Monday, May 15, 2023

Blackest Night #4-7 (December, 2009-April, 2010)

Despite being a Superman-level space zombie powerhouse, Black Lantern Martian Manhunter was mostly sidelined for the second half of the mini-series event. I believe that he is only in one panel of #4, and completely absent from #5-6. The story began to expand outward into the greater DC Universe, with more personal interactions between living characters and the undead who torment them. A gigantic central Black Lantern Power Battery manifested on Earth, followed by its representative entity, Nekron. Ringbearers from across the emotional/color spectrum banded together, including Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Sinestro, Star Sapphire, the Red Lantern Atrocitus, the Blue Lantern Saint Walker, Indigo-1 of the Indigo Tribe, and Larfleeze. Their energies combined into a white light that was the only clear method of destroying the Black Lanterns. Earth's heroes also banded together to combat the threat... to their peril. Black Lantern Batman rose, and with him a wave of contamination of currently living metahumans who had previously resurrected, making Black Lanterns of Wonder Woman, Superman, Superboy Conner Kent, Kid Flash Bart Allen, Green Arrow Oliver Queen, Troia, and Animal Man.

The recently revived Jordan and Barry Allen Flash managed to evade this compromise, although when a group of Earth heroes took on spectrum rings, Allen became a Blue Lantern. Wonder Woman was restored by a Star Sapphire, Lex Luthor went orange, Mera saw red, the Atom turned into a shrinking violet, and The Scarecrow turned yellow. Luthor soon came to covet the other rings, but was fought off, then the majority of the actual ring corps made landfall. It was finally revealed that what had drawn everyone to Earth was a Life Entity buried within it, representing the ultimate combined energies, and the target of Nekron. In the face of mortal peril, it briefly conscripted Thaal Sinestro to be its White Lantern.

"Blackest Night" was by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Oclair Albert with Joe Prado.

2 comments:

Kevin from New Orleans said...

I wanted to let you know that Doomsday is getting a one shot & he'll be fighting Supergirl & M.M. , plus Bloodwynd is coming back in the issue.

Diabolu Frank said...

Hopefully nobody dies in that one, but I get the feeling somebody is.