by: David Pinckney

Blackest Night was the biggest event in the DC universe since Final Crisis and has led into the universe's next event, the Brightest Day. As most of us do after an event like this, we tend to think back on the story as a whole which is the goal of this article and we are going do it spoiler free.

Geoff John's Blackest Night was great from the start. He gives the reader a very good introduction that promises a normal day in the DCU but eventually goes tragically wrong. From here, he does what he does best, he gives the reader a sense of urgency and just enough information to make you want to come back for more. Through the eight issues there is an amazing sense of pacing which is rather uncanny for comics of this nature. Are there slow patches? Yeah, but not so slow where you feel yourself trust trying to just dredge through it. We get a balance of some what slow, but very interesting and crucial informational parts, and a lot of very well done action scenes.

So what is the Blackest Night? Essentially, it's about the Black Lantern Corp “raising the dead” to fight along side their corp to erase life and emotion from the universe. Naturally the world's first line of defense is its ever popular super-heroes, but at the forefront of this battle between the dead and the living is Hal Jordan and the rest of the lantern corps. This really brings for an interesting assortment of fights as we see our dead heroes fight the living heroes in a universe altering grudge match. This scenario makes in very hard for our living heroes to fight their former companions. An internal conflict plagues almost all of the heroes as they have to put aside their thoughts and feelings towards the ones they once fought along side of and put them back into the grave they came from by any means necessary.

How it ends is for you to find out (I'm sticking with the spoiler free article) but it does invoke a bit of mixed feelings in some, for me, I believe that it ended very well. Like it or not, we cannot deny the fact that this was more then just a solid series of comics. That said, at the end we do get a new lantern corp that steam rolls us straight into the follow up event, Brightest Day.

In many ways the first three issues (issues 0-2, the only three out as of now) are in no fashion brighter then Blackest Night. There is still some pretty dark directions the stories take. With the dark and gritty aside, we now see how some of the heroes are coping with the events that happened prior and we get a question that still is up for debate, the question being “Who will wield the white light”. This question gives us so much to wonder which is what John's is good at, keeping us guessing. From the beginning we know of one who wields the light, but considering it's a corp we can assume there will be more then just this one person.

This isn't simply just a clean up of Blackest Night, rather it's an extension of the series from a different point of view with a new goal in mind. We have moved from defending the world from an onslaught, to our heroes figuring out what to do with all that has changed since Blackest Night #8. As for now, it's pretty good. Easy to follow, thought provoking but too early to tell the overall direction it's going to take.

Many people may be thinking “alright, well I missed out on Blackest Night, can I still read Brightest Day?” and the answer to that is, sorta. You don't need Blackest Night to read Brightest Day per say (this is based on the first three issues of Brightest Day) but it helps a lot and by not reading Blackest Night you are missing out an a fantastic limited run series. You will be able to piece together some information with just Brightest Day issue 0 through 2, but you won't get the same feel that you would get if you read Blackest Night first.

So should read the two events? Yes. Regardless if you are a DC fan or not, both series are written so well, that you can't help but love something about it. John's can even make characters that readers don't like pull some sort of emotion from them besides blind rage at their sheer presence. I know this from experience. If your local comic shop has Blackest Night still in stock you owe yourself the favor of at the very least, checking it out.

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