Blackest Night’s story I freaking awesome. So far, I like reading Batman and Robin’s arch and the Titans arch. What do you guys think of the story?
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I read Blackest Night for the first time on this service, and I agree that it’s pretty fantastic. It’s a cool idea executed well.
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Absolutely. As I am reading i am tense because i do not know what will happen next. The carnage is done well.
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70+ issues of panel chaos. Now I gotta work through BRIGHTEST DAY.
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Anyone else notice Indigo Lantern Munk looks like a certain villain from another comic company!
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@Awesome_Squid
To respectfully disagree, I’d argue that it’s a cool idea executed poorly. The plot is a very Geoff Johns brand of “stuck up your own a**” that I don’t particularly enjoy.
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It’s definitely in the top five at least of my favorite DC events.
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@batwing52 I’m intrigued. What is the biggest turn away from The Blackest Night. (No judgement, just curious)
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All of its problems stem off from three major points:
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Geoff Johns isn’t writing this as a story: he’s writing this as universe building. A writer making major changes and upheavals to a character’s mythology is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Grant Morrison did this rather well with Batman and New X-Men, changing and modernizing aspects and adding on completely new ideas to existing characters. The difference is that in Blackest Night (and TBQH Johns’ run on GL as a whole) there’s ONLY world building. It’s not about a story, it’s about adding ideas and expanding on old ones. That’s what a high school chemistry textbook does. Not a comic about a dude in a green leotard shooting lasers out of a ring.
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It never goes any deeper than its basic premise. “Superheroes fighting zombies” is a cool, but inarguably tired idea. Before Blackest Night, Marvel had done this multiple times with its Marvel Zombies line, and even DC had done a few single issues and one-shots about heroes vs. zombies. The point is, it didn’t try to do anything new. It was a bare minimum, college student film-level of a superhero horror book. If it was the first time anyone had done this, I could cut it some slack; at least the idea would have been original. But it wasn’t, and so I can’t.
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It commits the cardinal sin of big, “crowd-pleasing” event comics: ennui. Nowhere in this book is a hint of joy. A tinge of self-awareness. A healthy drop of self-deprecation. No, it’s “serious” and “grim”. IT’S SUPERHEROES FIGHTING ZOMBIES. THIS ISN’T WILLIAM FAULKNER. It tries too hard to please a mainstream audience that can’t accept and love the inherent silliness in superheroes and instead needs conversations between Flash and Green Lantern about how superheroing sucks, and how life sucks, and how everything just SUCKS that it alienates the audience who would actually buy it and re-read it on a bored Sunday evening. It’s relentlessly depressing, and any emotional gravitas the story would have otherwise had is just completely ruined by it.
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And also, I feel like I should add, if you got something out of it: great! These exist to entertain. If you liked it, it did its job. I didn’t like it, but that’s my opinion. You can totally disagree.
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@Batwing52 well put. I do respect your thoughts and opinions on it. I agree it is a dark series which honestly is a big reason I am into it. Even now as I am reading I am looking for some kind of “light at the end of the tunnel” but as cheesy as it seems I know there will be prevailment. I am a novice cb reader and I am really entertained by the series. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. And if you have any recommendations on good reads that would be awsome.
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I can kind of see what you’re saying with the first two points, though I feel like there’s more character work than you’re giving it credit for, for one. On the second point, I would argue that the “triggering emotions” aspect by basically revealing the worst aspects of these dead characters and emphesizing them to torture the living is definitely enough to differentiate the Black Lanterns from your standard zombie enemy.
The third point, though, I think you’re completely and utterly wrong. There are moments of levity, of triumph, of pure fun, especially as you get into the other characters getting their own rings and all that. And lack of self-awareness? One of the tie-ins of the book basically has Superboy Prime in our world poking fun at crossover events. They even have I believe either Hal or Carol say what we were all thinking for months when all the ring-bearers would shoot their energies at the same target and called it a “Care Bear Stare.”
Just seems like you’re really undervaluing it purely because of darker elements in it, as if just because there are dark moments, it automatically makes it bad.
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::SPOILER:: One of the pivotal moments, imo, in the book that offers some hope is when Atrocitus joins the Lanterns. When I read that, it was a glimmer of light to me. There is some character development, they did not dwell on, which I appreciate. The zombie heroes and villains are able to pull at the strings of the living because they are able to speak and have the memories of the dead’s past. This is why I do not believe they are your typical run of the mill “zombies.” But as I stated before I am a novice reader and I am not too fond of the Green Lantern stories.
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::SPOILERISH:: Can I just say I really enjoyed the double page panel of the Lanterns speaking their oaths? Larfleeze’s “eh?” Badass!
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@Jay_Kay
I think there is self-awareness, fun, and entertainment to be found (as you mentioned) in many of the tie-ins, but the core miniseries is unrelentingly depressing. Most events I consider to be bad have great tie-ins (Convergence has Convergence: Shazam, etc.), and BN is no exception.
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