Well here we are again. I apologize about putting off the posts, I do intend to write at more regular intervals, things are just kind of hectic right now with school starting up again.
Covering the tail end of last year and the beginning of this year DC comics ran a crossover entitled "Blackest Night." It was originally intended to be self contained within the Green Lantern family of comics much like the excellent Sinestro Corps War. DC smelling the gold mine they were sitting on decided to branch this out and make it a company-wide shindig. While most of the meat of the story took place in the self-titled limited series and in the Green Lantern titles, the potatoes were scattered all over the DCU. In a nutshell, the darkness that existed before the big bang was tired of life and wanted to end it all, so it send it's champion Nekron to eliminate all life and light in the universe. To accomplish this, Nekron brought back to life tons of dead super heroes and villains just itching to sell comics. Of course in the end the heroes save the day, and just like Saint Walker said, all was well.
Or was it?
While I felt Blackest Night started incredibly strong, around issue #5 it kind of started to slack. While I did enjoy the overall story, it seemed to be that each issue had one big "OMFGDIDYOUSEEWHATTHEYDIDTHERE?!?!?!?!?!" moment and some filler in-between. Probably the biggest shocker was the resurrection of 12 characters in Blackest Night #8. And thus the Brightest Day began:
At that point you could color me super excited. Firestorm is one of my favorite DC characters, and there's something about that classic Aquaman look that you can't deny. Unfortunately, Brightest Day has been no Blackest Night. Spread out over 52 weeks, Brightest Day ships twice a month for 26 issues total. We are now at issue 8 as of last week, and nothing of significance has happened. That's right, we're over a 1/3 of the way through and we just NOW learned what the characters were brought back to do. Brightest Day is also being used as a banner to spear head some other comic books that skirt around the edges of the main story: Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Emerald Warriors, Green Arrow, Titans, Flash, Birds of Prey, and Justice League: Generation Lost.
Part of the problem is I feel that there's just too much going on for a 26 issue limited series. While the issue of Max Lord is mainly being taken care of in the Generation Lost comic, there are still 11 other characters whose stories have to be crammed into less than 30 pages. Each issue so far gives you just enough to pique your interest and then it lets you down. Just when things get interesting we are forced to go to another storyline. I think it would have worked better as a 52 issue series, but that probably would have been too much for Geoff Johns to handle. I'm just wondering if Mr. Johns is stretching himself thin and this grandiose story he has created is going to fizzle out with a whimper instead of the bang I know he can deliver.
I will say that issue #8 was a departure as it was focused mainly on a handful of characters. The writing and pacing felt tighter than the previous 7, it remains to be seen if the series will keep it up. If so, kudos to DC for pulling off another killer storyline courtesy of the Green Lantern mythos. If not, this reader won't be surprised.
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