Blackest Night # 5 - Blackest Night Part 5

I've really enjoyed the Blackest Night series from the beginning and I followed all the tie-ins and mini-series related to it. Every time I read a Blackest Night book (especially Blackest Night and Green Lantern) I find the saga compelling than before and I'm really looking forward to it. 
In this issue, we see that Hal Jordan has already reuned a squadron constituted by a member of each corps,

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

(Hal, Carrol Ferris, Sinestro, Atrocitus, Larfleeze, Saint Walker and Indigo-1)

 
based on the theory that the combined might of the light of all of the Corps could form a white light (the light that Dove projects), that can destroy Black Lanterns (see Blackest Night 4 & Blackest Night: Titans 2 & 3). 
At the same time a superhero team formed by Barry Allen, Superman, Superboy, WonderWoman, Wally West and others take the fight to Black Hand, Scar and the Black Lantern Corps' Secret Guardian Nekron. If that name doesn't ring a bell on your head chef his ComicVine bio. 
But it's what comes next thing that happens that you may find more shocking. I know some people might have already seen it but I'm still putting it on Spoiler Zone.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Black Hand somehow turns Bruce Wayne into a Black Lantern and we see a Black Lantern Batman. If he's somewhere lost in time how can he be dead. That's the question! 
And more, Black Hand flyes Black Rings to Superman, Superboy, Ice, WonderWoman, Green Arrow and other heroes that have cheated death over the years and somehow he makes them die imediatly only by wearing the ring and turns them into Black Lanterns. And Hal Jordan and Barry Allen are the next in list: we se a pannel of them running from the rings.   

  
It was an enjoyable read but it felt like it was too quick: so much things happened in one issue.  

I'm not saying it was a bad issue. That's not it. I personally think you should check this issue and series out. 
Blackest Night is a big saga of this generation. 
Blackest Night (the main title) and Blackest Night: Titans are fundamental picks. 
And that's it.

It's been a long time since I felt compelled to re-read an issue as soon as I finish it… I was at the gym on an elliptical while reading this and I think I was creating a scene because I was literally freaking out, throwing my arms up in the air, and talking to myself while reading this issue. It was just THAT GOOD.

The meat of it:

You should have read Green Lantern #48 before reading this. The seven Lantern Corps have finally united in an effort to neutralize the Black Lantern threat. Believing they can destroy the Black Lantern power battery by creating the White Light they teleport to to start their assault. The issue started off with a scene that fans have been anticipating for a while: all the lanterns repeating their respective oaths at the same time, charging up together in a moment of harmony and cooperation. After that shit starts getting REAL, yo.

So here are the SPOILERS followed by some questions:

The assault on the battery fails. In fact there's a distinctly opposite reaction. Black Hand claims that their energy from their combined rings is only making Nekron stronger. Following this we see a single black ring emerge from the power battery…

This ring zeros in on the skull which Black Hand is holding (Bruce Wayne's) and reanimates what we believe to be a Black Lantern Batman.

It's hard to speculate that Bruce's personality was actually downloaded because this lantern doesn't actually say anything.

Instead he vomits several black rings which force themselves upon a number of heroes who have escaped death and were resurrected. This includes Diana Prince, Superman, Green Arrow, Ice, Animal Man, Conner Kent, and Impulse. The Black Lantern Batman construct disperses at Nekron's command and the rings he vomited kill the heroes they attached themselves to and induct them as Black Lanterns… This issue ends with two rings attempting to induct Hal and Barry… It looks like Nekron kept his word on reclaiming those who had escaped death.

So my immediate question is would any of these heroes be authentic Black Lanterns? Nekron commanded all of them to "DIE" as soon as the rings attached themselves but he never ordered them to "RISE." Instead as soon as they died their costumes changed into Black Lantern uniforms and they were under Nekron's control.

Personally I don't believe they are dead or genuine Black Lanterns. I don't think these heroes were "downloaded" like the others. There has to be some sort of distinction and hopefully it will be clarified soon. If they are indeed dead I'm even more curious how Geoff Johns intends to bring them back.

Beyond that I'm also left scratching my head over the significance of the statement "Emotional Tether Registered." It was repeated by the black rings a few times and I wasn't sure how it worked. I keep thinking about the word "tethered." It's like an emotional response is achieved and in the process the heroes re-established a link with something that they used to have. Maybe it's a link with the "other side?" Because it was only being said around heroes who have died before… Food for thought.

Also, when the Hell does Jean Loring have the ability to stretch her arms like Elongated Man or the ability to shrink like the Atom? Did I miss something?

This was an incredible issue and easily the strongest to come out of the Blackest Night storyline. Nekron still looks lame to me with the exception of when he first manifested himself last issue… But I can get past it! Five out of five.    

Nekron is here, with an army of black lanterns battling the Justice League and the rest of the heroes from the DCU along with the newly united lanterns of the emotional spectrum (see GL#48). This issue is all out action laid out beautifully with some truly awesome splash pages. So many amazing things happen in this one issue; Lanterns are united, Guardians die, and (MAJOR SPOILERS!) a certain undead Bruce Wayne becomes a pawn of Black Hand and Nekron and is used to turn the heroes of the DCU that have escaped death and been resurrected (i.e. Superman, Green Arrow etc.) into latest editions of the Black Lanterns! The issue ends with black rings chasing down the only 2 resurrected heroes to escape the black rings so far; Hal Jordan & Barry Allen! What an ending and what an issue!

*Note – To top it all off you get a free Green Lantern ring with this issue (lets face it, this is the ring we all wanted and have been waiting for)- that helps it nail the top spot for book of the week!*

The middle installments in a series are often where things slow down. You're not at the early, "this is what's going on" stage of your story, and you haven't yet hit the climax. So while it's certainly not always the case, if there's a slow stretch to be found, that's usually where it hangs out. So knowing that "Blackest Night" runs eight issues, I braced myself for a lot of exposition this issue, and sure enough, that's what I found. But just when I had gotten used to that idea... well, things didn't stay slow for too long.

There are some nice surprises early on in "Blackest Night" #5; a team-up that I thought wouldn't happen until almost the conclusion, for instance, has already started (and kicked off in "Green Lantern" #48, so make sure you read it first), and there are some good back-and-forth dialogue moments between the characters. But once we hit Earth, it feels almost like Johns has to give the characters there an obligatory scene or two. We hear about what happened in some of the tie-in mini-series, and on the whole the characters remain ineffectual -- which is really the one big problem with "Blackest Night" up until now -— while the Black Lanterns continue to walk all over them. There's just only so much of, "the heroes can do nothing to stop the bad guys" that one can take, after all. So by the time #5 has rolled around, it's hard to not groan out loud and think that we know that the Black Lanterns are generally unstoppable.

I guess that's why the second half of the issue makes everything much more interesting. Suddenly everything is rolling forward again, progress is being made, for both the good and bad guys. Johns has timed that moment almost perfectly, when you think about it. You're no longer expecting it to happen, and that sudden flip around feels good to finally occur. It's also a great usage of the cliffhanger; instead stopping the action at the climactic moment, Johns extends it by three extra pages to build on the moment and make it even worse. It's a nice progression of things going from bad to worse for our heroes.

Ivan Reis' pencils look snappy as ever; this is one of the few books where double-page spreads feel not only natural, but have the amount of punch that should always be required for those kinds of moments. It helps that he's got Alex Sinclair providing colors, for that matter; the glows of the various lanterns on the same panel look fantastic, and the attack on Scar halfway through the issue just sings. While "Green Lantern" is in excellent hands these days with Doug Mahnke on pencils, Reis' work here makes me miss him on the other title. Reis is definitely proving he can headline such a major event comic for DC.

Some of the tie-ins might have been a little iffy, but "Blackest Night" continues to entertain (as do "Green Lantern" and "Green Lantern Corps" and are really required reading for this mini-series). It's easy to see why Johns and Reis have pulled so much attention to this corner of DC Comics's stable. This is just good old action-adventure fun.    

             Here we are at issue 5 of 8 in the Blackest Night event. From the beginning I felt that the series was balls to the wall crazy with some of the better writing from Geoff Johns and art from Ivan Reis that is, in most cases, wonderfully hideous. At issue 5, though, it’s starting to feel a bit long. Somewhere near the end of the issue I actually started wondering what they were going to do to stretch the story out in order to get those final three books. Given the last page, I guess I can see where its going but I’m not convinced we need that many issues to wrap this up but given the series so far I have no reason to believe it won’t be good. Future predictions aside, let’s look at the comic itself.

This issue seems to pick up right after the events of Green Lantern #48 (although that issue says it takes place before Blackest Night 6…which I guess it does technically, but still) with what I will, from this point forward, refer to as the “Rainbow Corps” on Ryut in space sector 666 hunting the leader of the black lanterns and their power battery. One of the more clever moments occurs as each of the Rainbow Lanterns recites their individual motto. All except for Larfleeze, the orange lantern, who takes this time to complain about how hungry he is. I also liked that the Indigo Lantern’s recitation was completely unintelligible. One thing I didn’t quite understand was how the green lantern ring only charged to 100%. I was pretty sure that when in the presence of a blue lantern it could go beyond that, but that’s easily forgiven. One of the other aspects of the story I had a qualm with was the appearance of Dove who’s ability to use white light (I’ll admit I’ve never heard of this character before) makes her a great weapon against the black lanterns. I think the discovery of her use against the hordes of the undead happened in the Titans series and I have to say I’m not a big fan of pivotal events occurring outside of the main series that affect its story. It is, however, still to be seen how pivotal of a role her character will play. The biggest problem I had was the buildup we’ve had over the course of the series about Bruce Wayne’s return as a black lantern and the subsequent disappoint it brought. The guy lasted all of about 4 pages! He didn’t say anything, either, just spouted some black rings and created the emotional tethers I assume are necessary to create a black lantern. Other than that the story was solid, with a good amount of strong set pieces, a bit of humorous quips from Barry and Hal, and a little suspense as Necron reveals his intention to uncover a great secret about the Guardians of the Universe.

Ivan Reis is on a roll. I didn’t like him that much when he was working on Green Lantern (although that could be because I’d only known Van Sciven’s vision of that particular universe) but I’ve really grown to love him through this series. I will say that the cover is easily the weakest part of this issue. I didn’t really like the last cover either so I hope this doesn’t become a trend. On the interior everything looked pretty good but one thing that stood out was the use of one or two page spreads. There were probably five in total and it definitely lost some of the epic feel such things are supposed to deliver. The spreads started to seem like more of an artistic showcase than a story telling device. Besides that we get some great artwork with Necron looking particularly menacing, Jean having half of her skull removed, a great zombie Batman, and a very appropriate spread of the undead versions of DC’s finest.

            Blackest Night is shaping up to be one of the better events in comics. The central series has delivered and not relied too heavily on the audience reading auxiliary issues. It’s not perfect, what with Dove’s revelation in the Titan’s books and a good amount of story happening in the Green Lantern series, but it’s hardly to the extent of, say, a Civil War or Final Crisis. If these things stay pretty contained, Blackest Night could turn out to be a truly great series.