That Blackest Night Thread (Spoilers!)

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Well, someone has to start it...

I really liked issue 1. For one thing, I wasn't in the dark after missing the Free Comic Book Day issue (I thought they'd have reprinted that by now!). For another, I liked that while it's Green Lantern-centric, for now, at least, it doesn't require me to know the ins and outs of all the different Corps, because I just don't. I quite reading GL when the Sinestro Corps War started, and planned to but the trade paperbacks by now, but haven't yet. (Heck, vol2 just came out, didn't it?)

So as someone who *knows* the DCU, but isn't exactly in tune with some recent events, I had no problem understanding it. Bitey Guardians? I'm down with that.

My favorite scene has got to be the one in which Hal shows Barry all the heroes who've died in the time between him dying and coming back. I *loved* his reaction to Ronnie -- being the junior member of the league when he was on it, Ronnie was probably the closest person to Wally's age he fought with. He's a kid they took under their wing, and now he's gone. And then seeing Ralph and Sue... but of course, that's setting up a later scene down the line.

The one thing that bugged me was the crypt of dead supervillains the JLA has under their HQ. I don't care if it makes them easier to guard, it's just ghoulish and wrong. Why the hell would anyone want the Fiddler's body? Just guard his &%#@ fiddle, for Pete's sake!

[Rich Lane]

Dang...I just went back and read it and you're right!

I don't know how I missed that my first fly through. It didn't even look familiar.

[Don Collett]

I finished issue 1 last night. Green Lantern #43 was creepy enough, but this...whew. I'm not really a horror fan, but I'm sticking with this just to see how the GLs get themselves out of this.

The final page...it seems the black rings are quite slow to charge. Seems like it's gonna take a lot of dying to get the rings fully charged...probably everyone in the whole blamed universe.

Final Crisis was OK, but Blackest Night has me wishing the next issue were already on sale.

[Dagwan]

Jason Marconnet (Lime_Coke) said:

Mongul's was about his son and didn't even have a power ring in it. Still the strongest of the three stories.

The Mongul currently in the DCU is the son of the original Mongul (who is dead), and I'm sure that it is the same character shown in this story. We just get to see how twisted he was, how young.

[KSwolf]

Dagwan said:

Jason Marconnet (Lime_Coke) said:

Mongul's was about his son and didn't even have a power ring in it. Still the strongest of the three stories.

The Mongul currently in the DCU is the son of the original Mongul (who is dead), and I'm sure that it is the same character shown in this story. We just get to see how twisted he was, how young.

Yep, the original Mongul was killed by Neron during the Underworld Unleashed crossover back in 1995. Mongul II debuted a few years later, and since he's pretty much the same character as his father, it made the original's death pretty pointless.

By the way, wasn't it revealed at the end of Infinite Crisis that Darkseid's Omega Beams had actually just transported Batman back to the Paleolithic era? I've been assuming that the body Superman found belonged to somebody else. But the events of this story seem to be suggesting that it really was Bruce's body, since you'd think that people with the power over life and death would realize if they were trying to reanimate the wrong corpse.

[Dagwan]

Final Crisis, you mean?

They haven't yet explained the "dead body"/ "alive Batman lost in time/space" thing.

[KSwolf]

Yep, I meant Final Crisis.

I can see that the limited edit function is going to cause me problems.

Dagwan said:

Final Crisis, you mean?

They haven't yet explained the "dead body"/ "alive Batman lost in time/space" thing.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Y'know, if Batman was sent back in time, that doesn't mean for sure that it *wasn't* Bruce's skeleton. Assuming he stays back there (which he won't, of course), all he has to do is die and rot, and somehow get back to point A (the hard part). Presto! A skeleton for Superman to hug and cry over!

But even if he doesn't stay way back when (which, of course, he won't), the skeleton's existence in our time could be contingent on him dying earlier -- which, once Bruce returns and restitches that loose thread from the timestream, could make the skeleton fade from existence like Superman did when time-traveling to Superboy's era, pre-Crisis.

Or it could be someone else's skeleton. Maybe Mopee's.

[Randy Jackson]

I dunno...this whole thing just seems to be Geoff Johns upping his body count again. I don't think this is for me.

[Rich Lane]

Yeah, but this time the bodies are able to count back!

Randy Jackson said:

I dunno...this whole thing just seems to be Geoff Johns upping his body count again. I don't think this is for me.

[Doctor Hmmm?]

Just reading this thread, it occurs to me that if I were actually reading the books these days, I could probably do a wicked version of "Zombie Jamboree."

Of course, if I were actually reading the books these days, I'd have already wasted that joke on Marvel.

[Cavaliere (moderator emeritus)]

I'm not quite ready to read the rest of this thread yet because I just picked up two weeks of comics today and have only read Blackest Night #1 thus far. I did enjoy it, though, and the other three BN books are at the top of my read pile. I also dig the Black Lantern ring I received with my purchase. Mwa ha ha ha!

[Cavaliere (moderator emeritus)]

I'm moving my comments over the discussion in the Green Lantern group.