Between The Panels: Blackest Night #1 Review
Blackest Night #1 is an odd beast. Usually with reviews and most certainly with crossover epics, writers who review these things feel compelled to give a lengthy explanation of what exactly this story is about. Who the main characters are, why the story exists, and most importantly, what the hell is going on.
Blackest Night simply doesn’t need that explanation. Every part of the story is meant to take the reader on a journey and help you understand a great many things about the very universe it is operating in. The comic focuses on the various aspects that the story will be touching brilliantly, and also manages to focus on the characters. Something that is missing in a lot of epics, is the characters who participate in these epics. I can see the reasoning, there is an assumption that if you are reading this epic, you already know the characters basic traits. Geoff Johns avoids this by introducing the characters and through dialogue, individual moments and interactions, he imbues the knowledge of the DC universe into you, without you really knowing it.
This can prove frustrating perhaps to older readers of DC Comics, but I also found it refreshing to see how well this writer knows the universe he is writing in. Nothing feels forced, no one acts out of characters. In fact, thats one of the many complaints of characters IN epics, is that they seemed shoehorned into the story. One of the main complaints in Civil War was of supposed character derailment of a variety of Marvel characters. Not so in Blackest Night, in fact I would say the characters are distilled into their purest iteration to make each character viable to new and old readers alike. The artist too managed to make each character look their iconic best, and used expressions and little artistic flourishes to really immerse you into the world. Look on The Atoms desk after his talk with Hawkman, feel the anguish that Barry Allen feels after receiving a bit of news.
A fascinating aspect to me was the way the creative team managed to infuse an all encompassing dread into the work. A brilliant juxtaposition of writing and art lead you to feel the incoming dread of what exactly the blackest night is and means for the universe. Feel the dread as the black rings descend from the sky. Not only does the artist use cliches of old horror by having the rings appear as a black mass that penetrates defenses as it looms, but notice the wordplay that Geoff Johns uses about the sound the rings make. Every panel is filled with the idea of death, the effects of death, or the iconic symbols of death, skulls, flies, blackness, decay. Amazing.
The other major factor is the idea of resurrection. Be it Hawkman and Hawkgirls constant reincarnation, to the Death of Superman, to the return of Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, the comic doesn’t shy away from the idea of people coming back from the dead. It fully explores the idea, and probably will continue to do so. This along with death and the very emotions of the characters will be a major theme in the event. Emotion, this is the third and most important theme to the book. You wouldn’t expect emotion to so highly influence an action adventure superhero comic that is about death and zombies. It does, and does so so effectively you will wonder why events don’t play on emotions moreso than they normally do.
Geoff Johns mentioned bringing horror into the comic, and he wasn’t kidding. We have all see the promo images of the Black Lanterns, but they are only part of it. Look at how the artist draws Scar. Look how Black Hand handles himself in the various panels. The Black Lanterns are in fact quite scary, but it isn’t so much the zombie feel we were expecting. The artist manages to infuse the idea of horror into us with the symbolism of black mass, blackness, decay in the black lanterns. The real horror is also psychological as we not only get a glimpse as to what the Black Lanterns, not so much the master, wants. We get a glimpse that these black lanterns are not mindless zombies, the horror is how close to being like their past selves they really are.
The comic was by far the best start to a summer event I have seen in awhile. The fact that it has been building steadily for almost 4 years definitely helps that perception, but there is a feeling it has been starting for far longer than that for the steady DC fan, even the casual comic fan. Blackest Night is confronting head on the idea of how ethereal death is in the various comic book universes, and how bringing people back from the dead seems to have pissed off somebody. Make no mistake, people will always come back from the dead in comics, its the nature of the beast. It is refreshing to see the topic explored along witht he fact that the story seems to have been progressing for so long.
Do yourself a favor, whether you are a long time fan of DC or just a casual comic fan. Pick up this comic and immerse yourself into this fantastic world. You will see why people like events so much, why people like superheroes. In this event the characters really do shine. It might be a dark book in terms of theme
