Blackest Night

I am a huge comic book fan, so the fact that I have, as of yet, not posted many reviews of graphic novels, is surprising. I am remedying that oversight now. ;)

Blackest Night is a 2009-2010 “crisis crossover” event in the DC Comics Universe. A crisis crossover is basically where the heroes of all of the titles (and some who have no titles of their own) come together to face some huge threat to Earth, some other planet, or the universe. BN is unique among many crossovers in that it is not directly a sequel to any of the previous crossovers, but still is to a great degree the most ambitious and influential crisis crossover since the late 80's Crisis on Infinite Earths. At least, it was until the entire DC Universe was rebooted with Flashpoint.

BN seeks to explain the much-maligned practice of “comic book deaths in general, and especially during the past twenty years odd years. “Comic book deaths” is a term referring to the practice in comics (and some other media) of continually having characters die and come back to life later on. The authors sought to explain how this all occurs in such a way as to have the characters' returns due to some rational (though evil) force causing this to happen for it's own purposes. The only problem with this is that the ending of the graphic novel leaves room for whether this plot point actually is true or not.

The story starts out with one of Earth's Green Lanterns, Hal Jordan, with his friend, Barry Allen, one of the Flashes, talking together over the grave of Bruce Wayne. That's another story. They are confronted by a dark force that is trying to kill heroes and bring their bodies back to life as a tool to help accomplish a dark purpose. The dark force, Nekron, is the personification not so much of death, as he is of the absence of life. His rival is the embodiment of creation, and he seeks to destroy all of life in order to have the peaceful “emptiness” that he seeks. Unfortunately, the heroes may fall into his trap and help him in his plans....

The story line, as I said, is ambitious. Most of the “crisis crossovers” are seemingly designed to just lure readers into trying new titles. Not that this is bad, as comics is, after all, a business venture. The problem is that the story doesn't actually need the loads of characters introduced. BN is careful to make use of the characters, and it shows. I haven't read the off-shoot stories in the other titles, just the main story in BN, but if they are like the primary story, then the characters were used well.

That said, the philosophizing, while not as annoying as in other comic story lines, is really grating and unnecessary. I feel like telling these heroes to focus on the story and the battles they are in, instead of shouting out platitudes while they fight the bad guys. Again, it isn't as bad as in some other stories, so I can accept it.

The artwork is just beautiful and vivid. Of course, sometimes the artwork becomes horrendous nightmare fuel given the fact that the vivid illustrations depict unpleasant scenes. But all in all, the pictures themselves are worth seeing, as they are just some of the most beautiful work I've seen in a comic. Blackest Night is a superb piece of comics and must read for any comic book fan, with illustrations that should catch the interest of even non-comic fans.

Highly Recommended. ( )

Making a point that I've made before w.r.t. DC graphic novels, the mythos is damn near impenetrable. I picked this up at library and by the end of it I was no clearer on what or why. Even who was a challenge since all the zombified characters looked the same. The artwork was wonderful but it was too damn difficult to care about the story. I'm sure if you are a hard-core DC fan that this would be a very interesting read, but not for a casual comics fan. If you are interested, the story is told over 6 or 7 graphic novels, so you are in for a long haul. ( )

Very cool. Anyone who is a fan of the DC Universe or graphic novels in general should check it out. While the plot seems stretched at times, it's pretty deep overall. However, check it out just to see Ivan Reis's spectacular artwork. Wow! Amazing. ( )

This book has made me what to invest more time in comic books and in writing in general. This series was well written and well illustrated. This is a must have for true comic book lovers

Zombies are risen by the Black Ring, while the other colour rings come to rescue, all the heroes who people thought were dead are walking the earth and several who were resurrected are walking again. The events are worldshaking and should be quite scarring to a lot of the participants.

It was readable, I'm not a fan of absolutes or zombies and while the different shades show the bad aspects of some ideas they don't use the opposites, except for compassion.

It's interesting, I don't regret reading it and the events flow from the Sinestro Corps war. ( )