Flashpoint: Green Lantern (comics)

Writers: Adam Schlagman, Jeff Lemire, Pornsak Pitcheteshote
Artists: Cliff Richards, Joe Prado, Ig Guera and a metric ton of others
Collects: Flashpoint: Green Lantern #1-3, Flashpoint: Green Arrow Industries, Flashpoint: Frankenstien and the Creatures of the Unknown #1-3, Flashpoint: Hal Jordan #1-3

So, the actual title is supposed to be "Flashpoint: World of Flashpoint starring Green Lantern", but screw that. Kind of long and a little redundant. Anyways, with all the New 52 reviews, I took a look at my trade stack and figured an interlude was in order. What better than a tie in from the event that led to it?

In theory at least; most of what's collected here really isn't that interesting.

Green Lantern has top billing for this volume, since six of the ten issues collected star the character. They're kind of underwhelming. Abin Sur survives the crash and the consequences of that turn out to be exactly what you expected. Neither series goes in any new or unique directions, which is a complete waste of the concept; this is, of course, an alternate universe that would temporarily replace the normal DCU, so it isn't like they had to worry about breaking anything. The writing is iffy at times - Hal Jordan holds together a bit better than Green Lantern - but more than that it's really not that interesting. Considering these two comprise over half the book, you can probably guess my score just as easily as you could the plot of either miniseries.

Green Arrow Industries does better for itself. Ollie never really grew up in this universe and ended up manufacturing weapons, all the while feeling like he was meant for something better. Time and again he fails to make the right choices. I liked some of the ideas - Flashpoint Ollie deciding to steal the gimmick weapons of villains and reverse engineer them into his own designs is a nice touch I'm surprised no one has done in the regular DCU - and it was a decent read. Unfortunately, the main plot kind of falls a bit flat; the comic could easily have survived as a character piece on a man who has lost sight of his better nature and become the supplier for a devastating war.

Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown, however, is where it's at. This three issue miniseries is a joy from start to finish. Ever want to see Frankenstein kill some Nazi's? Maybe decapitate Hitler? Beat the crap out of a military robot, all while flanked by a vampire, werewolf and merwoman? If you don't, imagine me looking at you funny. Why it was collected with Green Lantern is a mystery to me - Green Arrow at least has a connection beyond color, given that he and GL are basically best friends normally - and frankly I'd rather it had been put in with better material. Great as it is, it sadly cannot buoy a lackluster trade all by itself.

The art's barely worth mentioning. There isn't a single consistent artist for anything in here. It's pretty much a different artist for every issue. There isn't anything particularly bad to be found, but it feels like a patchwork quilt of different styles. I don't get why it happened either. As I recall the miniseries all had no more than three issues spread out monthly.

My Opinion: Skip It

There's little reason to bother with this volume. It isn't technically bad, all told, but it wastes the opportunity to tell different stories in a world gone to hell. Definitely get Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown, but you don't need to buy this volume just to get it. Pick it up in single issues.

Blackest Night (comics)

Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Ivan Reis
Collects: Blackest Night #0-8, Directors Commentary, sketches, scripts for deleted scenes and other bonus material

Ahh, Blackest Night. The culmination of the first five years of Geoff Johns run on Green Lantern and his third big event for DC. Thing is, I'm not a big Green Lantern reader. By all rights, Geoffs run on Green Lantern has a lot of things I generally like in comics - as much as it's been derided by the smarmy corner of internet reviewing, the mutli-colored corps are a hell of a way to throw color around and history will show I like that - but I've long had difficulty really caring*.

To tell the truth, that's been a bit of a problem for me in general regarding Geoff - I'm generally fond of his work, but Teen Titans aside he has quite the affinity for characters I couldn't care less about - but in this case, he threw zombies into the equation. I'm not a rock; I had to get around to this one eventually. It certainly helps that I loved the idea. After all is said and done, this one didn't sell me on the Green Lantern, but I have to admit that this is probably the most accessible - even if it isn't the smartest - event he's done to this point.

So, basically, lots of dudes in neon spandex like killing each other in space with rings that produce colored light. Of course, differences need to be put to the side when, holy crap, black rings show up and start reviving dead bodies. While on Earth, heroes and civilians are celebrating their own day of the dead, honoring the fallen in the line of superheroics. What a lucky coincidence that some black rings are around to raise dead loved ones and have them eat some hearts, right? This looks like a job for... some second stringers!

I'm being snarky, sure, but the idea is pretty sound. Basically, the black rings revive dead heroes and loved ones who could get a rise out of our heroes, causing them to feel emotions. They need these emotions to power up the Black Lantern battery, at which point they could really smack around our heroes. You can see why this was retooled from being just a Green Lantern story to a full on event; there's a lot of potential here for mining the storied DC history - which, at the time, was played as one of DC's defining elements - for emotional drama.

As you can tell by the contents, this was an eight issue event, not including the short zero issue that served as a prologue. That's a hell of a lot of room to work with, arguably too much for an event. These things are sold largely on hype, so somehow you need to keep wowing people each issue, in this case having to do so for eight issues.

To Geoffs credit, he pulls it off. The stakes are high early on and manage to keep going up. Even when you think "this is it, the good guys have it in the bag", Geoff will have one more trick to pull. As such, the book is filled with big moments that will stick in your mind, even if the general story does not. These alone hold your attention very well even in the collection; it must have been really exciting month to month.

It's a good thing Geoff knows how to wow you though, because his writing in this book is not always the sharpest. Some exchanges vary from either hammy to corny, while some of Green Lanterns cracks about "lite bright" and "rainbow brigade" are a little too wink wink, nudge nudge to fan grumblings to really work. For every moment that works - there's some speechifying Flash gives Mera and Atom about halfway through that I thought was effective - there's another that isn't.

Worse still, the book feels like a jigsaw puzzle with a few of the pieces missing. There are some quick cuts that are obvious setups for the tie-ins, but in the process the main story suffers somewhat. Green Lantern is spirited off a third of the way through the book to round up the rest of the corps and doesn't appear again until a while later, the whole recruitment bypassed. Similarly, you could be forgiven for forgetting the Lanterns in space are in trouble too, because after some quick setup early on showing them besieged by black rings, we almost never see them again until the end.

Sloppy, confusing and stupid. Probably easily fixed too with a bit of trimming.

All that said, if you ignore these moments, the book IS readable. Like I said, it's pretty accessible even if you don't care a whit about Green Lantern. This was clearly what they were shooting for. Of course, the fact that "readable" and "genuinely great" aren't the same thing happens to be lost in the process. Still, I'm not sorry I read it, which is a hell of a lot better than some other events I've read.

The event is bolstered by the presence of Ivan Reis, who is on art duties from start to finish. His work is great as always. The coloring isn't quite as lush as Brightest Day - considering this is a story dealing heavily in death, it probably shouldn't be - but the actual linework is still top notch. No artist changes midway through either, which really bolsters the book. Better written events were practically sunk by art shifts partway through; had the same fate befallen Blackest Night I think it would have joined them. Never underestimate the value of a consistent look.

The Score: 7 out of 10

Not as great as I hoped it would be when it was in the midst of monthly serialization, but it's definitely a solid seven. It might have fared better if the Green Lantern issues were included in their proper place; at times it felt like I was only getting half the story. I imagine I will get to that collection eventually. In the meantime, the core event is worth a read at the least. But unless you're a fan of Geoffs ongoing Green Lantern saga I hesitate the recommend an outright purchase.

* Actually, that's not entirely fair. There was a point during Blackest Nights publication where I had honestly considered trying to get into Geoffs Green Lantern starting from Rebirth on. The trade collection plans are what changed my mind. I wasn't happy when I heard the Green Lantern tie-in issues were to be collected separately, as what I'd heard made it sound like they easily slotted in the issues of the event and added a lot of depth. A lot of folks would have just sucked it up and switched off between the two books, but I'd hoped DC would eventually collect Blackest Night and the GL tie-in issues in a big ol' "Ultimate Collection". So far, it hasn't happened.

Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps

Writers: Geoff Johns, Peter Tomasi, Sterling Gates
Artists: Rags Morales, Gene Ha, Eddy Barrows, Jerry Ordway
Collects: Tales of the Corps #1-3, Adventure Comics #4-5, six pages from Green Lantern #49, Book of the Black

We're still in tie-in land here, but unlike last time, this ones actually got some measure of worth to it.

I kind of get the impression that a lot of what's collected here are odds and ends that didn't fit in any other collection put together in it's own trade. Obviously, the Tales from the Corps mini needed to go somewhere and I imagine the two Adventure Comics issues weren't exactly easy to place in a trade. Slapped together with six pages from Green Lantern #49 - which is clearly there only to give a chapter to the Black Lanterns - and the "Book of the Black" segments and you have quite the odd collection. The end result is a trade that feels like an anthology, which really isn't a bad thing.

It's fairly enjoyable and really serves as something of a primer to the Green Lantern franchise as it exists now. The bulk of what's collected are origin stories for various characters across the seven Lantern Corps, giving insight into some key supporting players in the franchise. If you ever wanted to see Killowog as a Lantern recruit or, say, Monguls history, this is the volume to go to. All of them are fairly enjoyable little stories - well, except for the Indigo Lanterns piece, which shows us that they're supposed to represent compassion and then tells us nothing else about the mysterious group - though the nature of the exercise keeps all of them at a short length. To be honest, despite the clear Blackest Night branding, the Tales of the Corps issues really have more to do with the "War of Light" amongst the different corps.

The latter half of the book is the one that justifies the tie-in banner. Six pages of Green Lantern #49 provide a Black Lanterns chapter for the book, rounding out the book with at least one story for each corps. It's presented as an origin story, but it isn't. It's the only story of the volume that doesn't work on it's own, because frankly it reads like what it is; six pages of a Green Lantern issue in the middle of the event. There's also a small prose section detailing the thoughts of Black Hand which was fairly interesting and perhaps even a bit creepy.

The last part collected is a two issue tie-in centered on Superboy Prime. Look, I like Superboy Prime. I'm not going to apologize for it. Ever since Infinite Crisis - and hell, even during it - he's become a gigantic indictment of comic fanboys, which I suspect is primarily why a lot of them hate him. I mean, he prowls on the DCMB for chrissakes. He's also good for a lot of metatextual stuff, since he supposedly lives on "our" Earth, or real life.

This tie-in seems to signal the character being set aside for a while. It's probably a good thing, as while I hope he comes back after a couple years, he probably needed a break, since doing the same joke without a pause tends to wear it out. Still, it's an enjoyable, goofy story in that Superboy Prime way, seeing him trash the DC offices and demanding they leave him alone to fighting Black Lanterns of all the heroes that he killed in Infinite Crisis. Well, all of them save Pantha; I guess Geoff Johns didn't want to piss off the four people who actually give a goddamn about the character again.

The art's held down by a bunch of pencillers that are particularly good at their craft, which is the long way of saying the art's pretty rad. They don't always get much to work with - these are short vignettes that typically clock in at six pages and never exceed twelve - but they make the most of it. Even Eddy Barrows turns in some good art - as you'll note my previous experience with his work was not positive - and how the hell can you go wrong with art from guys like Gene Ha, Tom Mandrake, Jerry Ordway and Chris Samnee? That's right, you can't.

The Score: 7 out of 10

It's ties to the event may be tenuous and it's probably the least necessary of all the Blackest Night tie-in volumes, but what the hell. I enjoyed what I read and to me that means a lot. If you want to read some origins, are in the mood for some quick stories or are looking for decent Blackest Night tie-in volumes, you could do worse.