BLACKEST NIGHT #1 - Review

Well, the summer just officially kicked off for me. All of the disappointing hollywood blockbusters have pretty much all passed and now it is time for the real fireworks, BLACKEST NIGHT!

As you can all tell from this blog, i am a big Green Lantern fan. The first line in the Green Lantern's Oath is, "In brightest day, in blackest night". Blackest Night, though it takes it's name from the Green Lantern mythos, Blackest Night is not a straight forward Green Lantern title. The events in Blackest Night affect the entire DC Universe. You see, Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps will continue to be published as Blackest Night goes on. Geoff Johns, the writer of both Green Lantern and Blackest Night, has some sort of weird knowledge of the entire history of the DC Universe, almost to the point where it gets a little tiring and cumbersome. Because this is a big event that stretches across the whole DC Universe, it has left Green Lantern out of the title, which i am sure is to appeal to a wider audience.

Because i am merely a green lantern fan, a lot of the first half of issue one is lost on me. There is a HEAVY amount of exposition that centers around all the people who have died in the past, from a bunch of books i have never read. Because i am a Green Lantern fan, i could care less about Hawkman or the hundreds of other DC characters that Geoff Johns insisted on putting in the book. It is almost to the point where it feels like Geoff Johns is saying, hey remember these guys? You don't? Well maybe i am a little better than you. After reading the first half of Blackest Night, i felt like i was sitting here reading off a checklist of characters.

Luckily Blackest Night issue one is a double sized comic and the second half moves away from the graves of the dead and moves on to OA, where Scar (a rogue guardian and leader of the Black Lanterns) unleashes all kinds of hell and sends millions of Black Lantern rings and begins to raise the dead! After a lengthy setup Blackest Night begins to unleash all kinds of hell!!

Imagine a universe full of Flesh craving undead super human zombies with power rings with a thirst for destroying and converting super heroes everywhere. The last half of Blackest Night is the greatest Sci-Fi, Horror, Superhero, Space Opera EVER! I hope that all of the people who died on Xanshi come back to haunt John Stewart.

After a slow setup, i am glad it is out of the way, so that Geoff Johns and artist Ivan Reis can unleash hell on the DC Universe!

★ ★ ★ ★ ½