Post by Zoom on May 1, 2011 17:40:31 GMT -5
SPOILER ALERT!
90% of this series's plot comes out of left field in the last two issues. If you haven't read them yet, you might not want to read this review yet. Then again, I gave this issue a 2/5 so maybe its not that big of a deal to you.
Quick recap. At the end of Blackest Night, a white lantern revived a bunch of dead heroes and villains and (relatively) soon, gave each of them a task. For Firestorm, Martian Manhunter, Hawkgirl and Hawkman and Aquaman, their tasks were irrelevant and they were seemingly killed when they completed them. Professor Zoom’s task was the bring back the Flash (which is silly because both Professor Zoom and the Flash are alive and well in the future and they don’t need a magic white lantern to bring them back from the dead but whatever) because, you know, Geoff Johns ran out of Wally West stories and decided that Flash meets CSI would be an interesting story to tell. He’s kinda right. The only problem with the new Flash book is that it’s full of retcons (but you knew that when I said it was a Geoff Johns book) and that it takes 8 issues to tell storylines that could be resolved in 1 issue. Max Lord’s purpose was to stop a metahuman war (but really it was so that they could sell a JLI book which had a 24 issue storyline that would have been a 3 issue storyline back in the 80s ). Deadman’s purpose was apparently to eat cheeseburgers and hang out with his grandpa. Captain Boomerang’s purpose was so that Geoff Johns could finally tell a story about Captain Boomerang. He’s been trying for some time, now. * Jade’s purpose was to make people read JLA, Hawk’s purpose was to make people read Birds of Prey and Osiris’s purpose was to make people read Titans. I can’t speak for JLA because after Robinson’s Cry For Justice, I didn’t particularly want to read his JLA. Birds of Prey and Titans were awful (Birds because Simone doesn’t research characters properly before using them. Titans because…well everything about that book was bad) and I dropped both books after a few issues. The white lantern also created a forest in the middle of Star City for Green Arrow to play Robin Hood in.
This brings us up to the last couple of issues of Brightest Day. We’ve spent about 22 issues doing things that aren’t really important to the plot with mixed results. Martian Manhunter and Aquaman were pretty cool distractions. Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s stories were pukeworthy. Once all the filler stories were told, though, we were left with several seemingly dead heroes and Captain Boomerang, Hawk and Dove on a collision course. Then all of the sudden, Swamp Thing comes back from the dead as a Black Lantern. The white lantern explains that Nekron (the big bad from Blackest Night) has imprinted himself on Swamp Thing and so now Swamp Thing is trying to destroy a special tree in Star City’s forest because it’s some special tree from the Parliament of Trees which would probably mean something to you if you had read Swamp Thing’s book.
So the white lantern turns the dead heroes into elementals which is okay, I guess but it leaves us wondering why we had to sit through a bunch of Hawkman stories to get Hawkman the air elemental when freaking Red Tornado is right there, already an air elemental and a far more interesting character. The white lantern brings back Alec Holland (the original Swamp Thing...sorta) to fight the evil Swamp Thing but it can’t bring him back fully because somebody has to die first. Somebody has to die for the white lantern to resurrect somebody? This is news to me and seems to contradict the rest of the series but maybe nobody brought up that people had to die for the white lantern to resurrect heroes at the end of Blackest Night since presumably thousands of people died during that event and maybe bringing birds back to life doesn’t count. So anyways Captain Boomerang throws his boomerang at Dove. Hawk tries to catch it but it slices his hand. Deadman steps in front of Dove and takes the boomerang for her. He dies and Alec Holland lives. This is dumb. We’re expected to believe that the white lantern resurrected Boomerang, Hawk and Deadman so that Deadman could die, which would allow Alec Holland to live? WHY THE HELL DIDN’T THE WHITE LANTERN JUST BRING ALEC HOLLAND BACK TO LIFE AT THE END OF BLACKEST NIGHT? Because then Geoff Johns couldn’t tell stories about Captain Boomerang and because then, we’d have to cut out half of Brightest Day and have even less content in this storyline.
Anyways, Alec Holland turns into another Swamp Thing to fight the Nekron Swamp thing. Apparently, Jade did something in JLA to weaken bad guy Swamp Thing so Alec and the elementals stop the bad guy Swamp Thing. Hooray! Good guys win. Deadman and Dove admit that they love each other (since Dove has whatever powers the plot calls for when Geoff Johns is writing. In this case, she can hear ghosts). This is also dumb. Dove is frankly too good for Deadman. Deadman is selfish and uninteresting. The only thing the character ever had going for him was that he was funny and could possess people. Throughout Brightest Day, Deadman hasn’t been funny and he couldn’t possess people. He was just the white lantern’s butt monkey and I refuse to believe that eating a couple hamburgers together and making out one time is love. I’m sorry. Love is more complicated than that. Love is not that contrived. However, since we’re reading a story by the same guy who is writing the Hawkman/Hawkgirl love story, this is about the quality of romance that we’re to expect.
As in all recent Geoff Johns crossovers, half of the last issue is spent as an advertisement for new books and for the next big event. We get a bunch of Swamp Thing and a splash page (first rule of Brightest Day: there can always be more splash pages) with John Constantine. Firestorm talks about how he’s going to explode in 90 days. Aquaman talks about how the bad guys in his storyline had Atlantian weapons, implying there’s some conspiracy for him to uncover when his new book is launched. This is all meant to make the reader want to go buy these books but I can’t imagine really caring unless Alan Moore or Peter David is going to be writing one of them. It just feels really anti climactic to end the story and then rather than provide the characters with resolution, immediately move on to trying to sell your next story to the audience. YOU HAVE TO READ MORE AQUAMAN! AQUAMAN’S STORY IS NOT OVER! ALSO CHECK OUT TEEN TITANS FOR MORE AQUALAD! That’s okay. I think we’ve had enough Aquaman for now.
The good: Dove didn’t die. Aquaman’s regular hand is okay even though Black Manta cut it off a few issues ago. I would have hated for him to pull a Professor X by being injured, healed and injured in the same way again as writers shift. Hawkgirl dies for reals (read: until another writer wants to use her) meaning that we don’t have to see her and Hawkman being all lovey dovey anymore. Seriously. The worst part of Hawkman is Hawkgirl and vice versa. The art is also good so props to Ivan Reis. Finally, Swamp Thing being pushed in the mainstream is kinda cool, even if it was rather out of the blue.
The bad: A half dozen splash pages in one issue, contrived love stories, nonsensical plot points, blatant advertisements for other series thinly disguised as plot, mainstream readers being expected to know who John Constantine is and the entirety of Brightest Day’s actual storyline being crammed into the last 2 issues.
Overall: 2/5
*During Mark Waid’s Flash run, Wally West (the Flash to most people under the age of 30) was sent to an alternate dimension or was time traveling or something. For a couple issues, an alternate version of Wally who went by Walter, aka the Dark Flash, took over for Wally in his book as well as Titans and JLA. Captain Boomerang got in a fight with Walter and Walter threw an exploding boomerang back at the good Captain, crippling him. This helped motivate Replicant (a character who was swept under the rug because he had the powers of all the Rogues and therefore made the Rogues irrelevant and Geoff Johns likes the Rogues) to become a supervillain. Mark Waid’s run on the Flash ends and Geoff Johns takes over, deciding to bring back all the silver age Rogues who have been retired since Barry Allen’s death in the late 80s. This was for the most part well and good except Captain Boomerang was still crippled. So Johns had Deadshot inject Boomerang with Joker venom so that Boomerang’s wounds would heal and he could use him too. Then Identity Crisis came along and Brad Meltzer killed off Captain Boomerang. So Johns just took Captain Boomerang’s son and turned him into the new Captain Boomerang….until whoever was writing Outsiders at the time decided that Boomerang Jr would make a great superhero. So Geoff Johns wrote a big crossover called Blackest Night where he had Boomerang Jr murder a bunch women and children as a big #### you to Outsiders and then zombie Captain Boomerang killed Jr and at the end of the crossover, the white lantern brought Boomerang Sr back to life. This is how much Geoff Johns wants to write a story about an Australian supervillain who throws boomerangs at a guy who can move at the speed of light.
Considering how John’s Captain Boomerang takes very little from Ostrander’s Suicide Squad run (where Boomerang received years of character development), even people who like Captain Boomerang aren't pleased with this. Don't even get me started on the beanie.
90% of this series's plot comes out of left field in the last two issues. If you haven't read them yet, you might not want to read this review yet. Then again, I gave this issue a 2/5 so maybe its not that big of a deal to you.
Quick recap. At the end of Blackest Night, a white lantern revived a bunch of dead heroes and villains and (relatively) soon, gave each of them a task. For Firestorm, Martian Manhunter, Hawkgirl and Hawkman and Aquaman, their tasks were irrelevant and they were seemingly killed when they completed them. Professor Zoom’s task was the bring back the Flash (which is silly because both Professor Zoom and the Flash are alive and well in the future and they don’t need a magic white lantern to bring them back from the dead but whatever) because, you know, Geoff Johns ran out of Wally West stories and decided that Flash meets CSI would be an interesting story to tell. He’s kinda right. The only problem with the new Flash book is that it’s full of retcons (but you knew that when I said it was a Geoff Johns book) and that it takes 8 issues to tell storylines that could be resolved in 1 issue. Max Lord’s purpose was to stop a metahuman war (but really it was so that they could sell a JLI book which had a 24 issue storyline that would have been a 3 issue storyline back in the 80s ). Deadman’s purpose was apparently to eat cheeseburgers and hang out with his grandpa. Captain Boomerang’s purpose was so that Geoff Johns could finally tell a story about Captain Boomerang. He’s been trying for some time, now. * Jade’s purpose was to make people read JLA, Hawk’s purpose was to make people read Birds of Prey and Osiris’s purpose was to make people read Titans. I can’t speak for JLA because after Robinson’s Cry For Justice, I didn’t particularly want to read his JLA. Birds of Prey and Titans were awful (Birds because Simone doesn’t research characters properly before using them. Titans because…well everything about that book was bad) and I dropped both books after a few issues. The white lantern also created a forest in the middle of Star City for Green Arrow to play Robin Hood in.
This brings us up to the last couple of issues of Brightest Day. We’ve spent about 22 issues doing things that aren’t really important to the plot with mixed results. Martian Manhunter and Aquaman were pretty cool distractions. Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s stories were pukeworthy. Once all the filler stories were told, though, we were left with several seemingly dead heroes and Captain Boomerang, Hawk and Dove on a collision course. Then all of the sudden, Swamp Thing comes back from the dead as a Black Lantern. The white lantern explains that Nekron (the big bad from Blackest Night) has imprinted himself on Swamp Thing and so now Swamp Thing is trying to destroy a special tree in Star City’s forest because it’s some special tree from the Parliament of Trees which would probably mean something to you if you had read Swamp Thing’s book.
So the white lantern turns the dead heroes into elementals which is okay, I guess but it leaves us wondering why we had to sit through a bunch of Hawkman stories to get Hawkman the air elemental when freaking Red Tornado is right there, already an air elemental and a far more interesting character. The white lantern brings back Alec Holland (the original Swamp Thing...sorta) to fight the evil Swamp Thing but it can’t bring him back fully because somebody has to die first. Somebody has to die for the white lantern to resurrect somebody? This is news to me and seems to contradict the rest of the series but maybe nobody brought up that people had to die for the white lantern to resurrect heroes at the end of Blackest Night since presumably thousands of people died during that event and maybe bringing birds back to life doesn’t count. So anyways Captain Boomerang throws his boomerang at Dove. Hawk tries to catch it but it slices his hand. Deadman steps in front of Dove and takes the boomerang for her. He dies and Alec Holland lives. This is dumb. We’re expected to believe that the white lantern resurrected Boomerang, Hawk and Deadman so that Deadman could die, which would allow Alec Holland to live? WHY THE HELL DIDN’T THE WHITE LANTERN JUST BRING ALEC HOLLAND BACK TO LIFE AT THE END OF BLACKEST NIGHT? Because then Geoff Johns couldn’t tell stories about Captain Boomerang and because then, we’d have to cut out half of Brightest Day and have even less content in this storyline.
Anyways, Alec Holland turns into another Swamp Thing to fight the Nekron Swamp thing. Apparently, Jade did something in JLA to weaken bad guy Swamp Thing so Alec and the elementals stop the bad guy Swamp Thing. Hooray! Good guys win. Deadman and Dove admit that they love each other (since Dove has whatever powers the plot calls for when Geoff Johns is writing. In this case, she can hear ghosts). This is also dumb. Dove is frankly too good for Deadman. Deadman is selfish and uninteresting. The only thing the character ever had going for him was that he was funny and could possess people. Throughout Brightest Day, Deadman hasn’t been funny and he couldn’t possess people. He was just the white lantern’s butt monkey and I refuse to believe that eating a couple hamburgers together and making out one time is love. I’m sorry. Love is more complicated than that. Love is not that contrived. However, since we’re reading a story by the same guy who is writing the Hawkman/Hawkgirl love story, this is about the quality of romance that we’re to expect.
As in all recent Geoff Johns crossovers, half of the last issue is spent as an advertisement for new books and for the next big event. We get a bunch of Swamp Thing and a splash page (first rule of Brightest Day: there can always be more splash pages) with John Constantine. Firestorm talks about how he’s going to explode in 90 days. Aquaman talks about how the bad guys in his storyline had Atlantian weapons, implying there’s some conspiracy for him to uncover when his new book is launched. This is all meant to make the reader want to go buy these books but I can’t imagine really caring unless Alan Moore or Peter David is going to be writing one of them. It just feels really anti climactic to end the story and then rather than provide the characters with resolution, immediately move on to trying to sell your next story to the audience. YOU HAVE TO READ MORE AQUAMAN! AQUAMAN’S STORY IS NOT OVER! ALSO CHECK OUT TEEN TITANS FOR MORE AQUALAD! That’s okay. I think we’ve had enough Aquaman for now.
The good: Dove didn’t die. Aquaman’s regular hand is okay even though Black Manta cut it off a few issues ago. I would have hated for him to pull a Professor X by being injured, healed and injured in the same way again as writers shift. Hawkgirl dies for reals (read: until another writer wants to use her) meaning that we don’t have to see her and Hawkman being all lovey dovey anymore. Seriously. The worst part of Hawkman is Hawkgirl and vice versa. The art is also good so props to Ivan Reis. Finally, Swamp Thing being pushed in the mainstream is kinda cool, even if it was rather out of the blue.
The bad: A half dozen splash pages in one issue, contrived love stories, nonsensical plot points, blatant advertisements for other series thinly disguised as plot, mainstream readers being expected to know who John Constantine is and the entirety of Brightest Day’s actual storyline being crammed into the last 2 issues.
Overall: 2/5
*During Mark Waid’s Flash run, Wally West (the Flash to most people under the age of 30) was sent to an alternate dimension or was time traveling or something. For a couple issues, an alternate version of Wally who went by Walter, aka the Dark Flash, took over for Wally in his book as well as Titans and JLA. Captain Boomerang got in a fight with Walter and Walter threw an exploding boomerang back at the good Captain, crippling him. This helped motivate Replicant (a character who was swept under the rug because he had the powers of all the Rogues and therefore made the Rogues irrelevant and Geoff Johns likes the Rogues) to become a supervillain. Mark Waid’s run on the Flash ends and Geoff Johns takes over, deciding to bring back all the silver age Rogues who have been retired since Barry Allen’s death in the late 80s. This was for the most part well and good except Captain Boomerang was still crippled. So Johns had Deadshot inject Boomerang with Joker venom so that Boomerang’s wounds would heal and he could use him too. Then Identity Crisis came along and Brad Meltzer killed off Captain Boomerang. So Johns just took Captain Boomerang’s son and turned him into the new Captain Boomerang….until whoever was writing Outsiders at the time decided that Boomerang Jr would make a great superhero. So Geoff Johns wrote a big crossover called Blackest Night where he had Boomerang Jr murder a bunch women and children as a big #### you to Outsiders and then zombie Captain Boomerang killed Jr and at the end of the crossover, the white lantern brought Boomerang Sr back to life. This is how much Geoff Johns wants to write a story about an Australian supervillain who throws boomerangs at a guy who can move at the speed of light.
Considering how John’s Captain Boomerang takes very little from Ostrander’s Suicide Squad run (where Boomerang received years of character development), even people who like Captain Boomerang aren't pleased with this. Don't even get me started on the beanie.
