Green Lantern #43

Blackest Night Prologue: Tale of the Black Lantern

Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Doug Mahnke
Inks: Christian Alamy
Color: Randy Mayor
Cover: Mahnke, Alamy and Alex Sinclair
Variant Cover: Eddy Barrows and Nei Ruffino
Letters: Rob Leigh
Assoc. Editor: Adam Schlagman
Editor: Eddie Berganza

Our cover shows the focus of this issue (and much of the Blackest Night event), Black Hand, showing off a shiny new power ring over the grave of Bruce Wayne. It's a striking reminder of the most shocking "death" from Final Crisis and the ominous arrival of a villain with power over death.

Our variant cover shows Black Hand battling Hal Jordan. Despite the rain and the blood pouring from Hal's mouth and nose, this cover lacks the drama of the main one. Everything just looks fake and plasticy. And the teeth are incredibly distracting. Barrows tried to draw every single tooth in both characters' mouths, but he drew all the teeth identically. Just a mouth full of incisors without any canines or molars.

In an ideal world, Johns' Legion of 3 Worlds story would have finished before his Flash: Rebirth story started. And in that ideal world, Flash: Rebirth would have wrapped up before Johns' Blackest Night epic began. But we're not in an ideal world, so we have to try to make best with a bit of overlap (I can only imagine how difficult it was for readers at the time). Unlike the past two stories, though, Blackest Night is a DC-wide event, and a massive one, at that. It is ostensibly a Green Lantern story, but it spread to nearly every other title DC was publishing at the time, as well as carrying its own dedicated miniseries. It's very easy to get sucked deep into this tale and the enormous Green Lantern universe Johns created, but this is a Bart Allen blog, so we're going to skim across the top.

This issue sets up the main villain of Blackest Night — essentially Death itself. At least, as far as we can tell so far. One of the Guardians of the Universe has split away from the others on Oa and has become obsessed with/corrupted by Death. This Guardian then works with Death to create the first Black Lantern — William Hand, better known as the Green Lantern villain, Black Hand.

Hand was the son of two morticians and always obsessed with death, even as young boy. As he grew older, he began hearing Death speak to him. And after surviving a near-death experience with some aliens, Hand begins receiving visions of all the major DC characters who have died and been brought back to life. Naturally, this includes our recently resurrected speedster, Bart Allen.

Death tells Hand he feels cheated by all these people, and he wants them back. So Hand agrees to become Death's herald. He kills his family, then himself. The Guardian arrives on the scene and vomits up a black ring that flies onto Hand's finger and tells him to rise. Hand's injuries heal and the "Zombie" Black Hand rises up and vows to extinguish the light with his new power.




This is actually a nice setup for a comic book event. Lots of people like to complain about how nobody stays dead in comics, so what would happen if Death itself decided to take that personally and start going after all the people who had cheated death? Unfortunately, I know how long this event is going to drag out, and I'm already dreading it. But that's nothing to hold against this issue.

I also want to note that this is the first issue I've reviewed that I don't actually own. I got these images through the DC Universe app, which has completely blown me away with the amount of digital comics they're making available. Old, new, obscure and popular. If you want it, you can probably find it there. It's not just a streaming service for Young Justice. And no, DC is not paying me to advertise this — I just genuinely am a huge fan of it.

Next time, we'll begin the story proper with Blackest Night #1.