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By Jason Bourgeois
Welcome back to Grey Matters! It's a busy month, so let's dive right into the thick of things with this month's look at the biggest event to come down the pike in, oh, a few months; DC's Blackest Night!
Now, I've been reading Green Lantern off and on for as long as I can remember. I actually quite liked the last big GL centric event, Millennium, back in the 80s. It wasn't until Geoff Johns took over and reinvigorated the book a few years ago with the GL: Rebirth miniseries that brought Hal Jordan back from the dead and recreated the Green Lantern mythos for the 21st Century.
That was only the beginning though, as things slowly built up the new status quo and reintroduced the GL concepts to old and new readers alike. As the issues came out, things grew and grew, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become known as the Sinestro Corps War. This pitted a whole new corps of lanterns, embracing the power of fear and the colour yellow, against the long-established GLs. This was such a radical concept, and so simple it is amazing no one had thought of it before, outside of one or two other people wielding rings.
But even that wasn't enough. No, the Corps War ended with the revelation that still more corps would rise, more colours and emotions would become clear in the coming months, all leading to now, all leading to the Blackest Night, a prophecy set out in vague details by Alan Moore over twenty years ago. When the Blackest Night came, so too would yet another corps, the Black Lantern Corps, and the teaser for that was nothing more than a series of corpsified hands bursting up out of the ground, and coming in 2009, almost two years away at that time.
I was stoked. I could not wait. I love zombies, I love cosmic stories, and I was totally into Green Lantern by then.
And finally, finally the series came out, and I have to say, I was utterly disappointed.
I've been growing tired of Geoff Johns' writing over the last few years. All he does in Green Lantern is go on and on about how important and awesome the title character of the book, Hal Jordan is. If I wanted to read a comic where the title character is the best thing in it, I'd go read Superman. The gag got old quick, and I was mostly going along with the book hoping it would get better, especially once Blackest Night kicked off, and it didn't. It moved on from one new corps to the nest, with Hal trying on every colour ring imaginable, save for the Star Sapphire ring, which is just dumb. Oooh, Hal is so awesome, he's in every corps ever! See how awesome he is?
If you want a guy who can write vast cosmic epics, and really manage top notch crossovers, they should have gotten Grant Morrison to write this book. He's the best writer DC has, and his work on Final Crisis was so out there and so good, it couldn't even be understood by regular people. He could have done amazing work with Blackest Night. He has such focus, and such big ideas, this could have been amazing. Instead, Geoff takes Grant's Alpha Lantern idea and totally butchers that for his own purposes, ignoring what Grant set down.
But instead we have Johns and his one true love, Hal Jordan, trying to save the universe. And gee, DC decides to rake our emotions over the coals by zombifying all the characters they've been killing the last five or six years for the express purpose of having an army for this event. They were out of character, mean spirited assholes who only wanted to empower the Black Lanterns. Which is another thing. The big bad behind all this is Nekron? What a loser. Why would you bring back such a sucky character and try to reinvigorate him with new goals, new purpose, and a killer attitude? What is this, the 90s all over again?
As if that's not enough, they went and killed a number of characters they recently brought back, including Superman! Freaking Superman!! And Wonder Woman, and Bart Allen, among a ton of others. How dare DC kill Superman? AGAIN? What a dick move! Now, I haven't read the final issue yet, but I've already formed my opinions, and nothing will change them, because it's cool to form your opinions on an incomplete story. It's not like DC would bring all those people BACK to life, as well as others, just to satisfy the fans. That would just make this book so redundant and unnecessary if everything got reset to the status quo.
But oh man, if they DID bring back those characters, that would still suck. No matter what they do, they can't end this well. Bringing them back again? How dare DC bring characters back from the dead! When is this unending crap of death and rebirth going to end in comics? Let's start with the Phoenix and leave her dead for good, and then these Black Lanterns too.
If the writing and plotting wasn't bad enough, then there's also the art. Ivan Reiss used to be this Alan Davis clone back in the day, and that was awesome. But now that he's grown into his own, he's just so bad. He's got his own style, the pages are just filled with characters and detail, and everyone is pretty recognisable. On top of all that, the book shipped mostly on time. That is NOT how you handle a big event series.
If DC really wanted to get things right, they should've hired Rob Liefeld to do the art. That would have been so extreme. The book would only be on issue three right now, right off schedule, and there would be like zero backgrounds. And I really wish the Black Lanterns had more pouches. Instead they're just boring black and silver. Yawn.
So close DC, but you missed it by a mile. Next time you do a big event, do it right, and get the right people to do it. I'll be passing on Brightest Day.
Thanks for saving me money, DC Comics!
As for the rest of you, I hope you have an enjoyable April Fool's Day!
Jason M. Bourgeois
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