposed to be two ridiculous extremes who balance each other into behaving rationally, but then Dove is always just smarter and right. I’m not saying Hawk shouldn’t be an idiot, I’m saying Dove should be an idiot too! Don Hall was at least a bit of an idiot; I miss him.
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Adventure Comics #4 by Geoff Johns and Sterling Gates: Go away, Prime.
- Legion of Superheroes backup by Geoff Johns and Michael Shoemaker: Look, it’s the Legion, you know the drill by now. They’re less annoying when contained to their native environment, but I still don’t have any of the context I’d need to remotely understand or care about what’s happening.
- Adventure Comics #5 by Geoff Johns and Sterling Gates: Characters showing up to the comic company’s own office so the people there can have self-indulgent cameos? How Marvelous.
- Superboy Not-Prime backup by Geoff Johns: I don’t really know what’s going on, but the twist at the end sounds ridiculous. Stop revealing people are related to Lex Luthor, Geoff. It was bad enough the first time.
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Justice League of America #38 by James Robinson: Wow, that accomplished extremely little.
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Justice League of America #39 by James Robinson: I haven’t read Robinson’s Justice League stuff straight through, but what I’ve read feels really phoned in. Like, I actually kind of like Detroit League reunions in principle, but it’s like… the dialogue is all the most obvious dialogue and the plot points are all the most obvious plot points and the issue’s over just when something starts to happen. It’s fluff.
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Justice League of America #40 by James Robinson: Uuuuuuuugh, Doctor Light (um, Arthur Light, that is) was fun before Identity Crisis. Anybody remember that? Anybody remember fun?
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Blackest Night: Superman #2 by James Robinson:
I’m beginning to think this reading order is deliberately grouping issues by writer.Anyway, I feel like it defeats the point of the Black Lantern emoto-vision when every single character lights up with like four or five different emotions every time it’s used. Like, I sort of get it, but in the context of the event, I think they’re probably supposed to be lighting up with the thing that’s motivating them most strongly in the moment, because the Black Lanterns are trying to provoke very specific reactions. Plus, while I think it’s trying to be nuanced, it comes across more indecisive. “Well, Superman could be angry, or he could be scared, but he’s a compassionate guy, and he’s one of those characters where people fall all over themselves to congratulate us whenever we vaguely cough the word ‘hope’ in his vicinity(seriously, there are a surprising number of these and people swoon over them every time, I don’t get it; I mean, I like hoping as much as the next guy, but I don’t know, apparently the next guy does like hoping better than me-)so he’s gotta light up a little blue too-” -
Blackest Night: Superman #3 by James Robinson: i know i’ve been dumping on this but shoutout to the fact that krypto is a good boy (but also, shoutout to the fact that Conner constantly forgetting about his powers is justified by saying he… literally forgets about his powers, amazing)
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Suicide Squad #67 by Gail Simone and John Ostrander: I almost forgot that these, uh, zombie titles, I guess they’re supposed to be, were a thing, but apparently they’re showing up in style. … OK, I think there are some typos here, though. See, the cover says “Blackest Night” and “Suicide Squad,” but this is actually just a normal Secret Six issue that occasionally mentions that the Suicide Squad exists and generally does not mention that an event is going on. I don’t, like, dislike the Secret Six or anything, I just… you got my hopes up there, you know?
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Secret Six #17 by Gail Simone and John Ostrander: You know, Yasemin, it occurs to me that you might not have failed your mission if you hadn’t shown up to a commando raid in a skintight leather dress with a
“Deposit Bullets Here” slot for more convenient targetingplunging neckline. -
Secret Six #18 by Gail Simone and John Ostrander: I’m roasting this a little, but it actually developed into one of the more competent tie-in arcs so far. It’s just odd that the Suicide Squad issue is the one that paid the least attention to the Suicide Squad characters; they could’ve just changed the order. But anyway, Waller is incredible under writers who know what the hell they’re doing, and this was a good year or two before Simone lost her mind.
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Green Lantern #46 by Geoff Johns: “Take note, Mongul. You are a creature of action, but those actions are unmotivated, and, therefore, empty.”
Wow, even Johns is roasting Tomasi.But also, I think Sinestro might be my hero now? Mongul’s been a pain in the ass for issues upon issues upon issues in GLC. Wanders into the wrong title and gets put in his place in like three pages. I also like how Tomasi couldn’t bear to be the one to put away his own pet villain. -
Catwoman #83 by Tony Bedard: Ugh, whirlwind tour of all the worst decisions made with this character. Well, I suppose it doesn’t reference Batman: Year One, so it’s not all the worst decisions, but it’s definitely a lot of them.
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Green Lantern Corps #41 by Peter J. Tomasi: Tomasi, you were the one who came up with Arisia’s family history, in an earlier tie-in to this very event. I’m reasonably certain her mother was not a Lantern, and her uncle is missing here; get your own stuff right. And oh my god, we have another scene of it raining corpses. What is with that?! Is raining corpses to Green Lantern what missing faces is to Batman?
Except this time it’s always Tomasi’s fault. -
Outsiders #24 by Peter J. Tomasi: Uh… OK, so, here’s the really… weird thing. You, uh, may have noticed that in general, I am not especially fond of Peter Tomasi’s writing. I have also mentioned on certain occasions that I am not especially interested in the Outsiders. So, awkward question. Really awkward question. I’m not especially sure how to go about asking this, but… why… Why is this good? Like, this was a pretty solid issue. Like, as characters I have less than zero interest in go, Geo-Force, Katana, and Halo are all near the top of the list, and yet I kind of found all three of them compelling here. What’s going on?
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Outsiders #25 by Peter J. Tomasi: OK, Black Lantern Tara’s double-cross was really obvious and basically the only sensible direction this could’ve been going, but damn, it would’ve been more interesting if she were legit about it. Still, though, points for making the best “No, really! It’s actually me, honest!” con the Black Lanterns have gone for to date. This arc also has… surprisingly little gore for Tomasi. I mean, there is gore, but, like, a baseline level of gore for this event in general.
Has Patrick Gleason been the one doing that? Does he just like to draw that stuff? Is he, uh, okay? -
Green Lantern #47 by Geoff Johns: Atrocitus really does not look very much like the other four Inversions. Nor does his name really match them. It has a very… fanfic OC feel, which I guess is kind of what he is, and in this particular instance I’m not necessarily using that as a diss (my actual opinion is that fanfiction doesn’t have even the minimal quality control of professional fiction, so in that sense it’s worse on average, but there’s no ceiling on the quality and at least when it’s based on a large franchise, it’s freer to take risks, so individual fanfics can sometimes be better than the bulk of the franchises they’re based on). But it’s just distracting.
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Blackest Night #4 by Geoff Johns: OK, Geoff, you like Silver Age characters, I get it.
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Green Lantern #48 by Geoff Johns: Atrocitus is annoying, but Larfleeze is a legend, so, toss-up.
42.* Green Lantern Corps #42 by Peter J. Tomasi: This is kind of like Sinestro Corps War, where the actual plot of the event is bouncing all over the universe and has a bunch of things happening, while GLC spends the entire time muddling around in a single battle somehow because this title’s writer was only given one plot point to work with.
- Blackest Night: The Flash #1 by Geoff Johns: Well, I guess… have fun congratulating yourself for your dumb Flash plot points?
- Already read R.E.B.E.L.S. through recently, so skipping a couple tie-in issues of that.
- Doom Patrol #4 by Keith Giffen: i have no clue what’s going on
- Metal Men backup by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis: You know, I’ve snarked to the effect that I don’t care about the Metal Men, and… wow, this was going to build to a joke about actually liking this because it’s by the JLI team, but even they can’t sell this. I’m legit bored.
- Doom Patrol #5 by Keith Giffen: well, fight scenes are going on, i understand fight scenes
- Metal Men backup by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis: … I mean, I’m closer to caring about the Metal Men. I don’t, but I’m closer.
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Booster Gold #26 by Dan Jurgens: Jurgens is pretty inconsistent, quality-wise, but this is on the good end for him, I think.
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Booster Gold #27 by Dan Jurgens:
So, like, one of my beefs with Jurgens is that he just cannot get over the Cyborg Superman. At least it was only the teaser at the end, but come on. -
Teen Titans #77 by J.T. Krul: Though this event is also just a very long procession of reminders of ill-advised deaths. Poor Wintergreen, he deserved better. Anyway, I feel like the sheer number of dead people with grudges against Deathstroke should probably be less funny than it is.
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Teen Titans #78 by J.T. Krul: Joey’s whole history is just one long string of terrible decisions, isn’t it? Not that I dislike him; just stop killing him and turning him evil. Also, obligatory complaint about the incessant need to “fix” characters with disabilities.
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Weird Western Tales #71 by Dan DiDio: If my wall ever explodes, I’ll be sure to shout “Oh, Lord! The wall! It exploded! It can’t be!” Anyway, DiDio is actually a marginally better writer than publisher. Still kind of hard to care when he introduces a bunch of dislikeable people we’ve never seen before and then immediately kills them all.
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Starman #81 by James Robinson: I’m so conflicted about the Shade. Like, he’s cool. Objectively, he’s cool. And Robinson knows he’s cool. He really, really knows it. And he really, really wants to make extra double sure you know it. It’s kind of like Dan Jurgens and Superman, where it’s a lot less obtrusive when he’s just playing with his own toys, rather than using them to one-up other writers’ characters. And Shade and Hope is weird; it’s one of those things where a writer realizes after the fact a pairing they wish they’d done and rushes it into a distant epilogue.
Make your J.K. Rowling jokes here, though I actually didn’t have so much of an issue with Deathly Hallows’ ending. -
The Power of Shazam! #48 by Eric Wallace: I was wondering when someone would do the “Black Lantern who’s legitimately still in control of himself” thing.
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The Question #37 by Denny O’Neil and Greg Rucka: yessssssss
(but also, i should’ve skipped one of the previous issues to get the number right) -
Blackest Night: JSA #1 by James Robinson: While Robinson’s initial run on the JSA title was a mess, this is actually shaping up to be competent, adding to my suspicion that the problem was David Goyer all along.
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Blackest Night: JSA #2 by James Robinson and Tony Bedard: This is… I mean, I kind of expect both JSA and this event to be 90% fight scene, so I might be roasting an issue of something else more aggressively for living down to that. But this is actually reasonably compelling as 90% fight scene issues go.
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Blackest Night: JSA #3 by James Robinson and Tony Bedard: You, uh, you realize it’s Jakeem Thunder, not Jamal, right? … Right? No? OK, then.
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Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #1 by Greg Rucka: You know, I was having good luck with this string of adequate-to-good issues. But… welp. OK, so I’ve gone over how ridiculously contrived the “necessity” of Diana killing Max Lord was, and how, again, at least see if somebody who does gadgets can make an anti-psychic gadget? Put him in a medically induced coma? Literally anything other than summarily snapping his neck when the problem actually is temporarily under control, just because he thinks the only way to stop him is to kill him (maybe, though he seems to be able to work around the Lasso to begin with, so it’s possible he was even lying about that)? So even if we accept the absurdly specific circumstances, it just makes everyone look like idiots for calling it “necessary.” Anyway, this next part was probably something that came down from Johns, so I can’t roast Rucka for it, but I would really describe Diana’s general motivation as more compassion than love, even here. The choices of deputies in this event are generally pretty arbitrary on the high-frequency end. And also, these tie-ins are really inconsistent about how much effort it takes to generate enough light to kill a Black Lantern. Well, actually, they’re very consistent, it’s “However much the protagonist can come up with in the allotted page count.” So here it’s just, “Um, uh, Wonder Woman’s lasso is kinda glowy, that’s probably good enough. She, uh… waves it around, and, um, all the Black Lanterns die. The end.”
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Blackest Night #5 by Geoff Johns: anyway, where’s captain atom when you need him, remember when he solo’d nekron that one time, it was cool
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Green Lantern Corps #43 by Peter J. Tomasi: Wait, how did Inexplicably-Now-a-Red-Lantern Guy Gardner get to wherever the hell Miri and Kryb were? Those two were on the remote planet where Kryb was hiding the kidnapped children, while I’m pretty sure Guy was on Oa. Then suddenly he’s just fighting Kryb? And in any case, how long was the red ring flying around a battlefield? Because I can’t imagine Guy was the only one to get angry about losing a friend in the battle, and it seems like a stretch that it’s because he’s that much more angry about it than anyone else. Hell, you’re shipping Kyle and Soranik so hard, why didn’t Soranik become a Red Lantern?
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Green Lantern Corps #44 by Peter J. Tomasi: It’s very inconsistent who has the power to do what to these Black Lanterns. It’s starting to kill a lot of tension.
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Green Lantern #49 by Geoff Johns: Wow, like nothing happened in this. Huh.
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Blackest Night #6 by Geoff Johns:
You know, a lot of this would’ve made more sense if I hadn’t accidentally skipped this issue. I could’ve done a lot of my snark at the choices of deputies here instead of piecemeal through the rest of the event. -
Adventure Comics #7 by Tony Bedard: First of all, the recap at the beginning makes it sound like Conner and Cassie started dating in the Teen Titans, which is a small enough error that I’d overlook it if I weren’t already annoyed with that book’s aggressive dismissal of everything related to Young Justice despite stealing most of its cast from it. Huh? Oh, right, there’s a plot. Actually a solid plot. I’m good with it.
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Green Arrow and Black Canary #30 by J.T. Krul: Ah, here we are, the book that sent Birds of Prey into a tailspin by hijacking poor Dinah. And, like the whole issue is about what a dick Ollie is, which I can get behind, but it makes it a little hard to root for him?
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Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2 by Greg Rucka: OK, back around to this mess. Actually, this is a complaint that I can hit the last two issues with too, but only because it’s becoming a pattern: These black rings are doing a really bad job of actually controlling anyone. This is the third issue where the Black Lantern-ified hero breaks through at a critical moment to save whoever they’re attacking. And it’s beginning to make me wonder: If all the resurrections were actually a plot by Nekron to set this up all along, why did he bother? If he just left everyone dead, he could bring them back as much-more-reliable normal Black Lanterns. He’s just completely shot himself in the foot! Furthermore, having a magic rope that breaks mind control is like Diana’s main gimmick. What is it with Rucka-written tie-ins to Johns-written events and the Lasso just arbitrarily not doing its stupid job? Like, I know I was just dragging this issue for the Black Lanterns breaking control too easily, but Diana of all people should not have been vulnerable to this in the first place.
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Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3 by Greg Rucka: I still say that they’re just aggressively referring to something that’s obviously compassion as love just to get Diana into an even skimpier outfit.
Not that I entirely mind, but it’s the principle of the thing-There’s also the scene that every writer feels the need to write at least once where they wink at the original Marston stuff by having some villain suddenly start making bondage jokes.I just keep imagining her eventually blurting out “I don’t know how everyone seems to know this or why you all find it so fascinating, but it’s perfectly normal, relatively common, and only in certain contexts, so you can stop sneering about it now.”Anyway, in the Lasso sequence, it’s extremely vague what we’re supposed to be learning here. Diana asks Mera if “He never knew” and I have no clue who’s supposed to have never known what. Would I understand this if I knew my Aquaman continuity better? Because none of the scenes look especially out of place. Meanwhile, the extremely sudden insistence that Diana had been in love with Bruce the whole time is, uh, extremely sudden. Like, I liked animated Justice League too, but there is no basis for this in the main timeline, so introducing it when Bruce is dead is just strange. -
Blackest Night: The Flash #2 by Geoff Johns: Man, Black Lanterns just get easier and easier to kill as this event goes on, don’t they?
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Blackest Night: The Flash #3 by Geoff Johns: In fact, I think their key weakness is authorial favoritism. For example, Johns is obsessed with the Rogues, so Heat Wave can destroy black rings. Not, of course, any of the hundred other fire-themed characters running around, because they’re not Johns’ favorite fire-themed character. Also, how long has Boomerang Jr. been feeding people to Boomerang Sr.? He seems to have been doing this for a while between issues, but the Rogues are still in the middle of the same fight scene they were already having.
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The Atom and Hawkman #46 by Geoff Johns: So, Diana gets a love ring because of her “love for the whole world” which seems to basically just mean she’s a good person who cares about people, while Ray gets a compassion ring because he didn’t give up on the one he loved and took it poorly when she didn’t live up to his expectations? Does this not seem backwards to anyone else?
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Green Lantern Corps #45 by Peter J. Tomasi: So… are we to assume that Red Lanterns are just that much more powerful than all the other colors? Like, Guy roasting Black Lanterns I got, because that was the established way to kill them, mixing green with another color. But now that he’s Hulking out on a bunch of GLs (with one Indigo and one Violet for flavor), why’s he such a problem despite being completely outnumbered and busy fighting with himself? Anyway, Mogo is cool, but this book is becoming a chain of Mogo ex Machinas.
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Green Lantern #50 by Geoff Johns: Honestly, I’m surprised they have all this time for haggling when dealing with the Spectre.
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Green Lantern #51 by Geoff Johns: The Spectre fight was a rather long tangent to wind up going nowhere, but sorta cool, I guess.
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Blackest Night #7 by Geoff Johns: “When I was thirteen, I killed a boy.” With a Fender guitar? Do you remember if it was a Telecaster or a Stratocaster?
Nobody’s going to get this joke, but I am inordinately proud of it. -
Green Lantern Corps #46 by Peter J. Tomasi: oh my god, black lantern alex dewitt comes with the fridge, i haven’t laughed this hard in a long time
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Green Lantern #52 by Geoff Johns: Wow, John destroyed Xanshi a second time. Planets just do not last around this guy.
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Blackest Night #8 by Geoff Johns: bring back ted kord, you cowards
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Green Lantern Corps #47 by Peter J. Tomasi: Also billed as a Brightest Day tie-in, sensibly enough since one event leads to another, but oddly not listed for Brightest Day by my reading orders? Weird. Anyway, there’s so much speechifying.
1,775.
OK, that was exhausting. Glad I can stop running around through event tie-ins from unrelated series and… just… focus… on…
…
…
…
… What do you mean, Brightest Day is even longer?!
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In Blackest RALs
Yeah, it’s more like anything you might consider remotely suspcious about the Blues actually got dumped onto the Indigo Tribe as the corps of Compassion.
The Blue Lanterns, however, are more tell than show, except for when they OP up a GL. I think they genuinely wanted a good-guy corps with no cynical agendas attached to it, partly to show how much of a good guy Ganthet is compared to the rest of the Guardians.
Lol! I chuckled at that too.
Okay, I’m not gonna pretend I know or remember when or how any of this occurred. But I have a couple speculations. Instead of Our Worlds at War, is it possible they died either during Infinite Crisis or durng the not-Aquaman series that spun off after IC?
I think that was actually the first issue of Brave and the Bold in the late 2000s… I believe? I don’t think it was written by Johns, though.
By Scott Kolins, I believe. It was… something.
Let’s just say Alan and Joan were suddenly in the market for a new house.
Yeah, this series did start with Bruce and Clark doing stuff… like dredging Supergirl from the depths of the ocean outside Gotham, and possibly rebooting the Metal Men, but… maybe a different dimension version of them…?
Anyway, yeah, after Batman RIP, the series somehow kept going, either by doing flashback-style arcs, like stretching out Our Worlds at War, or featuring tangential characters.
Bite your tongue!
LMAO!
Soo… it’s been a while for me on… er… all counts.
LMAO!!
Hmmmm…
If I remember correctly: Final Crisis. That’s all.
I… uh… remember when he got literally ghosted in Suicide Squad.
Yup.
And it gives Simone more room to have characters use uncomfortable innuendo as non sequitors.
I said a lot of words without actually saying anything.
And sometimes they’re Manhunter.
Ow! Stop hitting me!
Yeah, no, this sucked.
Each one was like 10 pages of over-exposition and so-so jokes.
How low a bar are you measuring with here?
I think we’ll be coming back to this further down your list.
And, I agree.
Given this was… late 2000s, you have to spin the Wheel of Atom to find out.
Is he… exploding into the future?
Is he… Suddenly and inexplicably a villain in a containment suit murdering interdimensional heroes for fun?
Is he… invading another imprint’s universe?
Is he… Completely forgotten about by this point?
Yeah, that happened so suddenly, I half expected the new couple to go refrigerator shopping in an issue.
It’s… painful how this series even made it 30 issues.
But, at least Birds got Kate.
Okay okay… that’s not a consolation.
Jamags, no…
Yeah, that all took a very weird turn.
Especially since not that long ago BJ was hanging with Supergirl as bfs.
Yeah, I’m still torn on how Diana got a love ring – the skimpy outfit theory leads, though.
Ray’s whole… Yeah, not only did his homicidal ex-wife not live up to his expectations, dude left the planet in shame.
“Nobody,” you say?
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I-Can't-Believe-You-Actually-Read-All-That-Sponses
I guess that’s a big part of it. They’re kind of a blank spot that says “Insert likeable characters here.”
Yeah, I think Infinite Crisis is the only place that makes sense, I just have repressed my memories of it.
Aww.
Yeah, I’d read a chunk of it (and it’s… oof, not Jeph Loeb’s best work; can hardly blame the guy, given his personal situation at the time he was writing it). I just hadn’t caught up to it as of Bruce’s death, so I wasn’t sure where it went.
Ow, that hurt.
There’s a scene in a theater that bills itself as showing Friday the 13th, and you see Jason Voorhees in full hockey mask on the screen. Except Jason wasn’t the killer in the first movie; his mother was. And the hockey mask is introduced in the third one. Scream references this in its first scene.
See, fun! That was fun. Sort of. Actually mostly weird, but closer to fun-
hahahahaaa
I spun the wheel but it blew up.
At least Birds got Nicola Scott, I’ll take that much.
sorry
I did find someone, but it wasn’t. At all. Easy.
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Chuck Berry Red Ring-sponses
Yeah, and as likable as they are, including Saint Walker and Brother Warth, I’m still unsure what exactly their rings do when they use them for other things besides supercharge GL rings.
Kinda downhill. Lol
Oh, that’s right!
LMAO! I’ve since been curious how Arthur comes back to life after that. I assume Underworld Unleashed?
LOL! Yeah, that was pretty good art.
It did require the perfect combination of power chords, and the precise angle from which to strike.
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That sounds right, but don’t quote me on it.
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I almost didn’t read through all of this because I just recently started reading through all of Blackest Night myself for the first time (I’ve read the main mini, just not all the tie ins) but I like keeping up with these reviews. And I needed a new thing to procrastinate with.
Rise-along
You know, before this issue, I don’t think I had ever heard about the purple eye think. After this issue, that is all I know about the character. Everything else has been pushed out by purple eyes.
It honestly almost makes me wonder if all the IC deaths were an editorial mandate, because Johns was super quick to do an event pretty much about undoing a bunch of deaths. Either that, or he knew Blackest Night was coming and wanted to boost up the universal body count before then.
Well, if Scarface ever got him…
Honestly, having read Tomasi’s Batman and Robin #1 a little while ago, and having seen Damian basically spend the whole issue making fun of Bruce for being sad about dead parents, I’m glad the little punk has a dead dad now. I hope Talia’s next.
Wait, have we finally found the thing that you like that I don’t like? Not that I dislike the Friday movies in general, but the first one is a bit heavy on Monopoly and snake killing for my taste.
I just looked it up, and the reboot came out just a couple of months before the event started, so it could just be that they’re really keeping up with the times.
Superboy-Prime space punched her out of reality. She was too dark and gritty for his world.
Thank you.
Yeah, but Ray Palmer is a nerd, and who wants to see a nerd in a skimpy pink bathing suit.
To be fair, Earth has been just fine, and he’s spent considerably longer here than Xanshi.
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Responsest Night
That’s why they’re so hated; they spread like an infection until they’re all you can think about.
I… hesitate to let the IC writers off the hook since they often reference back to it, but it does feel out of place for Johns to kill characters off needlessly.
You heard it here first, folks, Soup laughs at grieving orphans.
The second one is arguably better and I wouldn’t hold it up as the height of cinema, but I do have a soft spot for it.
Though to be somewhat fair, the Indigos don’t wear much more than the Sapphires.
That only proves he’s doing it on purpose and just choosing not to blow up his own planet.
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Oh, he’d come up with some tortured soldier’s reasoning for destroying earth if he had to. Just you watch.
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“If there’s one thing I learned in the Marines, it’s that… sometimes, you have to sacrifice a planet to save the universe.”
“How did you learn that in the Marines?!”
“Look, I’m paraphrasing.”
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Alternative punchline: “Experience.”
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