For The Love Of Reviews – Blackest Night 1
Dustin Christian | August 4, 2009
| 11:21 am
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First, here thar be spoilers. If you have somehow not read Blackest Night #1 in the past month and still plan on reading, you may want to skip this post. I’ll be spoiling what I feel is the moment of the issue.
The first issue of Blackest Night came out almost a month ago, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
It starts out pedestrian enough with heroes and loved ones remembering their fallen. Then it gets a little weird when Alfred finds Bruce Wayne’s grave desecrated, not the least because I’m not sure how there’s even a body in that grave with Bruce stuck back in the stone ages, but whatever.
Then? Then it gets downright disturbing. Something about Sue and Ralph Dibny coming back as evil zombie things and murdering Hawkman and Hawkgirl, just when she’s about to admit that she may love him, really messes with me in a way that seeing Bruce Wayne’s skeleton sticking up out of his grave, the Guardians of Oa being attacked and devoured by one of their own, or the Martian Manhunter about to attack two of his oldest friends doesn’t.
Maybe it’s seeing the Dibny’s – who affected me on such a deep level when we saw how broken Ralph was after losing Sue and he wasn’t complete again until he was reunited with her in death – ripped from their peace and turned into what appears to be the total antithesis of who they were that disturbed and disgusted me so deeply.
Regardless of the reason, I finished this issue more bothered than I have been by anything in years, and I read Garth Ennis books religiously. For a few minutes, I considered not finishing Blackest Night if this is what they were going to do to characters we loved so much.
Then I realized that this must be exactly what Geoff Johns was going for. The horror of the Black Lanterns is that nothing is sacred anymore, nobody is safe, and the heroes of the DCU will probably have to face and fight some of the people they loved most in the world.
That’s fucked up, but that’s also some good writing.
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I have taken the full month to consider Blackest Night
Robert Parizek | August 4, 2009 | 2:10 pmI have taken the full month to consider Blackest Night and I am standing to my decision that I do not care for the “Dead will rise” zombies in the DCU story.
I know Geoff Johns is a good writer and I often enjoy most of his work but the idea of reformatting heroes into villains as such does not work for me. I do not want to read about zombie Black Lantern Sue & Ralph Digby killing Hawkman & Hawkgirl. Not at all and it is enough to make me put down the book for the entire series. I understand that many believe that this story will set the tone in the DCU considering death of heroes for the upcoming future… or until the next meeting in which they rewrite everything which will happen. It always does.
I did notice that it seems that Atom will be a key in the conclusion to Blackest Night as the scene of Ray Palmer on his desk was the gun on the mantle piece. It will have to be used.
I am glad that Blackest Night seems to be generating more excitement amongst fans than the recent DCU events like Final Crisis, Infinite Crisis or the poorly done Year Later run as I have felt that overall DC has been lacking behind Marvel stories in the last few years.
I'm not looking at it as "setting the tone" for
Dustin Christian | August 4, 2009 | 3:08 pmI’m not looking at it as “setting the tone” for anything, other than Blackest Night. Heroes turned villains has been done before, and that’s not what interests me, either. It’s the idea that nothing is sacred, at least in this story.
To indulge in a cliche, all bets are off and anything can happen; I’m interested to see where Johns goes with it.