By: Goeff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi (writer), Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Patrick Gleason, Ardian Syaf, Scott Clark, Norm Rapmund, Vicente Cifuentes, Oclair Albert, Tom Nguyen, Mick Gray, Mark Irwin, David Beaty (artists), Peter Steigerwald (colors)
The Story: This is the conclusion of the Brightest Day 24-issue series. Nekron is kind of back, as is Swamp Thing. The dead-then-alive elementals are in place. Everything is set to go.
The Review: Okay. This review is going to be a bit different because this is the capstone of a whole series. As such, a whole lot of built up tension is in play, and reader reactions are important. So, how did Brightest Day #24 make me feel? Kind of disappointed. This series had resurrected 12 people for some conflict of cosmic significance. I watched Martian Manhunter revisit a living and dead Mars. I watched Firestorm go up against the Anti-Monitor and a bunch of Black Lanterns. I saw the land world invaded by the underwater world. I saw Hawkman and Hawkgirl end their curse. The magnitude of these experiences had keyed me up for something large, of impact to either the whole DC universe or at minimum, just the Green Lantern mythos. In the end, it was nothing so grandiose. I read all 24 issues and reread #24, and I’m still a bit confused. That’s disappointing. Were there some good emotional moments in this issue? Yes. While the climax lacked emotional punch, there were some very good, small character moments, especially in the denouement. The Boston Brand – Dove storyline ended with a bite and gave this book and the Brightest Day series a bit of gravitas. Same with the Martian Manhunter reconciliation at the end.
So, how did I react intellectually? Well, I was confused and felt short-changed. Around issue #23, a new character and situation and character (Swamp Thing) was sprung on us out of the blue as the key to everything. Surprising? Yes, but not in a fair way. That’s called Deux Ex Machina and that hasn’t been legit in any storytelling medium for decades. If someone or something is going to be the key to your mystery in issue #24, then you have to introduce that someone or something in issue #1 or #2 and then draw the reader’s attention away from it, so that at the end, we are surprised, but are forced to say “Of course! It couldn’t have been any other way! Good job writer.” Anything else is just plain cheating and I felt cheated by this ending, even more so than I did about the let down in the scope of the conflict. Also, after you read this, give some thought to whether the key to the whole thing is really even Swamp Thing, or if the key is a D-list DCU footnote character. A measure of how haphazard the story concluded was in the sheer amount of exposition this issue required. Concepts had to be introduced and explained at the beginning of the book before the story could keep moving. This point of confusion was so bad that Firestorm and Boston Brand were asking out loud what’s going on in the first few pages of the book. Weak.
Artwise, as you can tell from the giant listing of the art team, you get different art on different pages. While the first part of the book, up to the climax, had pretty consistent and clear art (and visually attractive as well), the change in artistic style post-climax was so pronounced (and such a drop in beauty for me) that I wondered if I’d entered a different story. Ivan Reis’ stuff, as always was spectacular.
Conclusion: A disappointing end to something I thought was going to be big. If you’ve followed the whole series, I won’t tell you not to buy it, but lower your expectations. If you were waiting for the trades, I would say don’t bother. The series is not worth it. While I felt that Blackest Night had some great bang at the end, I feel that DC has now burned me on World of New Krypton and Brightest Day with lame, unsatisfying endings.
Grade: C-
-DS Arsenault
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