Everyone is going to write up Harry Potter reviews. Not me. I didn’t read the books, so I don’t have much to say about the movie compared to what others would. It was fun. It was long. It was scary. It is weird that those little kids are adults.

Instead, I’ll review the trailers that played before the movie, since I was still completely awake at that point.

Green Hornet/Green Lantern – If I am going to see one green movie in 2011, it is going to be Green Hornet. It looks fun and it looks like it is meant to be fun. Green Lantern looks like it can’t decide what it wants to be. Read more of this article »

As Brightest Day, the follow up to DC Comics‘ hit miniseries Blackest Night, officially begins today (issue zero was released last month), ptb and I have taken few moments to reflect on what has come and speculate on what’s ahead.

ptb: The thing that stood out most to me about Blackest Night was the way it made me realize how little I know about the DC Universe. The major players and surface details I get, but as soon as you go a little deeper I’m lost. After reading issue one, we talked a bit about who was who and clarified a lot of civilian/code names. Knowing who people are is one thing, but understanding why they’re important is another. Barry Allen being back is kind of lost on me, but resurrections of guys like Max Lord are a complete mystery. The appearance of the Monitor (or was it the Anti-Monitor?) also didn’t mean much to me although I know it’s a big deal.

KevinMLD: Now you know how I feel when I read about Bastian!

The reason for Barry Allen being back is a mystery to me and so far DC has done very little to demonstrate why he’s something special beyond the fact that he was on the Super Friends when Geoff Johns was a kid.

The Anti-Monitor has played major roles in both Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis as well as the Sinestro Corps War. He single-handedly destroyed the original DC multiverse. That’s literally all you need to know about him. He’s the biggest of the big bads.

Max Lord is a little more complicated and stupid. He kind of ran or financed the Justice League during the 80’s sitcom years from what I know. He has some mind control powers. He was basically ignored as a character for years, but made a comeback just prior to Infinite Crisis. He turned heel in a big way and took over the organization Checkmate, which is a DC universe spy organization similar to Marvel’s SHIELD. He had big evil plans that involved using his mind control powers on Superman to do some supervillainy stuff until Wonder Woman snapped his neck on national television. This led to people distrusting Wonder Woman because no one knew how naughty Max Lord had been.

ptb: A second major issue I had with Blackest Night was the fact that throughout it, I was hearing about what was happening in Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps and those seemed to be the books I should have been reading. Blackest Night gave the main story from a DCU-wide perspective, but I’m honestly more interested in the spectrum of Lanterns than how Blackest Night affects the Atom (and he may be a bad example since he became a Lantern).

KevinMLD: The Blackest Night story obviously concluded in the Blackest Night main book, but I definitely think most of the major story beats took place in Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps. The main War of Light stuff took place in GLC, with the adventures of Hal Jordan and the main allied rainbow corps members taking place in the GL book. In fact, the Blackest Night main series felt like it was a tacked on, money grab on DC’s part until the last two issues.

This also reminds me of how I felt reading Civil War. Why did Spider-man side with Tony Stark again? If these companies are going to run major events like this, they need the information that is most important to the story to take place in the main title.

ptb: I read the whole thing and I definitely liked it, but I know there was a lot that I missed. Brightest Day #0 didn’t really change much of this. The tone and perspective of this issue may have been different from what’s to come in order to set things up since it is a zero issue, but it’s going to have a hard time maintaining my interest if it focuses only on the White Ring resurrected characters. The covers indicate that Hal Jordan is involved so maybe that will help.

Both series look great and that’s a big plus, but I’m definitely unsure of how long I’ll be sticking around from here. How many issues does this series run?

KevinMLD: I like that Aquaman is back, but a lot of the other resurrections aren’t very exciting… Especially Hawkman and Hawkgirl (not to be confused with Hawk who was also resurrected) who were killed twice in the last year and Martian Manhunter who just died during Final Crisis. But I am really excited about the resurrection of Deadman. That’s a brilliant concept. Deadman is a character who was completely content being dead. Being dead has always been his gimmick. This is brand new ground for the character. I’m kind of sad that the now “Aliveman” has powers. I wanted to see him just be human for awhile and come to grips with his new life. I hope there are interesting plans in place for him.

Anyway, even as a big DC fan I’m not totally sold on Brightest Day yet as there has been very little revealed about the story and due to the fact that it’s going to run for 26 issues. I’ll be there for the first few issues though.

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

Cry for Justice! launched on the heels of Final Crisis with Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Green Arrow deciding they needed to seek revenge… Scratch that Justice!… for the deaths of guys like the Martian Manhunter at hands of supervillians in recent years. The two heroes form their own seperate Justice! League to proactively dish out their new brand of Justice!

The book was originally announced as a second ongoing Justice! League title to be written by James Robinson. The series was mercifully shortened to just seven issues. Robinson has since, however, taken over the main ongoing JLA book. Spoilers below…

Since the publication of the first issue of CFJ! the book has been controversial. Fourth-tier DC characters were killed off seemingly without regard. The dialogue was at times ridiculously bad and the whole package desperately sought to be edgy. Hell, several supporting characters never even interacted with the books stars and had no reason for being in the series at all.

As the story progressed, I took it all in with a grain of salt because the art looked kind of nice and it all seemed to be done in the name of turning the villain Prometheus into an upper tier force in the DC Universe.

I’m always in favor of more top heels.

The final issue of the series landed yesterday and proved every single one of the book’s naysayers correct.

I really don’t know what DC was thinking with this one.

This book destroyed virtually the entire Green Arrow universe.

GA’s former sidekick Speedy, also known at one point as Arsenal and most recently known as JLA member Red Arrow, had his arm torn off. That’s a pretty big problem for an archer, but DC can always tack on a cyborg arm ala the Winter Soldier or Cable.

Why? Because it’s edgy.

Speedy’s most interesting characteristic has always been that he was a single father doing his best to raise the daughter, Lian, that he fathered with the supervillain Cheshire. Lian is a decades old character though maybe only six years old in continuity. (People age oddly in comics.)

Of course the most noted casualty in CFJ! had to be this little girl. The only interesting part of Speedy’s character is gone.

Why? Because it’s edgy.

Robinson went further by destroying GA’s hometown likely killing millions.

Why? Because it’s edgy.

All of this would have been a major price to pay to push Prometheus back up to the upper echelon of DC villains, but most troublesome of all, CFJ! ends with Green Arrow firing an arrow through Prometheus’ skull and basically nailing his face to a wall.

Why? Because it’s edgy.

It’s bad enough that the biggest developments in Green Arrow’s life since his own death and resurrection happened not in his own title but in a Justice! League mini-series… But what did any of this accomplish? Producing a suddenly edgier Green Arrow?

Why didn’t they kill Black Canary and Connor Hawke while they were at it? That would have been really edgy. Hell, for all I know Hawke may already be dead. Who can keep score?

DC has promised to follow up on this story throughout the Spring, but CFJ! has generated nothing but cheap heat and I can’t imagine people will buy those follow-up books en masse.

Ulimately, I know some of this stuff will be written out of DC continuity in the years to come War Games-style. It has to be. It’s all too stupid. But that just serves to cheapens the DC universe even further.

Cry for Justice! should never have been published.

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.