In brightest day, in blackest night... The Green Lantern Oath has been the same for over 50 years at this point, and while bits of the oath have been used frequently as part of comic titles and episode names, Geoff Johns saw the potential for huge events for the DC Universe. Blackest Night was the biggest event in DC comics from 2009-2010, as Black Hand and Nekron used the power of black power rings to bring the dead back to life in a super-powered version of a zombie apocalypse. Despite being an epic event with countless impressive two-page spreads from master penciler Ivan Reis, the event also featured many moments of real human emotion from a wide variety of characters in the DC universe. The Black Lanterns fed off of the emotional spectrum and attempted to make the living express them so they could feed of it and create new soldiers for their army. This event also introduced the Indigo Tribe, a new group of enigmatic, mystical Lanterns who were created by Abin Sur (the Lantern Hal Jordan inherited his ring from, for those overwhelmed by the history aspects of this week) to aid in the prophesied Blackest Night by bringing the Indigo Light of Compassion to the war. It was later revealed the the Indigo Rings are more or less brainwashing devices and that the Lanterns themselves were the worst, most unrepentant murderers in the universe, forced to feel compassion by wearing the rings. Iroque, the woman we knew for the longest time only as Indigo-1, however, was deeply affected by the effects of the ring and came to be one of the most compassionate beings in the DCU without having to wear her ring, a redemption that echoes Hals own journey from Parallax to redeemed Green Lantern. Eventually, all of the Lanterns combined were not enough to stop Nekron, but by channeling the opposing force, the White Light of Life, Hal and other DC superheroes were finally able to defeat him. The event brought back several heroes and villains back to the DC Universe (most notably Aquaman), but more importantly, it solidified the Green Lantern mythos as one of the defining aspects of it. I feel that this event truly solidified Green Lantern as a money franchise and helped elevate Hal Jordan to the level of Superman and Batman in the eyes of DC Comics fans. While Green Lantern obviously has a long way to go in terms of being a truly A-List property for the more casual, movie-going audience, Blackest Night was a major step up for Green Lantern, and for everyone else involved. It showed off the rich mythology that Geoff Johns had been building and brought it all together in an epic event. It was high on action, high on drama, and high on character development. Its everything you want when you read a comic book. Unfortunately, I will admit that there is a bit of a gap in my knowledge in the Brightest Day aftermath, but from what I understand it has a lot of thinly veiled Biblical religious allegory in it that doesnt really interest me. The important thing to note is that Hal Jordan was expelled from the Green Lanterns and Sinestro returned to the Green Lantern Corps, and that is where the two characters were when the New 52 was launched. I really enjoyed the New 52 Green Lantern series, as it played like a buddy cop movie, showing off the complicated friendship between Sinestro and Hal Jordan. This really established that Sinestro could be a force of good and that Hal could learn things from him. However, even though I was enjoying it, I could sort of tell that Geoff Johns was starting to run out of ideas. Or, at the very least, he wasnt as passionate about the universe after nearly a decade of work on it. What really made this sink in for me was when Hal and Sinestro were put in the background of the book to focus on new character Simon Baz, the very same month that Hal was removed from the Justice League line-up. Simon Baz is notably for being an Arab-American hero who has had to grow up with the prejudices one could expect from the last thirteen years of growing up in America. He is a mixture of Hals chaotic good nature, not afraid to stand up to corrupt authority, and Sinestros willingness to be the bad guy in order to protect those he cares about. I like him well enough, but I did think that it showed that Geoff Johns was starting to burn out on the character. But man, did he burn out with a bang.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:26:50 +0000