Jeff and Matt BS About Comics: Blackest Night #1, Part 2

Jeff and Matt BS About Comics: Blackest Night #1, Part 2

Jul 16

Matt and Jeff have been confabbing about this week’s Blackest Night #1. Matt is turned off by the violence; Jeff is tolerating it. Part 1 ended with a precarious cliffhanger of the “Cyclops is dead!” variety. Is Cyclops really alive? Keep reading.

Yesterday, in our discussion of Blackest Night #1, Matt asked, “…this is all really just fanboy masturbation, right?”

Potential SPOILERS after the pic!

gnort

Jeff: I think that warrants the question, “Isn’t everything the top-tier publishers put out just fanboy masturbation?” Is the only attraction of any shared universe story a degree of nostalgia-mining and going through the motions on these very, very well-worn paths that have been tread since the ’60s? Is the only value that we can take out of a book like Blackest Night proportionate to what we bring into it in terms of useless trivia? Is the act of reading Green Lantern or Batman more like charging a battery than eating a satisfying meal? Why am I asking so many questions?

Matt: You’re a curious fellow, in more ways than one.

I think you’re right; to some degree, this IS all fanboy masturbation, nostalgia-mining, and retreading well-worn paths. I tend to enjoy corporate superhero comics to the degree that they either demonstrate high ability to realize those retreads, or manage to overcome them through story, characterization, creativity, or whacked-out meth-fueled insanity (see: Grant Morrison).

Where this pertains to Blackest Night is that I don’t think you can really judge any aspect of its quality based on whether or not it’s “friendly” to new readers. I suppose it may or may not be friendly to existing readers of corporate superhero comics who either don’t follow DC or don’t follow Green Lantern specifically, and in that sense, I think it catches everyone up pretty well, and leaves only the typical blanks that pretty much any superhero comic leaves, which are at this point designed probably to sell trade paperbacks of past storylines as much as anything else.

But we’re not talking about Joe Mythical-New-Fan walking in off the street, having read about Blackest Night in his daily copy of USA Today, and deciding to purchase it entirely of his own volition? Cause that ain’t happening. Which is an entire separate issue.

I have been thinking about how much of my problem with this comic is really just a problem with Johns’ writing, and I think it’s true that while you may be able to get past his obsession with graphic violence, I simply can’t. I think he goes too far, and I say that as someone who has no problem with the typical “adult” content of the average superhero comic.

Because in other regards, it’s a fine first issue event comic. It sets the stage well. It builds a scope of significance. It has potential cosmic-level impact on the entirety of the DC Universe. It’s playing with a common superhero trope, the cycle of death & resurrection, even if it’s doing it in a retread of the zombie genre that’s about four years too late. It’s got good small character moments and good big explosive moments.

Can we talk about Ivan Reis now? I love him. The perfect love child of George Perez and Neal Adams.

Jeff: Oh yes, we can talk about Ivan Reis. I think he’s the real story here, especially in terms of establishing scope and delivering on explosive moments. I think I first noticed Reis on Captain Marvel. It’s funny that a lot of those late 90s/early 00s Marvel artists that had so much promise like Reis and Tom Derenick ended up at DC. I think that ‘Perez/Adams love child’ is a nice, succinct way to sum up how great he is. He does severely iconic work. This is going to be the year he transitions from ‘being at a con’ to having a Jim Lee-style line out the door just to see him, I think. Man, some of those big moments looked really cinematic.

Matt: I first noticed Reis on Rann/Thanagar War, a mostly forgettable and slightly confusing Infinite Crisis lead-in mini that practically DEMANDED your involvement just based on the iconic power of Reis’ artwork. It’s like he was drawing for his life.

I’ll be curious to see what the impact of Blackest Night is on the DCU. I think it’s a no brainer that some of these characters are coming back for reals; Bruce Wayne will emerge from this event as himself, alive and Batman again, or I’ll eat my underpants. I bet Martian Manhunter’s a lock for a real return as well. I would love to see it sincerely usher in a brighter day in the DCU, just as they claimed the post-Infinite Crisis era would, but I ain’t holding my breath. What do you think will NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN after Blackest Night? Can they really alter “the nature of death in the DCU,” or is that just DiDio’s fan service hype?

Jeff: I was a big Rann-Thanagar War fan. It was a solid follow up to Andy Diggle’s Adam Strange mini and it had Hawkman fighting space zombies.

As for how this all shakes out, I predict that we’ll see most, if not all of the BLs come back to life and then, after that, the revolving door is jammed shut, at least for a couple of years. That’s how they’re going to alter the nature of death, I’m guessing. I’m pretty sure that, either way, we’re going to see Martian Manhunter and Aquaman come back, along with Sam Scudder and some of the dead Titans. At least. And frankly, it’s a much better way to magic away continuity than selling your marriage to the devil.

Oh, and seriously, you think that’s Bruce Wayne’s skull? I’m pretty certain it’s a ringer. If Batman were really dead, he’d be shambling around already. Like Hal, he’s proven to be something of a ring-magnet.

Matt: That’s true–I did forget about the living Bruce Wayne we saw at the end of Final Crisis, too. Maybe his return from the “dead” will somehow enter into the resolution of the storyline?

It’d be pretty cool if the final result of all this was that “dead means dead” for at least a few years. Then they could get a big storyline out of the first resurrection after that, treating it like a big deal and a violation of the laws of the universe, which is as it should be, I guess, although superhero death has never hung me up much. If it’s a good story for a good reason, I’m into it, and if not, I check out, just like any other story.

And with that, I’m kinda running out of steam. I need to go complain about something else now, somewhere else on the internet. It’s a busy job being a bitchy fanboy. Are we missing anything?

Jeff: Are you going to read #2?

Matt: I will probably read #2, but if I’m being 100% honest, I will probably find a way to do so that does not involve me parting with any of my precious American dollars. You?

Jeff: In for a penny, in for a pound. I am liking it much more than you are right now, but I’m not ruling out a point where my tentative enthusiasm is dried up by the inexorable progress of Johns’s bleak, gore-flecked parade.

So, that’s it, kids! Now, we wanna know what you thought? Are you as disillusioned as The Comics Commentarian? Or are you as rabid as the Newsarama posters who are disappointed that it will only take 10,000 deaths to charge a Black Lantern ring? Tell us below, won’t you?

5 comments

  1. I have this issue where I love Green Lantern characters but don’t much like Green Lantern stories. I asked folks on twitter to tell me if anything happened in this comic that I would care about, and Dan won the contest with “Hal and Barry bond in a cave.” If they made a compilation of “male bonding scenes from Geoff Johns comics” it would be one of my favorite and best loved volumes ever. As soon as you start telling me about what the different color lanterns do, I fall asleep. I can’t figure out if this is some kind of mental block or if there’s a legitimate critique of Johns’ writing in here.

    Anyway, if it’s not apparent, I didn’t pick this up and I probably won’t. I generally like big DCU-spanning epics — I thought ‘Infinite Crisis’ was solid and fun, and ’52’ and ‘Final Crisis’ are probably my two favorite things I’ve read in that universe that don’t involve Hal Jordan on a road trip.

    So, uhh, what was I saying — I’d love to see you guys continue to take this on so I don’t have to.

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  1. Journalista - the news weblog of The Comics Journal » Blog Archive » July 17, 2009: Becoming a bummer - [...] [Review] Blackest Night #1 Link: Alert Nerd (one, two) [...]
  2. Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources - Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment » Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes - [...] | Jeff Stolarcyk and Matt Springer talk over the first issue of DC’s big summer event Blackest Night. “I…

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