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reviews and quick thoughts on Blackest Night

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For some reason, a bevy of Blackest Night books coming out made me read the three main ones and write about them at Popdose.

At almost every turn in Blackest Night, Johns basically tells us that we need to feel the importance of these things but never tells us why.  Or worse yet, he just assumes we know who everyone is and how they relate to one another.  Big forehead guy?  These things are important to Geoff Johns so, by his supreme will, they’re supposed to be important to us?  Johns spends so much time coming up with new and different ways to torture, maim and resurrect characters that he doesn’t have any time to make the reader care.  A bunch of dead villians rise.  Why?  A bunch of colorful Lantern warriors show us with Green Lantern.  Why?  The big bad is some dude named Nekron.  Why?  The friggin’ Anti-Monitor show us just because I think Ivan Reis likes drawing him.  There’s no purpose given to any of the actions in this book.

You can read the full review here.

A couple of more quick thoughts:

  • It's at least better than Siege, which I also read over the weekend.  Love them or hate them, I think Bendis and Johns are the two most fascinating mainstream superhero writers right now, the way they're regurgitating ideas from their own personal golden ages and filtering them into the Avengers and Green Lantern books.  I'm not saying it's good; just interesting.
  • Wanting a good book, I've been reading the Absolute Planetary volumes and found something I hadn't noticed before.  In that issue of Planetary showcasing how the 4 had killed analogs for Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, Ellis slips in a reference to Blackest Night in the GL oath I think.  I wonder if Ellis was pulling this from the Alan Moore story as well or is it just something in the zeitgeist that makes that a good term.
  • I only got into it a bit in the review but, man, was Blackest Night (at least these three volumes) a good artist showcase.  Reis, Mahnke and Gleason all did great work.  I was ready to completely ignore anything after Blackest Night but after rereading the series, I'm really wanting to pick up Brightest Day and Green Lantern just for the art.
  • Also not brought up in the review but I hate the covers to the Blackest Night and BN: Green Lantern collections, and the way they painted over the art.  I guess it unifies the look of the series but I'd rather see the original line art in those covers.