Weekly Comic Book Review

by Geoff Johns (writer), Ivan Reis (pencils), Oclair Albert & Joe Prado (Inkers), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Eddie Berganza (editor)

The Story: We’re deep in Act II of Blackest Night, so things aren’t going so good. The Flash, Mera and the Atom are being overwhelmed at the JLA headquarters. The heroes of the rest of the world are being overwhelmed as well. The Earth, as the new focus of the war of light, needs a field marshal, but the Indigo Tribe has taken Hal Jordan, the most obvious choice, away. A hero steps forward. But is it too late? That slow charging of the Black Lantern power battery has reached 100%.

What’s Good: Things are pretty bad at the midpoint of DC’s zombie apocalypse. If you like your heroes in tight spots, and watching some of them have their hearts ripped out, this is your book. If you like heroes, real, old-fashioned, inspiring heroes, then this book is for you. A hero is only as good as the villain he fights, and in this case, Johns has given the villains pretty much all the cards. The tension in the writing is high, and the pacing is great. There are so many twists and turns that the book seemed like a larger experience than 27 pages it was. As a throw-away compliment to Johns, the dialogue was excellent: natural, tense, doubtful, inspiring, fearful, denying and spooky, depending on who was talking.

Reis, Albert, Prado and Sinclair deliver some very fine art as well. I’m loving the Flash effect of having two images of the Flash in any given panel. It really communicates the essence of the Flash. The colorist and inkers really have to take some credit for this too. No doubt Reis has in mind what he wants things to look like based on his pencils, but with the Flash effects (and some light effects), the inkers have a much harder time of figuring out where they have to ink heavily (it is a horror book), where they have to ink lightly, and where Sinclair is going to add color with no lines at all. It all works really well.

What’s Not So Good: I am not an unseasoned DC reader, but when you crowd dozens and dozens of dead heroes and villains into the pursuing background, color them all gray, drop 20-50 lbs off of each one and remove the skin in some cases, it gets a little hard to recognize who exactly the heroes are facing. This detracts from how we experience the torment of the heroes. I don’t have a solution. The art has integrity of vision to it that I have to respect, but as a form that communicates the story, I think some trick has to be found for letting the reader know who everyone is in any panel. The reason superheroes had brightly colored costumes in the first place was not to serve the story, but because when old printing plates got hot and art got blurred, it was the only way to tell people apart in the four-color world. Technology has advanced since then, but I think an event like Blackest Night is facing this same problem.

Conclusion: Blackest Night is the event that everyone should be following. Don’t miss out.

Grade: B+

-DS Arsenault

Filed under: DC Comics | Tagged: Adam Schlagman, Alex Sinclair, Atom, Black Lantern, Blackest Night, Blackest Night #4, Blackest Night #4 review, Comic Book Reviews, comic books, DC Comics, DS Arsenault, Eddie Berganza, Geoff Johns, Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Mera, Nekron, Oclair Albert, The Flash, Weekly Comic Book Review, Wonder Woman