Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Blackest Night #7 of 8
DC Comics
Johns, Reis, Albert & Prado
The penultimate chapter in the main mini series continues to move around the pieces for the big finish. The comic book looks great, has some great confrontations and has a lot of loud moments, but its light on story. As has been the case since the beginning of this series (and the satellite titles) seems to not have enough story to fill in the duration, and yet, in the main series the story seem to be leaving out too much story. It's puzzling when you stop to consider the elements of the issue and how they get from point A to C while leaving out point B.
The bulk of the story in this issue is the reveal of the White Lantern. Essentially there is a being living on Earth that is similar to Parallax or Ion and it just needs a host of some kind to activate its power. Yes, it's very cool and there is a great confrontation leading up to the moment, most of which are caused by Sinestro, Hal and Ganthet. And it provides a nice twist at the end. However, the concept is lost because of the shaping of the villain.
There are two primary villains in the comic and they feel interchangeable. Nekron and Black Hand each have some action but what is the difference between them? They each can't seem to be defeated or cut up like most of the other Black Lanterns and they both seem to have specific undefined objectives. Lost in all of this is the power that they command. Why is it that they are so powerful that they can kill off Guardians at will but they can't just wipe out all of the Corps? The questions about how and when they became so powerful nag at me. It doesn't really help that they are put over via other villains (Anti-Monitor or Spectre) to show how powerful they are. All that does is make the story look like it steamrolled past the important parts of the story to fast-forward to the fight. While we've seen that in things such as DC Versus Marvel, you don't expect it from a crossover of this nature and scope.
The artwork is brilliant. Plenty of splash pages as the whole cast descends on the scene in this comic book. While the comic is colorful and packed it also contains some gruesome images, such as the execution of the Guardian. There is one sequence where Black Hand is battling with a character and then an explosion occurs and he seems to disappear. The thinking is that the artist simply forgot to draw him within the explosion, but that is not the case as we see a couple of pages later. These little nuggets amaze me at how comprehensive the art has been. We've seen a consistent and detailed art effort throughout this series on all fronts – pencils, inks, colors and lettering. To me, this is the highlight of the comic book and the series.
This comic book contains some terrific dialogue whether it's from Lex Luthor, Sinestro or Ganthet and this makes the comic flow very nicely. The artwork has all kinds of surprises on various pages and makes the comic book worth a read. The story is strange because the comic book gives no reason to feel that the villains are anything to fear or even that they would be difficult to defeat. This is what prevents the comic book from achieving a "can't miss" status. One other item of note is that the letter at the back of the issue points readers towards a website called inblackestnight.com for character bios. This is something DC should have advertised much earlier as it would have made following the obscure tie-ins much easier. This is a decent comic book but it is not worthy of the blockbuster event tag it's been given.
3 out of 5 geek goggles
