Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Blackest Night #1

Tim Seeley Writer

Kyle Hotz Pencils

Dexter Vines, Walden Wong & Danny Miki Inks

David Baron & Allen Passalaqua Colors

Tom Napolitano Letters

Lee Weeks & Brad Anderson Cover

Full disclosure: I was supposed to review this issue before the Infinite Crisis one, but I got them mixed up. I hope you can forgive me. Anyway, our cover shows Sinestro being attacked by the Black Lantern versions of the Justice League. If you look closely, you'll notice that Sinestro is wearing both a white ring and a black ring. It's a fine cover, recapturing the inherent creepiness of Blackest Night.

Much like the Infinite Crisis retelling, this story changes just one aspect of Blackest Night: What if Sinestro didn't share the White Lantern power? Well, the immediate answer is quickly taken care of in just two pages. Nekron wins and turns everybody into a Black Lantern zombie. Sinestro is so distraught by his failure, he commits suicide. The remaining 40 pages of comic deal with the aftermath of this crushing defeat.

We head to San Francisco 19 days later, where Lobo is smashing in the skull of zombie Kid Flash. (And poor Bart's head will permanently be squashed for the rest of this issue.) Lobo has been hired by a mysterious benefactor to capture Dove, whose connection to the Lord of Order makes her immune to the Black Lanterns. And as such, she is the last woman alive on Earth.

As Lobo viciously tears the zombie Titans apart, he's bitten by Starfire, which allows him to demonstrate his immunity to the Black Lanterns — being a Czarnian, he's able to regenerate at a cellular level at will, thus instantly expelling any infection. Anyway, Sinestro soon shows up, revealing that the White Lantern ring wouldn't let him completely kill himself. So he mainly spends his time torturing the Black Lantern zombies by briefly reviving them with his white ring before his black ring kills them again.

Eager to atone for his failure, Sinestro travels with Lobo and Dove into outer space, where we learn the man who hired Lobo is Mister Miracle — the only New God who was able to escape the Black Lanterns. Mister Miracle has a wild plan to harness the energy of the Source to destroy all the Black Lanterns at once. Well, that turns out to be pretty tricky, and in one cool moment, zombie Darkseid kills Lobo, only to witness each drop of Lobo's blood grow into another Lobo (just like we saw way back in Young Justice #36).

Anyway, Dove, the embodiment of peace, was supposed to be the template for the Source energy to create new life from. But Mister Miracle was tricked into killing her, so Lobo killed Miracle in retaliation. In desperation, Sinestro used Lobo as the template, which successfully destroyed all Black Lanterns in the universe ... but unfortunately created billions of violent Lobo-like creatures.

Once again, I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting this story was. If it didn't rely so heavily on over-the-top, grotesque violence, I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more. Altogether, I'd say our two Dark Multiverse issues were a success.

Next time, we begin the final month of 2019 with Young Justice #11.