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REVIEW: Brightest Day #8

Posted by under *mixed, Comics |

DC Comics’ Brightest Day #8 landed in stores last week and the initial reaction: “nothing special.” Still some things happened centering mainly on Hawkman and Hawkgirl with some Martian stuff thrown in.

PTB: I like the inks and colors on the cover. It’s a different style from the previous issues (and David Finch‘s usual stuff), but it works. Hawkgirl was indeed unleashed in the issue.

KevinMLD: The cover is fine, but I thought you might be interested in the variants DC has been running for Brightest Day lately.


I had only ever seen the Aquaman one and I thought it was pretty nice. Each cover features one of the resurrected characters dressed as a White Lantern seated on a throne with some stuff happening in the background. DC is claiming the images unite Voltron-style to form another giant preview image. If you ask me the images only work together in the loosest possible fashion, but each individual portrait by Ryan Sook is pretty nice.

Image courtesy of http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/

I’ve been a fan of Sook for years and his announced run on Detective with Ed Brubaker that never happened is one of my greatest comics-related disappointments. That would have been a special book. You might also know his art from X-Factor.

PTB: I remember Sook from X-Factor and I liked his work, but this is really something special. These should be the regular covers, or at least some attempt to do something like this. Finch is great and all, but I much prefer this approach.

KevinMLD: Apparently other artists including Jim Lee were involved with the rest of the image. I’m behind on Green Lantern, but I guess these are mostly the Lantern entities we see in the background?

PTB: That’s what it looks like to me. I’ve only ever seen Parallax (the Yellow entity) and the one from the White Lantern. It seems like that’s the idea here. Looking at the Black Lantern representative reminds me that the Black Hand was taken by the Indigo Tribe at the end of Blackest Night. Have any of the books followed up on that yet?

KevinMLD: Not yet. But I know Johns has promised there will be some payoff on that issue eventually.

PTB: Moving back to the book, The queen of Hawkworld is revealed to be Hawkgirl’s mother. Is this someone we’ve seen before?

KevinMLD: No idea. Sometimes this title makes me feel like I’ve never read a DC book before in my life and that’s a major failing on its part in my opinion.

PTB: Hawkman had a big part in the issue as the animal people begin to rally around him. Sounds like these creatures have been seen before, but there seemed to be a lot of new things introduced: Nth metal, the giant statues, a portal to the planet Thanagar. A lot of time was spent introducing this stuff, but is it just new to me?

KevinMLD: I think this is just a retcon tying Earth and Thanagar’s history together. Nth metal has been a core element of Hawkman lore dating back to the Silver Age at least… Maybe even the Golden age but I’m not sure.

PTB: A lot of time was also spent explaining the White Martian/Green Martian conflict. It’s clear the creature that assaulted Miss Martian is looking to be Manhunter’s only friend from home.

KevinMLD: It’s like I said… Martian Manhunter is the last Martian except for all of the others. At least he doesn’t have a pet Martian dog flying around in a red cape… Yet.

PTB: I thought Manhunter could shape shift, but this new Green Martian seems to be unable or unwilling to take anything other than a grotesque form with extra mouths and what not. Plus there’s the whole wearing human skin thing. Given the mental battle the creature had with Miss Martian, can it be assumed she should have similar abilities to the Manhunter?

KevinMLD: Yeah. That’s a safe assumption, but I’m not convinced she can’t take more normal forms yet. We’ll have to see how this all plays out.

PTB: Oh and the battle is going to continue in the forest in Star City. Can it be assumed you love this?

KevinMLD: If it ends with the dumb forest gone then I’m fine with it. Seriously. A crazy bomb goes off in the middle of a city called Star City and it just happens to blow up in a star pattern? And then a magic forest grows there? And the hero of the city, who is a blatant Robin Hood knock off, gets exiled from the city and moves into the magic forest? Too much.

PTB: The only other thing that really happened in the issue was that Dove left with Deadman to ask Hal Jordan about finding the “Chosen One” to wield the White Ring. Also, Hawk continued to be a jerk.

With the teaser image we talked about last time, it seems like Hal Jordan himself may be the protector the White Ring is looking for. My pick at this point would be Roy Oswalt, but that could be 15th inning delirium setting in.

KevinMLD: Maybe the ring/lantern can sign up the umpiring crew of the Houston-Philadelphia series as its bodyguard. They’ve certainly protected the Astros pretty well so far.


Read our thoughts on:
Brightest Day #7 / Brightest Day #9

More on the series can be found at our Brightest Day hub.

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