Reviews for GL # 48 and BN # 5

Geoff Johns has been building anticipation for his Blackest Night storyline for a few years now. Starting with Green Lantern Rebirth back in 2006, the current volume has been retooled (even Hal Jordan's origin has been reshaped to include the current arc's co-villain The Black Hand, who in the time of his debut was a light and harmless villain who has since seen a massive overhaul into a more sinister guise) and at the run's midpoint in the 20's, The Sinestro Corps War arc outlined what was to be a War of Light.

Now there wasn't just A Green Lantern Corps. Now there were Yellow rings floating around. As time went on (and I'll spare the details for those of you unfamiliar with this story), a Blue Corps came into play followed by a Red. The Star Sapphires, long villains in the Green Lantern pantheon now shine a light and are rounded out by Agent Orange (the orange light of greed) and the Indigo Tribe who of course wield the Indigo light.

Seven Corps. If it weren't for the skilled writing and heavy layers of plot and story put into this by Johns, it would all just come off like a complicated and more grown up version of the Power Rangers. If only the Power Rangers were this great or even this much fun...

To catch up to speed from the past few issues of GL and Blackest Night issues 1-4, something has caused the dead heroes of the DCU to rise again. They're all wielding Black rings and are allied with what has now become led by Black Hand and christened The Black Lantern Corps. In the last issue, it was revealed finally that the mastermind behind even Hand's motives is Nekron. Most current readers of the GL mythos found themselves scratching their heads and running to their local comic shops to figure out who this guy was. As it turns out, Nekron first appeared in the 1981 three part series Tales of The Green Lantern Corps. Astute readers of GL's third predominantly Kyle Rayner fronted volume will note that Nekron appeared in one of the annuals bringing dead GL's back to life albeit for a very short time.

This pair of issues brings us up to speed on seeing the wielders of the colors of light reluctantly teaming up to take down the Black Lantern presence - GL # 48 is predominantly dialogue and build up showing Red Lantern Atrocitus finally succumbing to pain and revealing why his anger is so strong while Blue Guardian Sayd makes a deal with Agent Orange Larfreeze in order to acquire his participation.

From there we're thrust into Blackest Night #5 where Barry Allen (the recently resurrected Silver Age Flash) is joined up by more current Flash and successor Wally West. The two are joined by various members of the JLA and JSA before Hal Jordan and the other ring bearers come in to neutralize the threat. This only makes matters worse however when Atrocitus's red ring activates the skull of Bruce Wayne that Black Hand has been carrying around all this time...

By issue's end, many of the DCU's major players who at one point in their careers found death but eluded it are now playing for Team Nekron and The Black Lantern Corps while Barry and Hal are left trying to avoid being ringed in themselves.

Blackest Night takes a break for the month of December and will resume in January with a wrap up scheduled for March. This series gets better and better with each issue and the layers that are able to be pealed back with the supplements of GL and GLC each month make for quite the ride. Geoff Johns at one point stated that he wanted to shape the Green Lantern mythos to be epic to the point of being on par with a saga such as Star Wars. If he keeps down this road, he won't be bluffing in his claim.

If you haven't latched onto the Blackest Night yet due to worries of too much past continuity or not enough knowledge of characters, don't let that deter you. There's enough accessibility to where you won't be needing to reference Wikipedia every page (well, maybe every ten or twelve pages...)

Solid.