Blackest Night


By Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert & Joe Prado (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2953-5

After years of inexorable build-up, and following a plethora of end-of-everything crossover crises, when the Blackest Night at last dawned it was, like death itself, unavoidable and inescapable. The Major Publishing Event permeated and saturated every aspect of DC’s publishing schedule and even caused the one-night-only resurrection of a number of deceased titles for even more clashes between Darkness and Light…

The basic premise of the event was simple and delicious. All those times when a hero or villain actually came back from the dead, it wasn’t a miracle but merely part of a cunning plan by a cosmic death god to end all life.

The ghastly Nekron had just allowed the likes of Superman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Flash, Jason Todd and all the rest to return as strands of its infinitely patient plan to replace the lights of life’s emotional spectrum with the ebon gleam of ultimate, all-encompassing death…

The bare bones of the crisis were recounted in the core 8-issue miniseries Blackest Night by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis & Oclair Albert (with additional inking from Rob Hunter, Julio Ferreira & Joe Prado); collected in this volume with background material from the supplementary and complementary Blackest Night Director’s Cut one-shot.

The cosmic catastrophe had been building since time began (in continuity terms, but only a couple of years in the published comics) so, following an Introduction from movie producer Donald De Line and a few brief recap notes, the terror at last launches with ‘Prologue: Death Becomes Us’ as resurrected best friends Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan and Barry (Flash) Allen stand in the Wayne family cemetery, reminiscing on the manners of their respective demises and returns, as well as the friends and comrades they have lost in their lives.

Elsewhere, Black Hand, earthly avatar of Nekron and instigator of the eternally dreaded Blackest Night, rises from his own unquiet grave…

Issue #1 then commences as Hand unearths Bruce Wayne‘s skull and summons a horde of Black Lantern rings from the cold, dark void, commanding them to find corpses to reanimate: hungry souls to feed and fester on the broken hearts of the still-living…

On a day dedicated to remembering the dead in newly rebuilt Coast City (site of the greatest domestic massacre in US history), Jordan and fellow Green Lanterns John Stewart, Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner are attending a commemoration service and contemplating their own personal failures.

At the grave in Smallville, Martha, Clark and Connor Kent mourn the loss of family patriarch Jonathan.

In San Francisco, the Teen Titans wander through their hall of the dead, remembering their many fallen friends whilst in Central City Flash’s Rogues Gallery pay their unique respects to expired associates at the criminal cemetery Avernus.

In Metropolis the Justice Society of America and other costumed champions gather their thoughts as they honour their own fallen few in the forested memorial gardens of Valhalla.

On a solitary stretch of coastline the lonely grave of Aquaman is tended only by his wife Mera and former sidekick Tempest.

Later, Hal informs Barry of who else has died whilst the Flash was gone. The Speedster is appalled by how many heroes have passed – and which ones have since returned…

In deepest space the Guardians of the Universe are finally forced to admit their eons-long plan and convoluted efforts to forestall the prophesied Blackest Night have failed when one of their number – “Scar” – reveals she has been corrupted by the dark and brutally slaughters one of the immortal aliens.

The murder is the trigger for a wave of black rings to possess the corpses of heroes, villains and significant loved ones throughout the universe. On Oa, dead and cherished Corps champions return as Black Lanterns to kill their living comrades. On Earth a wave of still-missed dearly-departed stalk their nearest and dearest, generating love, grief, terror, compassion and other blazing emotions which the zombies use to fuel their rings – and something else…

When traumatised Alfred Pennyworth summons Hal and Barry to Bruce Wayne’s desecrated grave they are ambushed by the revenant of their beloved comrade J’onn J’onzz, even as in St. Roch, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are attacked and killed by the cruelly sneering corpses of the Elongated Man and his wife Sue Dibny…

The second chapter opens as the Black Lantern Hawkman lures his closest friend Ray Palmer into a trap. The Atom was already dejected by the crushing realisation that although his own dead wife Jean murdered Sue and started a bloody war between heroes, he loves her still…

In Gotham Jim Gordon and his daughter Barbara are on hand when Jordan comes crashing to Earth, whilst in Amnesty Bay, Tempest and Mera are confronted by the cadaverous Aquaman they so recently grieved over…

…And in a Gotham graveyard, ghostly guardian Deadman is reeling in psychic shock at the spiritual disturbances. The raw emotion is greatly intensified when his own corpse rises, called back into murderous physicality by a black ring.

The ubiquitous gems are not infallible however. When one targets the final resting place of Don Hall the hero dubbed Dove stays buried and “at peace”. The same is not true of his bellicose brother Hank, who rises as a bleak and even more savage Hawk…

Drawn to Deadman’s grave, a cadre of mystic heroes comprising Zatanna, Blue Devil, Phantom Stranger and The Spectre are confronted by the cadaver of pan-dimension doomsmith Pariah. Although even the black rings cannot affect the Stranger, they manage to separate the divine force of the Spectre from its latest mortal host – murdered cop Crispus Allen…

As Flash and Green Lantern continue their battle against Black Hand, Tempest dies and only Mera escapes the savage attacks of Black Aquaman. Events turn truly grim when Nekron’s earthly agent manifests an army of dead Justice Leaguers and sets them after Barry and Hal…

The bombastic battle looks a foregone conclusion until the Atom appears. Although ambushed by Hawkman, the incredible shrinking man had survived by hiding within his attacker’s monstrous black ring…

At Justice League HQ, Jason Rusch – who, with his girlfriend Gehenna, forms the fusion hero Firestorm – is trying to get a grip on the situation when Mera breaks in. Meanwhile Hal, Ray and Barry are saved from certain doom when the enigmatic alien Indigo Tribe arrive, using their brand of light to sever the Black Ring connections to their zombie hosts.

The exhausted heroes then join Firestorm and Mera, as the Indigo priestess reveals the secret and true history of the universe and how the seven hues of the Emotional Spectrum must unite to end the threat of the Blackest Night – a scheme to return creation to its cold, dark and unendingly lifeless primordial state…

The extraterrestrial shamans also reveal how the seemingly indestructible emotion-eating horrors can be disrupted by any two light forces acting in unison – although green and any other works best…

The powwow is interrupted by the dead Leaguers who again mercilessly attack. As the Indigo Tribe vanish – taking a horrified, unwilling Hal with them – the fight immediately goes bad. Black Lantern Firestorm Ronnie Raymond merges with Jason and Gehenna’s incarnation, killing the girl whilst repossessing and dominating the Nuclear Man’s composite form…

With victory already assured, a new flight of black rings then reanimates the collection of unclaimed super-villain cadavers stored at the JLA facility…

Issue #4 opens as the army of the Unliving Dead corners Flash, Atom and Mera. With his last surge of willpower, Jason takes back control of the Firestorm frame, allowing Flash and Atom to transport the embattled companions to relative safety. Before being again subsumed, Rusch also reveals that the inimical force behind the rings needs Barry to be dead.

All life and hope somehow depends on the Flash staying ahead of the Black Lanterns…

A fightback begins in Gotham and Metropolis as the Scarecrow and Lex Luthor are singled out by the Yellow Light of Fear and Orange Light of Greed, whilst Flash ponders on the fact that only the dead with emotional ties to heroes and villains are rising.

The uncountable mass of “ordinary”, unknown dead people are staying that way…

The battered, enlightened trio then travel to Manhattan to link up with the Justice Society survivors, before Barry begins his self-appointed mission to warn and inspire everybody left alive; staying always one step ahead of those implacable Black Lanterns…

As pockets of resistance such as the JSA and Teen Titans endure on Earth, in space a colossal Black Power Battery, fuelled by the collected emotions of everyone slaughtered by reanimated ring-bearers, nears completion.

As Flash travels the world telling every hero to converge on CoastCity, Nekron at last arrives…

One word of warning: this saga was merely part and parcel of a plethora of stories simultaneously occurring as the Event ran its course. Whilst maintaining a uniformly high quality of illustration throughout, the story is never meant to be read in isolation. For full comprehension you really, really need to have the other books to hand or at least fresh in your mind.

Thus, subsequent to actions seen in other venues, Chapter Five opens as Hal – kept busy since his abduction – musters a rainbow coalition of individuals – mostly old colour wielding enemies like Sinestro, Star Sapphire, Atrocitus and Larfleeze.

They are to unite and work together under the direction of rebel Guardians Ganthet and Sayd to reclaim the night, even as on Earth Flash confronts supreme antithesis Nekron and his herald Black Hand.

He is suddenly reinforced by his former protégé and successor Wally West and an army of resurgent (and mostly resurrected) heroes from the JLA and Titans. In Manhattan the last stand of the JSA sees Ray and Mera captured by the Atom’s Black Lantern wife Jean and taken on a subatomic voyage of discovery inside a Black Ring…

Just as Scar joins Nekron, bringing the Black Power Battery to CoastCity, Hal’s Rainbow Corps arrives but their concerted attack has negligible effect. When a Black Lantern Batman manifests and turns Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Superboy, Kid Flash, Donna Troy and many more into black ring copse warriors, Hal realises the living victims have one thing in common – they’ve all returned from the dead before.

Of all resurrected heroes, only he and Barry remain alive and with minds of their own…

Within the Black Ring, Ray and Mera are joined by Deadman who warns them that every Black Lantern in the universe is now headed for Earth, frantically urging them to get out and warn the living…

In the greater universe Ganthet takes drastic steps as the ultimate secret of the Emotional Spectrum is revealed. Working in unity, wielders of the seven individual wavelengths can form the pure White Light of Life and turn back death – but first the rings have to find exactly the right people to wear them…

Chapter Seven sees the beginning of the end as that lucky septet confront the triumphant Nekron, even as Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner assemble every ring wearer of every colour in the spectrum and lead them in Life’s last desperate counterattack…

At ground zero a minor hero named Dawn Granger changes everything. The successor to Don Hall is the new Dove, Avatar of Peace and her simplest touch destroys Black Lanterns. Calmly making her way through the legions of doom, she liberates Nekron’s hidden power source whilst the death lord is occupied killing an undying Guardian…

The lord of death’s actual intention is then revealed as a gleaming white Entity manifests: it is personification of the universal lifeforce and everything Nekron has undertaken over billions of years has been simply so that he could get close enough to kill it…

With all existence about to succumb to eternal darkness, one of the assembled champions must assume the power of a White Lantern to literally save everything…

Of course, following even more astounding battle and plot twists, life wins – but in the aftermath only twelve of the hordes who have perished are reborn, and those blessed individuals and the universe aren’t out of the dark woods yet…

But that’s all tackled in the sequel series ‘Brightest Day’, proving some things truly are eternal…

With every cover from Reis and Albert accompanied by its un-inked pencil artwork, this cosmic compilation also includes another nine variants by Ethan Van Sciver, Mauro Cascioli, Rodolfo Migliari, Doug Mahnke & Christian Alamy, Director’s Commentary from Johns, Reis, Albert, Prado, colourist Alex Sinclair, letterer Nick J. Napolitano plus editorial bods Adam Schlagman and Eddie Berganza, Deleted Scenes and a selection of info pages digging the dirt on Nekron, The Entity and Sinestro courtesy of designers Reis and Prado.

Bombastic, complex, thrilling, incredibly ambitious and awesomely impressive, Blackest Night shows exactly what superhero comics can be – but might also be why so many casual readers and newcomers to the art form apparently can’t handle them.

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