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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Comic Book Review: Brightest Day #1



Last month, Brightest Day #0 set up the forward progress of the DCU. Today, we see where everything thing is heading, and the greater mystery begins to unfold.

Picking up right after Green Lantern #53, the white power battery is still set in the crater in Silver City, New Mexico. This is where Sinestro has brought Hal and Carol, to see if the Green Lantern can move the battery. The battery doesn't budge at Hal's attempt, and after seeing him fail, Carol brings up the story of the Sword and the Stone, noting that only the King, King Arthur, can remove the mighty sword from is stone sheath.

We are now brought to Boston Brand, the former Deadman, who reminds us that he no longer has powers, cannot been seen or heard while being left to the whims of the white ring. He is currently on a rusty ship in the middle of the ocean, and watches hopelessly as the child traffickers are about to abuse their crying prisoners. But the children don't get hurt, as Aquaman and Mera jump out to rescue the kids. They take out all the traffickers, with an impressive display of being bulletproof, and Mera's water-dragons. After beating out all the criminals, they realize that their is another boat with more traffickers on it, so Aquaman summons a unlikely creature to help out. With his call, an enormous octopus emerges from the water taking down the ship. But they realize something weird about the animal, it's dead. With another call, Arthur summons a zombie shark, and soon realizes that the animals are killing people instead of subduing them.

In Westport, Massachusetts, a butcher is slicing fish, while customers watch the news of Aqauman's return. One customer expresses his excitement for the return of the protector of the seas, and the sends the butcher in a blazing rage, using his knife to kill everyone in the room, and then running out the door.

In the Pittsburgh University lab, Firestorm in it's new combo os Ronnie and Jason, are arguing with each other, as the look for Professor Stein. After trading jabs at one another, the attempt to spilt into their regular forms, but it doesn't succeed and leaves them in great pain. After the failed split, Professor Stein speaks over a intercom from a room with Ray Palmer, where they reveal that can longer split, and that they have worse news...

On Mars, J'onn is moving the large block of ice he found underground, so he can melt it and create water to build back life on his home planet. As soon as the ice melts, a green stalk begins to sprout from the soil, and J'onn flies down to inspect it. He touches to little green plant, and immediately he holds his head as he becomes half black lantern. A vision appears in his head of his hands around the neck of Professor Erdel, the man who accidentally beamed J'onn to Earth. In the vision, he also notices a woman lying dead in the background. After returning to normal, he realizes that he was just a victim of a psychic attack coming from Earth, and sets off to the planet to find the girl in the vision he just had.

In the Peruvian Andes, the Hawks are being led by the Claw of Horus that was fused with Zamaron crystal. They now see the men in white snowsuits, who have the bones of the original Hawks incarnation, and chase them to a jet flying above. They break through the jet to take out the white snowsuit guys, and then discover the bones of their past selves, who perplexes them as they thought they were destroyed during Blackest Night. Before they can think about the discovery any further, a sneaky snowsuit buy send off a stun grenade of some sort, and with the Hawks distracted, he slips out with bones. As the Hawks rescue the unconscious guys with the falling jet, they realize that they're being targeted. The last panel of their story, is Hath-Set, who is in South America, holding their bones in the Peruvian Amazon.

The last pages are of the butcher we met earlier, as he watches his former shop explode, he walks into the ocean, only to emerge as Black Manta.

So with the second issue Blackest Night in the books, the mysteries kicks off, are there are many: The mystery of the white light, Aqauman's zombie issue's, Firestorm's splitting problems, J'onn's visions, and the Hawks bodies, it seems like there will be a lot to cover in twenty-weeks. While the issue was great, and the writing superb, a concern I have is the issue may have to many storylines for one issue. Even though the mystery deepened, we still didn't receive much progress on the stories themselves. Nonetheless, the book is sure to be entertaining to the end, and I look forward to discovering everyone's role is this new DCU.

1 comment:

  1. I Agree. Brightest Day # 1 is a stunning follow-up to Blackest Night and will surely jump-start the whole DCU in 2010. The best scene for me is the reveal of Black Manta in the last page. His rude reawakening is similar in context to the Joker's 'revival' in The Dark Knight Returns. Guess Aquaman and Black Manta are the animus/anima of the seas. The Hawkman/Hawkgirl part of the issue just felt...flat and out of place. Can't wait for the segment of the resurrected Captain Boomerang and his promise to make good his new-found lease on life, and Barry Allen's thoughts on all this. I'm no huge Flash fan, but their conversation in Brightest Day # 0 is one of the best incarceration pontificating scenes I've read in a long while. And that's a Flash Fact! :)

    - Tony

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