Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps volume 1

By Peter J. Tomasi, James Robinson, J.T. Krul, Ardian Syaf, Eddie Barrows, Allan Goldman, Ed Benes & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2804-0

After years of inexorable build-up, when the Blackest Night finally dawned, it was, like death itself, unavoidable and inescapable. The Event permeated and saturated every aspect of DC’s publishing schedule and found almost every hero and villain living, dead or provably otherwise an active participant in a final clash between Darkness and Lightâ€¦

The basic premise of the crisis was simple and delicious. All those times when a hero or villain physically came back from the dead, it wasn’t a miracle – or even fashion and comicbook market forces – but part of a cunning plan by a cosmic death god to end all life.

The ghastly ultimate antithesis Nekron had simply allowed the likes of Jason Todd, Superman, Superboy, Donna Troy, Bart Allen and all the rest to return as strands of an infinitely patient plan to replace the lights of life’s emotional spectrum with the silent ebon glow of ultimate, all-encompassing nothingnessâ€¦

Reprinted here are three of the supplemental 3-part miniseries which accompanied and garnished the main event. Blackest Night: Batman, Blackest Night: Superman and Blackest Night: Titans were first released in released in 2009 to augment the culminating saga, but in isolation make for pretty confusing reading so best ensure you have a copy of the collected Blackest Night on hand unless you want a killer headacheâ€¦

Blackest Night: Batman ‘Who Burns Who’ (Peter J. Tomasi, Ardian Syaf, Vicente Cifuentes & John Dell) is a blistering introduction to the epic event as, in Gotham City, new Batman Dick Grayson and latest Robin Damian Wayne examine the desecrated family graveyard where recently Flash and Green Lantern battled someone impossible who did something horribleâ€¦

As they tend to the shattered open graves, in the distant Himalayas Ghostly Guardian Deadman is attacked by his own reanimated corpse. Attempting to re-possess his resurgent black be-ringed skeleton, Boston Brand is drowned in a ghastly torrent of memories and discovers how Death’s agent Black Hand has brought about the Blackest Nightâ€¦

In the skies above Gotham, a plane carrying the cadavers of many of the Dark Knight’s foes is shredded by Black Lantern Rings seeking beings of power and malice to resurrect.

Soon Blockbuster, the Ventriloquist, KGBeast, Magpie, Deacon Blackfire, King Snake, Abattoir and the Trigger Twins are on a rampage of slaughter just as Deadman tracks down his old friend Batman and discovers the one true Gotham Guardian is also goneâ€¦

As the phantom brings the substitute heroes up to speed on the Big Black Picture, more ebony power-rings rain down, programmed to cause maximum grief and pain.

Soon Grayson’s murdered parents are stalking the streets hunting for their heroic son, as are Tim Drake‘s (third Robin and currently operating as vigilante Red Robin) long-gone Mum and Dadâ€¦

With Deadman in agony as he taps into the ravening hunger of the undead horde, the Caped Crusaders realise that all of Gotham is under attack by the rapacious Black Lanternsâ€¦

Feeding on emotions, the zombies bolster their forces with every life they take, and Batman and Robin are forced to the regrettable extreme of tooling up with incendiary weapons from the National Guard armoury as, in the centre of town, Police Headquarters is slowly being drowned in undead berserkers.

Soon only Commissioner Jim Gordon and his wheelchair-bound daughter Babs are left to hold a Horatian rearguard action when the Dynamic Duo arrive with flamethrowers blazingâ€¦

Even then the effects are only temporary as the necrotic rings constantly reassemble the blazing Lanterns. With Deadman’s surreptitious assistance – and thanks to Red Robin’s timely arrival – the Gordons make a spectacular escape, but with the situation already beyond dire, the shaken survivors decide on a potentially catastrophic remedy and have Brand possess misanthropic occultist Jason Blood.

As the Batman Family are furiously fighting their own bloodthirsty dearly departed, Deadman is wearing the moody modern mystic and rushing to the rescue. Blood’s esoteric knowledge might be of some use in this situation, but the actual plan is to go for broke by releasing Etrigan the Demon from his immortal mortal cage and hoping they can all survive the Prince of Hell’s understandable and predictable outrageâ€¦

At roughly the same time in Kansas, Blackest Night: Superman began with ‘A Sleepy Little Town’ by James Robinson, Eddy Barrows, Ruy JosÃ© & Julio Ferreira. Here the alternate-Earth Man of Steel Kal-L erupts from his grave to attack Superman and recently reborn Superboy Conner Kent as they visit the family farm.

Distracted by the blistering blockbuster blitzkrieg, the Kryptonian combatants rampage all over the state in a perfect storm of destruction. Thus only faithful hound Krypto is left to protect ideal mom Martha Kent when Black Lantern Lois Lane-Kent of Earth-2 arrives, hungry for human hearts and emotional sustenanceâ€¦

Meanwhile on the freshly established planet New Krypton the dead are also rising, and Supergirl and her mother Alura are confronted by the last man they ever thought they’d see againâ€¦

On Earth, Smallville is deserted except for BLs Kal-L and Lois who hold Martha hostage in ‘Psycho Piracy!’ The long-dead master of emotion has also macabrely reincarnated and the entire township has succumbed to his spell. When Ma Kent boldly makes a break for freedom, Superboy falls under the Psycho Pirate’s power too and turns on â€œbig brotherâ€ Superman, whilst on New Krypton Supergirl vainly fights back against her dead dadâ€¦

‘The Long Dark Night’ (with additional pencils from Allan Goldman and inks by Eber Ferreira) sees Kryptonian science and Supergirl’s indomitable spirit drive off and exile all Black Lanterns from the embattled artificial world, whilst on Earth Krypto rockets to the rescue in Smallville, allowing Superman and Superboy to overcome and apparently deactivate Kal-L, Lois and the Psycho Pirate.

Apparentlyâ€¦

This initial sub-collection of Black Lantern butchery wraps up with Blackest Night: Titans as the teen team is similarly targeted by their beloved lost onesâ€¦

‘When Death Comes Knocking’ by J.T. Krul, Ed Benes, Rob Hunter, Jon Sibal & JP Mayer, begins as the current team visits their hall of dead heroes. The Titans have lost more than their fair share of friends and comrades, but at least two have returned from the grave – Superboy and Bart Allen, the second Kid Flashâ€¦

As the mournful group parts, a Black Lantern ring finds the grave of Don Hall, (first Avatar of Peace to carry the code-name Dove) but is unable to rouse the fallen defender as he is â€œat peaceâ€.

His belligerent fallen brother Hank, however, is notâ€¦

In WashingtonDC current Hawk and Dove Holly and Dawn Granger are the resurrected raptor’s quarry and despite their best efforts he hunts them down and slaughters his successor.

On Titans Island, Beast Boy Gar Logan is visited by dead and deadly Tara Markoff, who joined the team as Terra only to betray and kill them. Gar has always loved her and, despite knowing she’s evil, again falls for her â€œlittle lost girlâ€ act, even as Cyborg and Starfire are ambushed by departed telepath Omenâ€¦

In her home, Amazon powerhouse Donna Troy finds her dead husband Terry and baby Robert calling out to her, but many other Titans are simply attacked rather than beguiled. In ‘Bite the Hand That Feeds’ (by Krul, Benes & Scott Williams), dead baby Robert – who had only just cut his second tooth when he was taken – used them to bite his traumatised, grieving mother and infect with her toxic, terminal darkness, just as Terra turns on Gar and two undead Hawks pursue the frantic furious Dove as she flies for helpâ€¦

Kid Flash and Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark rescue Donna and begin to orchestrate a defence when Tara brings their skyscraper HQ down around them, leaving all the living heroes together at last but surrounded by their murderously-intentioned loved ones.

As an army of reincarnated Black Lantern Titans close in, hope blossoms in the Capitol when Holly tries to consume her sister and finds Dove impossible to â€œswallowâ€ as her Black Lantern ring malfunctionsâ€¦

‘When Doves Cry’ (Krul & Ed Benes) sees Donna, Kid Flash, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Wonder Girl and Starfire valiantly battling a dozen of their past team-mates and loved ones with little effect when Dove unexpectedly arrives. Exhausted and desperate, the Angel of Peace is seemingly easy meat for her closely pursuing dead sister, but as she readies herself for death, Dove suddenly emits a burst of light which melts her attacker. A second wave vaporises the entire attacking Black Lantern horde, and Dawn suddenly experiences an impossible visionâ€¦

Saved by an unimagined power they cannot understand, the weary Titans prepare to strike back at the cause of all their woes, unaware that the dark infection in Donna is gradually turning her into something Black and deadlyâ€¦

This initial volume also includes covers and variants by Andy Kubert, Barrows, Benes, Hunter, Bill Sienkiewicz, Shane Davis, Sandra Hope, Brian Haberlin, George Perez, and a big section of design and data pages by Joe Prado, uncovering the facts on thirty Black Lantern villains.

Fast-paced and action-packed, this is an impressive and pretty selection of comic thrills, spills and chills – unless you haven’t read Blackest Night (and preferably Blackest Night: Green Lantern and Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps too). If not, it probably feels like repeatedly hitting yourself in the head with shovel dipped in dayglo coffin liquor.

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