"Fear will rise. Willpower will gather. And a wave of light will unleash the truth behind the power of the ring."
~From the Book of OA
The spectrum of emotions and the culmination of the War of Light collide with the long-awaited Blackest Night saga that arrives today in shops. We’ve been waiting for this story since the seeds were planted way back in the 2004 Green Lantern: Rebirth series, which was actually published before the Marvel Zombies stories. Five years is a long time to wait, and I’m hoping it will pay off.
This should be loads of fun, despite the vocal outcries of fans seeing beloved deceased characters like E2 Superman, Martian Manhunter, and Firestorm return in unflattering forms. Personally, I think it will make for some excellent storytelling…seeing a loved one or colleague return from the grave, after you have made your peace and now respect their memory, now that could bring up lots of interesting insights and unresolved issues in all these characters we enjoy so much. Yes, seeing the original Superman return as a hideous zombie could be blasphemous. And yes, Black Hand looks like the Gimp from Pulp Fiction. But the Black Lanterns are all powered by the corpse of the Anti-Monitor, so I’m sold. A zombiefied Terra swapping spit with Gar Logan is just gravy.
And, of course, hopefully a few of these heroes (and villains) will return to the land of the living. We shall see.
Agreed. It’s gonna make some longtime readers feel upset at times (myself included) due to all the doom and gore involved, but it ought to be more exciting than Final Crisis proved last year. I just hope there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. (Pun intended, all the way.)
I’m always upset when a beloved character is killed off, however, in comics, nothing is final! This is truly going to be an event. I hope this one lives up to the hype, unlike some other comic events of the past! It has brought me back into buying comics regularly, something that hasn’t happened since the 90′s!
I can’t get past the depiction of the golden age Superman as a rotting corpse. Kind of tacky.
Don’t forget to ask your local comic shop for your own Black Lantern ring when you pick up your comics this week!
Issue #1 was VERY good.
Ryan, where is the above artwork from?
Anybody want to play “one of the things isn’t like the others” on this cover? Or did I miss when Diana died and was resurrected in the comics?…
Notice that Clark, Hal, Ollie, and Barry have all come back from the grave…But I don’t think Wonder Woman (well, Diana) ever has unless you count the original crisis…But that wasn’t a real death as the universe was rebooted.
Wonder Woman died and became a goddess during Byrne’s run. That was when Hippolyta took over for awhile.
Does the “death of Superman” really count? They explained his return by declaring Superman to be a solar battery that was depleted. The Eradicator healed him with a high dose of solar energy. Was he ever really dead?
The Eradicator did say he was “categorically deceased” or something like that. Think of it like someone who stopped breathing for a few moments and then someone administers CPR (season 1 of Buffy comes to mind).
Have to say after reading this– they are trying to follow up to Marvel Zombies and put as much gore as possible into this–
I thought the Marvin and Wendy was bad– It was an intersting read,
But at least Marvel knew to put the over top violence of their main characters into an alternate universe.
Re: Batman
I had forgotten about Diana being killed (it was by Ares right?)
and becoming a goddess. So I guess everyone on that cover had died and resurrected…
Re: Superfriend
Some have suggested he was in more of a comma like state, but he and Johnathan did greet each other in the afterlife. He wasn’t just mostly dead, he was dead dead.
Yeah, I remember him meeting Johnathan Kent who told him to ‘go back’ (1992). The weird thing is I seem to also remember Johnathan Kent dying more recently than that.
I still call it the Super-Coma.
In the World Without Superman 1-shot following the death, Jonathan had a heart attack and Near Death Experience, and he believed he saw Clark at that point (in life review/flashback to WWII’s Pacific Theatre?). Pa was revived and told Martha that he thought their boy was still alive, somehow. After YEARS of teases with Alzheimer’s and other such elderly fare, he did finally die at the end of the recent Brainiac arc.
What still stands in Super-Continuity, hell ALL of DCU continuity is up in the air. Recently heard about yet another Superman: Year One mini to reboot him AGAIN. TWICE in less than a decade, DiDio? um, ok. NOT.