Batman #692

Creator: Tony Daniel

Tony Daniel is no stranger to Batman.  he drew two arcs of Grant Morrison’s run, including the excellent Batman RIP.  He wrote and drew the recent Battle For The Cowl miniseries, which won’t win any lifetime achievement awards, but did its job well enough.  Now he’s returned to the main Bat-title as both writer and artist, and kicks off his story in a flurry of slightly disjointed activity.  There are some rough spots, but this issue holds up well enough to keep us reading.  In the end, that’s really all a first chapter has to do.

Daniel the writer may have learned a bit from working with Morrison. The story hits the ground running, leaving us to figure out the specifics of the story.  We hit several of the beats that post-Bruce Wayne Batman stories are supposed to hit: Dick Grayson is no Bruce Wayne, Catwoman doesn’t doesn’t really trust him, Black Mask is a really dangerous dude, etc.  We get a couple pages each of the main players, hopping from one to the next in a herky-jerky motion. Black Mask appears, inexplicably dressed like some sort of alien wizard in purple bondage gear. He’s gathered a cadre of mad scientists, Z-list characters from bye-gone eras of bat-lore.  A branch of the Falcone crime family returns, apparently not yet tired of competing with psychopaths and vigilantes for Gotham supremacy. And finally, we witness the resurrection of another fairly obscure bad guy (one created in a Nazi concentration camp.  SRSLY.  Why is it always Nazis? Aren’t there any bad guys from the last 60 years we can pick on?)

Daniel the artist turns in good work, without coming close to the iconic work he did on Batman RIP last year.  His layouts are clear but not repetitive, showing that he knows his way around a page in order to tell a story.  We get nice establishing shots, and while I could have done without the Falcone family flashbacks, they’re laid out nicely.

In all, it’s too soon to pass judgement on this story arc.  There is too much setup in this first book, but there seems to be a lot to set up.  If the story ends up being broad and eventful, then we’ll forgive a lot.

Grade: B

Blackest Night #4

Creators: Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis

There’s only so much gushing I can do here.  Blackest Night continues to be the best read on the comics stands.  The halfway point arrives and we finally meet what appears to be at the bottom of the Black Lanterns.

In the meantime, Barry Allen continues to show his revered leadership ability, Ray Palmer continues to work through his personal issues, and an ever-growing chunk of characters gets put through the emotional wringer.  My biggest fear about this title early on was that we weren’t going to get any forward motion.  I was afraid it would just continue to expand in scope until there was nothing left to do, inviting a stilted and cheesy ending.  That doesn’t appear to be the case.  The threat seems to be bottoming out, and we’re finally seeing how bad it’s going to get. And more importantly we have heroes acting like… well, heroes, a nice change from the brooding and hopelessness of some major catastrophic storylines.

Reis’s artwork gets even more spectacular.  While he doesn’t get as much detail on the zombies as some of the ther BN-related artists, he does do a great job of conveying the action.  This story is fairly dense, and Reis keeps it all straight for us visually so we’re not left trying to figure out what we just read.

Two slightly unfortunate things come to light here.  One is that the word “corps” is both singular and plural, and it’s the sort of word you’re not used to using a lot, so a line like “they need Hal to rally together the other corps” sounds odd as you read it.  The second has to do with my own personal prejudices.  I throw up in my mouth a little every time the Atom rides a phone line from one place to another.  Hitching rides on electrons didn’t even make sense when all phones were analog.  In the digital age, it doesn’t seem like this is even worthy of three seconds of thought.  Maybe Ray can read a packet header and address himself to the same place once his phone call gets to a router.  That’s right.  I suspend my disblief about super-powered zombies, but not about fiberoptics and VOIP. That’s my own cross to bear, though.

Grade: A

Green Lantern #47

Creators: Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke

The best of the companion books to Blackest Night continues.  While the heroes on Earth fight in the main title, Hal Jordan and Sinestro struggle to form an alliance that can take down the Black Lanterns. We see a return of the Five Inversions, the demonic characters conjured by Alan Moore ages ago as a throwaway backup story that Johns used as a basis for the sci-fi epic he’s building.  Abin Sur, Hal’s predecessor and Sinestro’s old friend, makes a comeback to great emotional effect.  We also get a glimpse of the two color corps we haven’t focused on much lately: Saint Walker and the Blue Lanterns, and the increasingly comedic Orange Lantern, Larfleeze.

It’s hard to top Reis’s artwork in Blackest Night, but I really do think Doug Mahnke does it here. Everything is so crisp and clean, with almost no linework.  The action comes through in powerful, large frames.  Like the last couple issues, Green Lantern #47 is a home run.

Grade: A+

For those not up to speed on the Marvel soap opera, here’s the shortest version possible:  Norman Osborn–the former Green Goblin–is pretending to be a good guy.  He’s become head of Homeland Security, he’s disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and formed a new agency called H.A.M.M.E.R. (no, i don’t recall what it stands for). Since most heroes won’t play ball with the guy who’s spent years trying to kill Spider-man, he’s been forced to recruit super-villains to masquerade as heroes. Filling the role of Wolverine (see, Dark Wolverine, cuz he’s…  okay, you get it) is Logan’s estranged son, Daken.

So, to recap: Daken is a sort of bad guy pretending to be a really bad guy pretending to be a good guy, working for a genuinely bad guy pretending to be a good guy.

Despite supposedly being a baddie, it’s hard not to like Daken.  He has much the same skillset as his father, but can also manipulate pheromones to bend people to his will.  Aside from his mild mind-control power, he’s also extremely smart and highly manipulative.  Turning him loose in the Stark Tower headquarters among such mental giants as Hercules and Bullseye has been a fun, fox-in-the-henhouse sort of treat for several issues now.  He’s failed to impress Osborn, however.  He questions Daken’s loyalty after some hijinks, and sends him to apprehend some criminals at a photo-op situation of his own creation.

This leads to a run-in with minor Wolverine supporting castmember Emmy Doolin, who realizes right off the bat that Daken isn’t really Wolverine and that Osborn is trying to manipulate her.

The story sounds more complex than it really is.  The fun in this book is found in the way Daken is constantly pushing people’s buttons.  Sometimes he seems to pick fights just to be a jerk, but you find rather quickly that he doesn’t undertake much of anything without a plan. His goading of Osborn is witty and scornful, but he plays at least somewhat nicely with other heavies like Reed Richards.  They both ask him whose side he’s on, and he has set himself up rather brilliantly so that he can honestly answer “yours” to each of them.

Taking over on art recently is Segovia, who has a lively style that suits the action well.  Lots of linework (crosshatching, shading, etc), but he manages to keep the action at the forefront without making everything too busy. His page layouts try to be a little too cute sometimes, and he accidentally confuses the flow of the page.  But aside from a few ticks, he has a very accessible and easy-to-read style.

By the end of the issue, we’ve set up a showdown between Daken and Doolin, and indirectly a showdown between Daken and Osborn’s trust in him.  Meanwhile, Bullseye continues to believe he has Daken’s number, and the Fantastic Four (who sit this issue out) will no doubt be involved as well.

Daken loves to make enemies, and we’re quickly building to see if he can best them without getting plowed under.

Grade: A

Astonishing X-Men #31

Creators: Warren Ellis and Phil Jimenez

Warren Ellis continues his run on X-Men by continuing to put them in outlandish sci-fi scenarios. Agent Brand of SWORD is in trouble, and the X-Men swoop in to the rescue.  Some vibrant Jimenez art makes for great action scenes as all the principal characters see a little action.  It all seems mundane enough to be an episode of the cartoon (albeit with more blanked out cursing) until the last two pages take a bizarre and crazy turn and plunge us into what we have to assume is the rest of the arc.

I love this book, and would read it no matter what. It just happens to also be a great individual story.

grade: A

Dark Reign: The List – Secret Warriors

Creators: Jonathan Hickman and Ed McGuiness

If James Bond and Jason Bourne were the same guy, and they were played by Clint Eastwood while trying to act like Dennis Hopper, you’d have something close to the awesomeness Nick Fury is supposed to represent in the modern Marvel Universe.  I don’t know that he ever quite gets there.  For one thing, it must be very hard to be such a high-level fighter when your one eye prevents you from having any depth perception.  But I digress.

The two main things we are meant to glean from this story, I guess, are that

1) Nick has everything under control, and can pretty much do anything he wants.  If this is true, one wonders why he hasn’t been busier fixing things, although the Secret Warriors book is doing a good job telling some of that story.

2) The super secret organization that has been running the other super secret organization is actually being run by yet another, even MORE secret organization.  I love spy fiction, but I fear that we are quickly approaching some sort of recursion error.

Also, McGuiness draws Norman Osborn like some sort of fell vampire lord, which is a little disconcerting.

grade: C

Daredevil #501

Creators: Andy Diggle and Robert De La Torre

This is a jumping on point, a new start for a new writer, an epilogue to the big events of #500, and a prologue to the upcoming arc.  That’s a lot of ground to cover, and they do cover it.  However, in the process we get 2 pages of action and 20 pages of brooding and talking.  I found that to be too high ratio.  This book has been very good for quite some time, so I expect things to get better.  However, this whole issue was really just catch-up with very little actually happening.

grade: C-

Deadpool #900

A guy walks into the doctor’s office with a frog on his head.  The doctor asks him, “What seems to be the problem?”  The frog says, “It started with a bump on my ass.”

One-liners can be really funny.  They work best when you don’t over-explain them or wait for the laugh.  You just say them quickly, and the funny part will make people laugh before the dumb part makes them think you’re an idiot.  By the time they realize you’re an idiot, they’re already laughing and can’t really call you on it.

Deadpool is the comic book version of a one-liner.  The longer a Deadpool story lasts, the less I find myself interested.  Deadpool works best in short, frenetic, violent bursts. You can laugh and goggle and not think about the fact that this is a character that has very little actual personality.  Because of this, Deadpool 900 is a perfect venue for some great Deadpool stories.  There’s a send-up of CSI, a funny but slightly creepy childhood memory story, a ping-pong match against Doc Oc, and one of the best stories I’ve seen messing with the fourth-wall convention.  None of it is deep.  The body count is high, the laughs are fun, and you don’t notice that it’s probably stupid until a while after you read it.  I’ll take that any day.

grade: B+

Green Lantern #46

Creators: Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke

Blackest Night is good, and I won’t go into specifics again.  This chapter centers on Sinestro, and we see a little of the complexity that Johns gives him. He is not a simple bad guy.  He’s loyal to his troops, to his planet, and to his friends. He’s also able to take a beating, as we see in a sequence of brutal Mahnke realism. The art here isn’t fancy or earth-shattering, but it’s dead on in its gritty detail.  Sinestro’s loyalty is matched by his ruthlessness against those who cross him.  His solution in his confrontation with Mongul is brilliant, and it leads right into a fantastic reveal that definitely advances the overall story.

Grade: A+

Detective Comics #857

Creators: Greg Rucka and JH Williams III

I probably should have listed Williams first here.  His art is mind-blowing, and his creativity is what has really powered this book.  The page layouts are incredibly inventive.  He never lets you get your balance.  Yet once you take a minute to process what’s going on, there’s an incredible amount of information being conveyed to you visually.  Consider, for instance, that if you pay attention to the way Kate and the High Madame are drawn throughout the book, the ending is not at all the surprise that it first seems.  Williams told you about it long before Rucka said a word.  This first arc finishes up in good fashion.  A little resolution, a few question left unanswered, and plenty of action. The Rucka and Cully Hamner backup feature starring The Question is a fun little gutter-crawling crime adventure, but it’s just icing on the cake.

Grade: A-

Fantastic Four #571

Creators: Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham

Hickman’s FF run continues with more high-concept sci-fi.  I hadn’t read this book much lately until Hickman and Eaglesham came on board, and I’ve been really happy with it so far.  Reed has met a council of alternate universe Reeds, and he has to decide if the influence he can have in the council is worth giving up his own family.  Great dialog sets off some interesting, slightly Kirby-esque art. The cliff-hanger is a little cheesy, but you can’t have everything.

Grade: B

This is a special one shot that concludes the “Old Man Logan” story which ran in Wolverine #66-72 over the last year or so.

The background. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic future (are there any non-apocalyptic futures in the Marvel universe?) where the bad guys have won.  Most of the heroes are dead, and the US is divided up into sections controlled by the major baddies.  Logan has survived, but has retired from the hero business.  He and his family eke a living from the California soil, while paying rent to the hulks, Bruce Banner’s murderous gang of inbred thug-offspring.  The Wolverine issues are some of the best work Marvel has put out lately, and come highly recommended.

In that main story, we witnessed a cross-country trip that ended with a climactic battle in Washington, DC.  It seemed as if that would be the end, but we were teased with a final chapter, wherein Logan finally embraces his inner mustelid.  Thus, the giant sized one shot and thus, the final chapter, and it is…  um… well, let’s just talk about the plot for a moment.

The Plot. Heres the plot. Ready? Here we go.

Logan kills everyone.

Now this isn’t a terrible story idea, as story ideas go.  It’s a revenge story, which is a time-honored tradition in prose, comics, and  movies.  With a revenge story, you don’t really need a plot.  The plot sort of assembles itself: awful thing happens to good guy, good guy snaps, good guy sets out to get even.  This usually means a series of grisly fights.  A few more bad guys end up dead after each one, until there’s just the big bad left.

Problem #1: Like I said, it’s fine as a story idea.  But it isn’t really a plot.  It’s just one long (and admittedly fabulous) fight scene.  If you don’t mind paying five bucks for one long fight scene, then don’t worry about it.  You’re fine.  Those looking for the internal depth that the other issues had will be disappointed.

And that’s problem #2: this is all just a hyper-violent coda to a story that was already great, and already done.  If Wolverine #72 (minus the last couple of pages) had been the end of the story, the world would have been no worse off.

So what’s good about Giant-sized Wolverine? Plenty.  First, while this one particular chunk of the story is lacking in direction, the overall story is quite compelling.  If there do wind up being more stories set in this world (and with the company that just recently finished a House Of M offshoot story, it seems likely), then this was a necessary step forward.

In addition, plot points aside, Steve McNiven’s art is jaw-dropping, as always.  It’s detailed but never too busy.  Facial expressions are incredibly detailed.  He lavishes as much attention on trailer parks and cow entrails as he does on explosions and wreckage.  And possibly at Millar’s direction, the depictions of the hulks as trailer trash are absolutely hilarious: bad teeth, receding hairlines, mullets, you name it.

If you haven’t read the whole Old Man Logan story, you should.  Once you have, this is a fun–if slightly brainless–addition to it.

If you don’t know what Red 5 Comics is, you may be missing out.

Let me start by just sharing this exchange with you from the third issue of Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time:

Carl Sagan (yes, that Carl Sagan): “And you’ve been fighting this being since 1908.”
Robo: “No, Mr. Tesla stopped it then.  I wasn’t introduced to this thing until it came out of H.P. Lovecraft’s head in 1926.”

First, understand that Robo is not talking figuratively.  The creature in question came out of Lovecraft’s head.  Second, see how you feel. If you read that and said to yourself, “That’s ridiculous,” then stop reading right here.  Atomic Robo is not for you.

If, on the other hand, you said, “That sounds kind of awesome,” then let’s talk.  (Oh, and you’re right.  It is awesome)

Red 5 Comics specializes in books like Atomic Robo.  Their stories are over the top: just silly enough that you have fun, but just serious enough that you don’t lose interest.  The page layouts are simple and easy to follow (issue 3, for instance, has only one page that isn’t composed entirely of page-wide panels). The art is expressive without being cluttered.  There is very little of the linework that makes some mainstream books so dense.  The dialog is witty, and free of the too-serious narration boxes that predominate in modern comics.

Robo is an “automatic man,” a thinking robot created by Nikola Tesla.  The title chronicles his adventures throughout the 20th century, which see him veer through a wide array of circumstances.  His exploits see him cross paths with all sorts of actual historical figures, as well as his fair share of colorful fictional ones.  Through it all, Robo’s witty and quirky personality focuses the action down to a personal level.  You can’t help but root for Robo.

Both Robo the character and Robo the book owe a lot to Mike Mignola’s Hellboy.  The soft-spoken, capable hero with the devil-may-care attitude fights a dizzying array of outlandish baddies.  But the setting is different enough that the similarities aren’t that noticeable.  One thing that makes Robo stand out is the great job Clevinger does of integrating real historical figures into the story.  Biographers of people like Tesla, Edison, FDR, and Sagan might disagree with the particulars, but each seems to be doing and saying the things you’d expect of them. It adds an odd depth to the story.

Shadow From Beyond Time, the third volume of Robo’s adventures, takes place in several different eras as he fights a time-shifting monster intent on (what else?) consuming the whole universe.  As we meet Robo in several different eras, we get a glimpse of the phases he goes through.  A lot of this has been sketched out before, but it’s still interesting to see.  Again, while you can’t accuse the story of being incredibly deep, it’s obviously better planned than just throwing a monster on the page.

The loose and open art style really do a lot for this tale.  We get a great sense of the action all the way through, without getting ourselves caught up on details.  The open spaces on the page make the action easier to pick out.  Robo is a machine of few words most of the time, which opens the visuals up even further.  But well as it’s drawn, if the story were a clunker, we still wouldn’t care.  Just like in the art, simplicity rules the story.  We don’t get a lot of nuance (giant monsters destroying things do not count as “nuance” in most people’s books).  What we get instead is a great vehicle for a great character.  The plot bounces along at a good clip, keeping us focused on Robo and his plan to beat the baddie.

If Robo has a hard time piecing his plan together, he doesn’t let on outwardly.  Part of the appeal is the understated coolness that Robo exudes.  Yes, he’s an action hero. But he is also a dutiful lab assistant, a carefree university student, a ’50s businessman who looks great in a suit, and a (mostly) competent CEO.  He may not be very smart with people, but he’s smart enough to save the day.

This third series might be the best place yet to get started reading Atomic Robo.  I look forward to plenty more Robo from Clevenger, as well as plenty more pure-fun comics from Red 5.

Creators: Grant Morrison and Philip Tan

Don’t say that DC never learns anything.  Apparently they’ve learned not to bank on a Morrison / Frank Quitely book getting into their hands on a timely schedule–their All Star Superman “monthly” managed just 4 issues in calendar year 2007. This time, DC only had Quitely draw the first three issues of Batman And Robin (and he drew the hell out of them, I tell you what).  The second part of the story is drawn by Philip Tan, fresh off a nice run on Green Lantern.

In the last issue, we met the new Red Hood, who may or may not be Jason Todd. In typical Morrison fashion, there’s more to think about here than there first appears.  We don’t know a lot about this Red Hood, except that he is violent in his methods and slightly delusional in his outlook on life.  He’s challenging Batman by leaving calling cards (which are not a Hellboy or Nick Cave reference.  It’s from Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ Don’t feel bad.  I had to look it up, too). He’s ably assisted by Scarlet, the faceless girl we were introduced to in the first arc. We see Red Hood display a genuine affection for Scarlett, which is a bit of an ironic twist.  In case you hadn’t noticed the contrast, Batman and Robin can barely stand each other.

Speaking of which, it’s worth commenting on the nice little character moment when Dick tries to teach Damian a lesson.  He ends up learning a lesson himself: that he’s underestimated Damian.  An adult Dick Grayson might not be Bruce Wayne, but Damian is definitely not a young Dick Grayson.  He’s a stone cold killer who’s only refraining from killing people as a courtesy. It makes the dynamic between the two very interesting, and very different from the typical Bat-books of old.

Next we meet the villains. In just a few pages, Morrison distinguishes several different types of players: the super-villainy of Batman’s usual gang of baddies are represented by Penguin, but so are the old-school mobsters and some foreign criminal empire.  Each has an agenda, and isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty to pursue it. Add in the chaotic vigilantism of Red Hood and Scarlet, and you’ve got an explosive mix.

Small nitpicky items:

• A lot of story is crammed into very small spaces here.  It’s represented quite well in Philip Tan’s art.  While I think he’s competing with JH Williams’ Detective Comics work for “most oddball visual layout that still works,” he gets the action across quite well.
• There needs to be an editorial directive about how old Damian is supposed to look.  Tony Daniel made him look maybe 15.  Tan seems to think he’s 10.
• This is the second time in a couple months that Twitter is done wrong.  It’s supposed to be Scarlet tweeting, but the way it’s drawn it looks like people are @ replying to her.  Joe Casey’s Dance miniseries is doing something similar.

All in all, this book continues to be the most exciting Bat-book on the stands.  Smart storytelling, snappy art, and an interesting storyline.

Recommended if you like: pretty much any decent Batman story, Damian Wayne, the fact that Grant Morrison is smarter than you.

Such was the case with the original Marvel Two in One starring Ever-Loving Blue-Eyes, The Thing.  Every month, a new issue would come out teaming up The Thing with another hero, and of course, zany adventures would happen.  While the Fantastic Four book was serious at times, Marvel Two in One gave The Thing a chance to shine.

The big draw for a Marvel Two in One book was the guests, sometimes very obscure to most readers.  I mean some were relavent at the time, but have no basis now.  Anyone remember ROM: The Space Knight?  He was in issue 99.  How about a little Wundarr, remember him?  Probably not, but he was in issue 57.  Maybe to get a little more obscure, you could got with Stingray.  Yeah, remember Stingray?  Of course the Spider-Man’s, Iron Fist’s, and Hulk’s were present at some point, but it was nice to see some lesser used heroes get the limelight, even if only for one month on the shelf.

If I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be Marvel Two in One issue 51.  It actually starred four heroes, Wonder-Man, Nick Fury, Ms. Marvel and The Beast.  The five heroes were meant to play a simple card game, but an alarm goes off at the Baxter Building, and all the heroes end up having to stop an attack on the SHIELD Helicarrier by HYDRA.  Full of great one liners and one of my favorite heroes (Wonder-Man), I still own two copies so I can read one and keep another in storage.

From my understanding, Marvel has brought back the Marvel Two in One books, but they just do not seem to have the fun vibe that they did back in the 70’s and early 80’s.  The Marvel Two in One series from my memory ended at issue 100 with the best guest star possible – Ben Grimm.

The primary story is in the Blackest Night miniseries, and it’s definitely not to be missed.  Geoff Johns and artist Ivan Reis are building a truly terrifying story here.  We seem to see an endless array of characters coming back from the dead.  Some were reviled, some were loved, some were super-powered, and some were just civilians.  But now not only are they all back, but they’re super-powered and extremely envious of the living.

This isn’t a zombie story in the classic “braaaaaaaaaaiiiiiinnnnnssss” sort of sense. Instead, it manages to incorporate the insane possibilities of what can occur in the DC Universe, the god-like power some of its characters possess, and an interesting and subtle take on what it is to be a zombie.  In the end, it winds up being more high-powered and much more disturbing than your standard zombie tale.  The undead in Blackest Night are far from mindless.  We don’t know yet exactly what they are, but they seem to be envious of the living while also wanting to end them.

In fact, there’s a lot we don’t know.  We don’t know the whole story of the black power battery, or the mysterious force that’s controlling Scar and Black Hand.  Apparently, we also don’t know where the bottom of the story is.  Just when you think there couldn’t be any more dangerous undead characters, a new wave of black power rings swoops in and makes more trouble.

Reis’ artwork doesn’t have the delicate detail of Mahnke’s in Green Lantern, but it’s exciting and gritty.  It fits the creepiness of this book perfectly.

While it’s possible to get the whole story by reading just Blackest Night, the original Green Lantern title also has a lot to offer.  Johns relaunched Green Lantern about four years ago, and has been using it to expand the scope of the story and characters to epic proportions.  He’s been tying bits and pieces of old stories together, taking decades of convoluted story and actually making some sense of it.  He’s told us a story about complex characters with believable feelings, who have their own motivations and personality.  Even though there are dozens of them, we get a real sense of why each does what he does.

In GL, Hal Jordan and The Flash (that’s Barry Allen, recently resurrected and also written by Johns in a separate title) come face-to-face with the no-longer-so-dead Martian Manhunter, who has a serious score to settle.  Jon Stewart comes face-to-face with some ugly parts of his past.  And the storylines that have been playing out for years come to a head, while the black power rings continue to make everything more complicated.

The book is drawn in fantastic detail by Doug Mahnke, and it’s nearly bursting with rip-roaring, smashmouth action.  Even if I can’t convince you to read Blackest Night, this one is still worth looking at.

In addition to the two Geoff Johns books, there are a number of other titles.  These are filler stories that aren’t really required reading, but there are certainly reasons to look at them.

Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason have been telling a good but not great B-story for quite some time in Green Lantern Corps, focusing on Earth GLs Kyle Rayner and Guy Gardner and a handful of others not regularly appearing in Johns’ flagship title. Now that the events of Blackest Night are hitting the fan, we might expect more details on what’s happening on Oa, and some explanation of why the Guardians are acting as they are.  Whatever we learn from this book, though, it promises to be underwhelming compared to the two above.

There are also three miniseries running along with the first half of Blackest Night, lasting three issues each: BN Batman, BN Superman, and BN Titans.  When they’re done, there will be a new set of minis focusing on other characters.  None of them seem to be critical parts of the story, but are intended to tell side stories that wouldn’t fit in the main titles.

They aren’t really worth commenting on, except to say that it’s more of the same.  Yes, dead people are coming back from the dead.  Yes, they’re pissed off when they get back.  And yes, the black power rings give them the ability to really mess with the living. You can pretty much pick your favorite line of books and get a glimpse into the zombie-fighting exploits of those characters.  You don’t need to get too carried away in continuity and details, but there’s obviously been some thought put into the events and reactions you’ll see here.

Like I said at the top, Blackest Night is a solid story.  It’s even more solid because it can be read (at least so far) as a self-contained book.  If you have the time and resources, I highly recommend going back as far as you can in the ongoing Green Lantern book to make more sense of what’s happening. The Blackest Night tie-in issues are just as highly recommended as the rest of the series.

GLC is really just for the hardcore GL lover, and the minseries are for completists only.  They’re fine by themselves, but don’t add a lot.  They don’t need to add a lot. Blackest Night is a harrowing experience all itself, and what’s to come promises to be pretty spectacular.