Blacking Out Over Blackest Night

[Derek Ramsey]

If your a comic book nerd, chances are you've already picked up, read or heard of DC's current event comic "Blackest Night". Well if your not really familiar with this well here goes.

After the formation of the 7 Lantern Corps, the Blackest Night prophecy has come to pass. All over the DC Universe, the dead have started to rise powered by black rings and wearing an emblem of the Black Lantern Corp. Their leader, William "Black Hand" Hand has recently killed himself to rise again empowered by Nekron's new power source. While other corps want dominance in the universe (or order in the cases of the Blue Lanterns and the Green Lanterns) the Black Lanterns merely wants to snuff out the life of everything in the universe.

Several dead superheroes in the DCU including Aquaman, Earth 2 Superman, Martian Manhunter and Firestorm have risen from their graves in order to become the first wave of Black Lanterns intent on killing everything on earth.

And they have successfully done so. Barely in the third issue of this 8 issue saga, several legacy characters such as the new Firestorm, Hawkman and Hawkgirl and Tempest (formerly Aqualad of the Teen Titans) have all been killed off in order to join the ranks of the undead.

Across the universe, in the Green Lantern world of Oa, the dead lanterns have also risen, switching allegiance from Green to Black.

Now I am going to stop spoiling anything else in this book and start giving out my observations, speculations and evaluation on this particular series.

First, we have to establish the main corps involved in the story. There are seven in all uses various colors that represent one aspect of life or another. These colors have a lot of representation in various religions, cultures and mythologies. I've been lucky enough to follow and read several research paper, blogs and dissertations regarding these colors in our society. They are:

Red - Rage
Orange - Avarice (or Greed)
Yellow - Fear
Green - Willpower
Blue - Hope
Indigo - Compassion
Violet - Love

All of these Corps are led by various characters that are a part of Green Lantern Hal Jordan's life (Star Sapphire Carol Ferris is Jordan's ex girlfriend while Sinestro of the Sinestro Corps was formerly Jordan's teacher and friend, Red Lantern Atrocitus was the killer of Abin Sur, who gave Jordan his power ring.)

Regarding my speculation, I believe that the Black Lanterns will be taken down by somebody that will bring the color White, which refers to the color of creation, the polar opposite of the Black. Various comic book forums and sites have been a buzz regarding the identity of the White Lantern of creation. Pointing out that it would be Green Lantern himself Hal Jordan. I really believe that there will be no White Lantern and that the ending would merely pit the leaders of the 7 Corps against the big boss of the Black Lantern's themselves, Nekron.

[Derek Ramsey]

@ Jonny G

Oh yeah. Aside from the heroes I've mentioned, as of issue three, one half of the firestorm matrix has been turned into a pile of salt. And solicits for October's issue # 4 shows Atom Ray Palmer about to be eaten by the deceased Atom Smasher.

[Jonny]

This sounds really cool actually, and that's coming from a die-hard Marvel fan. It sounds a little bit like zombieism, which kind of turns me off, but I think I'll definitely be following this. Are you predicting any of the MAJOR heroes die?