Manic Monday--Blackest Night Roundup

Did I miss anything while I was in 1985?

Oh, yeah...

**Forgive me for being contrarian, but Blackest Night was crippled by a huge flaw: no decent villain.

I mean seriously, can you remember one line of Nekron's? One substantial thing Nekron did, besides stand around and posture?!? Can you even remember what he looked like, without having to go back to the comic to check?

He was completely ineffectual as a presence, a complete black hole in the center of the story. And yes, you can try to defend that with "he was an avatar of death, so of course he wasn't big on personality--he was more a concept than person." Well, I say piffle, and point to Thanos. He tried to wipe out all life in the universe, more than once--and he was never a cipher. He was interesting.

Which is not to suggest that Nekron should have been a Thanos clone. But Geoff Johns didn't even try to make Nekron a character--he was an attempt to impress the readership with with Johns' knowledge of continuity, and because Johns needed a villain who'd fit his...odd...cosmology. But he could have been literally anyone else in the DC Universe, because he wasn't given a scintilla of a scrap of any personality or characterization of his own. Which means, when you compare Blackest Night to Crisis I or any other "event," it has to be ranked farther down, because the quality of your adversary defines you to a large extent--and the adversary in this series had NO qualities whatsoever.

I mean, it's gotta say something when the Anti-Monitor is a more compelling character than your main villain, right? And it has to say something when Johns put FAR more effort into his Black Hand text pieces than in doing anything--anything at all, for heaven's sake--with Nekron.

**Let's whine about dangling plot threads, shall we?

Like, what happened to Sinestro? After Nekron separates him from the White Entity, we don't see him again. Shouldn't we have gotten something? He had been imprisoned by the Guardians, and scheduled to be executed...and the Yellow Corps wanted to free him, and the Red Corps wanted to rough him up themselves...so what happened? He just disappeared from the story. Did someone capture him? Did he escape, twirling his mustache? We don't have room to deal with this?!? Sinestro was a major player, and...poof, gone without even a syllable of explanation???

And what about when "Scar," the Guardian working for Nekron, captured the other Guardians (or killed them...this was very nebulous)?? Are they alive now? Free? Gone back to Oa? Chastened by the mistakes they made that helped all this happened? Arrogant and blaming others? Anything? Hello?

And at the end, Earth was being visited by all these hostile and antagonistic color corps. Did of the the Sinestro Corps just go home, even though Green Lanterns are supposed to detain them, and are authorized to kill them?? Did the Red Corps, supposedly filled with unquenchable rage, just kind of wander off without attacking anyone? Does that seem likely??

Seriously, I know everyone (including Geoff Johns, apparently) was distracted by all the big "surprise" resurrections at the end. But they sort of forgot to actually finish the story they were telling. Even if the Guardians (assuming they're alive--no one bothered to tell us) declared a general amnesty and told everyone to go home (and how likely does that seem, given their depicted attitude to the other corps??), does it seem at all likely that the Reds and Yellows would just meekly go home?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! What the hell actually happened?

**I can't believe that nobody was harping on this:

Aquaman has his hand back!!

Not that it matters to me that much, but you think more people would have mentioned it...

**Pot calling kettle black department: From the Brightest Day panel at Wondercon:

Was Blackest Night meant to be a commentary on the nature of death in comics? "Characters get killed all the time in comics," Johns said. "We wanted to do away with that tool for a while—when a character dies, they're dead. Try to give death a meaning in the DC Universe again."

This from the guy who did more than anyone else--much, much more than anyone else--to take away the meaning of death in the DC Universe in the first place. It's kind of like Bendis and Quesada complaining about how Marvel had mysteriously become less heroic under their tenure, and then expecting us to applaud the Heroic Age.

[James]Robinson: "Can I just say that there are characters that I wish came back that didn't, but Ted Kord died a true hero's death," saying that bringing him back might diminish that.

Yeah, because Barry Allen didn't die "a true hero's death." I guess he just tripped and fell down the stairs or something...or maybe he was just killed to prove that Maxwell Lord was a villain now. Now that's heroism. Anyway, bringing Barry back in no way diminished his sacrifice, right? Right? Hello?

**Why do so many of these rings involve vomiting?

Seriously, Geoff, that's kinda sick (and odd)...