Cavalcade of Awesome

Summer of 2009 began the DC event, Blackest Night.  At the conclusion of the Sinestro Corps War, DC teased the coming of the Blackest Night prophecy.  The Guardians of the Universe told of the coming of 5 new Lantern Corps, each backed by a different color of the emotional spectrum.  This fracturing would lead to a war of light, the coming of the Black Lanterns, the dead rising and the eventual destruction of the universe.

The Blackest Night mini-series was eight issues long and first appeared in June 2009.  The story starts with Black Hand walking amongst the tombstones of a cemetery. He grabs Bruce Wayne’s skull and carries it with him (this was obviously during the time just after Bruce Wayne’s fate is revealed in Final Crisis).  Black Hand keeps talking about a coming war and retribution.  And the coming of “him” (who we’ll discover later).

We see black rings invade the Lantern crypt on Oa and start reviving all of the formerly deceased lanterns.  These “zombie” lanterns become the beginning of the Black Lantern Corps.

More formerly dead heroes are resurrected all over the DC Universe and begin joining the Black Lanterns.  Black Hand seems to be in charge, but he keeps referring to another as being his master.  Heroes around the DC universe are kept busy battling the undead lanterns.  We even see a supposedly undead Bruce Wayne Batman.

There’s not much that’s more bad ass than a zombie Batman puking up black lantern rings.  Am I right?  And that is the crux of aweomeness for this event.  Seeing formerly dead heroes rise from the grave and fight the current heroes.  We even see undead zombie Guardians of the Universe who set this whole mess into motion.  It’s all pretty bad ass.

We eventually see the architect behind this whole mess and the creation of a new, white ring which is used to help resurrect an old DC Universe foe but is then used to finally defeat the undead menace and all of his minions.

This whole event is very ambitious.  And it’s LOOOOOOOONG.  The main Blackest Night series is only 8 issues, but there are over 50 crossover issues.  Check out DC’s suggested reading list for Blackest Night.  Click it to see the list BIGGER on Flickr.

I attempted to read the entire thing, but I couldn’t make it. There’s just too much f**king story. Plus, I didn’t really care about either of the Lantern titles (Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps) so I wound up skipping them. And there were tons of one-shots that seemed dubious. It really was too much story to digest.

So I read the flagship 8 issues for this review. The core story. I liked it. Johns really does bring a hugely epic, cosmic, universe filled story and makes it work. And Ivan Reis’ art is fantastic.  The 8 issue mini really felt in story, scope and art like the old Wolfman/Perez Crisis on Infinite Earths.  I may go back to read some of the supplemental stuff like the three Flash issues and some of the Superman and Batman titles.  But I’m perfectly satisfied with the 8 issue core story.  Definitely worth a read.

Now, I guess, I need to take a look at Brightest Day, the “epilogue” to Blackest Night.  But from the looks of it, I think it’s even bigger.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

This entry was posted on October 8, 2013 at 8:00 am and is filed under comic books, monsters, Superman, The Flash, zombies with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Batman, Cavalcade Comics, comic books, DC Comics, monsters, Superman, The Flash, zombies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.