I’m really only writing this because I’m so surprised at Pete’s review and the fact that he seemed to follow Blackest Night as well as he did. I’m a guy who has been reading DC comics for close to 20 years and the level of continuity featured in this issue was ridiculous. To fully understand the continuity references in this issue you basically should be familiar with the following:
– Identity Crisis
– Green Lantern since the Rebirth mini-series.
– Green Lantern Corps since before the Sinestro Corps storyline.
– Infinite Crisis
– 52
– Final Crisis
– Final Crisis: Legions of 3 Worlds (Which still hasn’t finished being published)
– Geoff Johns’ Superman stories
– Geoff Johns’ Hawkman reincarnation stories
– Probably Flash Rebirth

To me that’s crazy excessive and I read virtually all of it! Beyond that the issue barely touches on the War of Light which the Green Lantern titles have been building up to as a prelude to Blackest Night.

Also, how concerned are we supposed to be about the fate of the Hawks? They just died in Final Crisis a few months ago, but that has clearly been since retconned.

Pete wanted to know why this is all happening now. I guess this is indeed part of the mystery, but what we’re seeing is the fulfillment of an ancient prophesy regarding the Blackest Night. You’d know that if you had read all of the above prerequisites.

I think this story will end up being interesting and exciting due to Johns’ involvement with it. But the first issue certainly wasn’t what I expected.

My biggest concern right now comes from seeing pictures of the Blackest Night Aquaman action figure, who is all zombied up but has perfectly combed hair. Please tell me our zombie heroes are not going to have perfect hair as a means of identification since they’re not wearing their traditional costumes!

Zombies do not use hair gel.

So this Blackest Night stuff is pretty cool.  I don’t read a lot of DC comics (and by this I mean any) on a regular basis, but I was getting a lot of suggestions from people that this was going to be a great book.  My intention was to stick to the 8-issue mini-series and not buy all of the tie-ins and spin-offs that are bound to be a part of this event.  However, when I went to my local comics shop last week, they didn’t have any more copies of North 40 so I used the money to pick up an issue of Green Lantern that serves as a prelude to DC’s new event series, Blackest Night.  I’m probably going to spoil things that happen in these books, so consider yourselves warned.

Green Lantern #43 (GL43) was totally creepy and a clear example of a comic that isn’t meant for kids.  It tells the back-story of the Black Hand (a character I have no familiarity with (like a lot of DC characters)) and how throughout his life he’s been surrounded by death.  I got what was going on and how he was selected to lead the Black Lanterns (a group of undead villains powered by black rings and a black battery in Space Sector 666), but what I don’t understand is why this is happening now.  Is it because Hal Jordan (The Green Lantern) and Barry Allen (The Flash) came back from the dead? Or is this one of the mysteries of Blackest Night?  The main things that might be missed if you didn’t read this issue are the life history of the Black Hand, his transformation into the leader of the Black Lanterns, and the fact that the Oa gnome with the scar on his face is the one who seems to have started the whole thing.

Upon finishing GL43, I went and dug up the Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) Blackest Night #0 (BN0) issue that I picked up back in May, but  hadn’t read (and was lucky to be able to find given the current state of my collection).  BN0 was a cool set up and bridged the gap between GL43 and Blackest Night #1.  I don’t know if that was necessary, but it’s interesting on its own and it was free.  The pages in the back describing the powers and members of the various groups representing the emotional spectrum was incredibly helpful and I referred back to it a number of times while reading Blackest Night #1, to summarize:

http://sinccolor.deviantart.com/art/Blackest-Night-114033719

Red = Rage
Orange = Avarice
Yellow = Fear
Green = Willpower
Blue = Hope
Indigo = Compassion*
Violet = Love
Black = Death

The main event, Blackest Night #1 was a really fun book.  Granted it was more set up for the most part (although it’s set up for the entire DC Universe), but a number of significant things happen.  Hawkpeople are murdered, Bruce Wayne’s skull gets carted around town (although I have suspicions that it isn’t actually Batman’s skull), and thousands of Black Lantern rings distribute themselves across the universe awakening the dead to serve in their mission to kill everything.  A nice background is given for the Green Lanterns of Earth, most of whom I have only the most cursory of knowledge of.  My only complaint is that in a few scenes names were being thrown around that I didn’t recognize and I wasn’t sure what the significance was.  The book made me want to know more though.  The artwork was top notch, and rendered an amazing number of characters (both living and dead) beautifully (and incredibly creepily).

I’m intrigued.  I will certainly continue with Blackest Night, and I’m even interested in checking out the stories that got everything to this point.

*Thanks to the commenter below for the correction.

For those that don’t know me that well, I’m an improvisational actor, among other things. I had an audition on Sunday that didn’t actually materialize, due an unforseen automobile accident with the directors. They’re okay, but I had driven in to the city, and parked in a place I need to pay 10 bucks to get out of, so I stepped round to the Wawa on 2nd street and South to get monies aforesaid. While strolling toward the Wawa, I stopped in front of the TLA, whose marquee indicated that VNV Nation was playing that night. I called my wife, asked if she was interested, and we got tickets.

Now, I never considered myself a huge techno or electro fan, but VNV Nation is good music. Nary a guitar, just drum machines, synths and keyboards, and the voice of Ronin Harris. Like I told PTB, it’s like early Ministry, sans the yelling, as Ronin’s voice is comprised of more dulcet tones than we typically hear from Alain Jourgensen. I don’t know the lyrics to any of the songs, but VNV puts on such a great show, I’m too busy dancing and shouting along with choruses I learn in the moment to care that I don’t know the words.

This from a guy who never quite gets comfortable with music lacking guitars.

But maybe life is changing. My real latest distraction right now? Autotune the News. Ever heard of T-Pain? Has the Vocoder and the Antares Auto-tuner burrowed its way into your brain through your ear in the last few years? The Brothers Gregory understand. They also understand that CNN and current events need some tarting up before the hoi polloi take notice. Thus, Autotune the News.

There are only 6 tunes at last count, but I frequently return to their YouTube account and play them all. Combine comedy with sterling beat production that Timbaland is embarassed he didn’t come up with, and gold is produced.

I can not do AtN justice by myself, so without further ado, check it.

I know this is coming almost two weeks after the book shipped, but I was pressed (slightly) into doing this by Kevin (who also reviewed it here). He’s very interested in my DC purchases lately.  For anyone who’s not familiar with the Wednesday Comics project, it’s a Sunday newspaper style “comic book” featuring a series of one page stories that will continue weekly over the course of twelve weeks.  The quotes are not meant to demean the “book,” I’m honestly not sure what to call it.

I had an immediate reaction to this “book” the moment I laid eyes on it.  Newsprint automatically equals cheap in my mind.  Even though it’s actually pretty high quality paper, I just thought that there was no way it should cost $3.99.  That’s just the price of comics at this point though and it’s one of the more expensive “books” on the shelf (I think most books are still $2.99, for now).

While the format is cool, really cool, I found it hard to read at times since the pages kept folding over on me.  The artwork is amazing at that size, but a one page story is just not enough to hook me in.  In fact, the Superman “story” hardly even qualifies as a story as they are only about 20 words and it’s the villain basically saying “you’re an alien, Superman.”

The other stories (15 in all) have a lot more substance to them, with the Kamandi story being my favorite, which is saying something since my only knowledge of the character is as a source of comedy as the go to obscure DC character that gets referenced from time to time.  The Hawkman story and Strange Adventures come in as strong runners up. I’d love to see where these stories are going, though I don’t see myself coming back for subsequent weeks.  I lead a serialized life, but the one page stories are just too low dosage.

One of the things I really like about MLD is the professional dedication to not allowing any personal bias impact our writing that each of our writers constantly displays. Unlike the current President of the United States who during the Major League Baseball All-Star game earlier this week seemed to forget that he needs to appeal to more than just a small group of fans of that other team from Chicago, we at MLD recognize that our audience is not only national, but global. We cannot make such a petty mistake as displaying any type of loyalty to a brand, sports team, corporation, musician, writer, artist, etc.

It’s just not appropriate.

Having said that, I’d like to welcome back to Major League Baseball Pedro Martinez. I hope he shoves a few 90 mile per hour fast balls up David Wright’s left nostril as the Phillies grind the Mets down with the back of their heel like a used up, spit out cigarette again this September.

And if he sucks on the field, I’m sure he’ll at least be good for a laugh. When a team sells out two out of every three games they can afford to spend a million dollars on renting a clown who used to be a brilliant athlete for two months on the off chance his tank’s not empty.