Blackest Night: Difference between revisions

Largely focusing on the [[Green Lantern]] mythos, the [[Big Bad|villain]] is an [[Eldritch Abomination]] named ''Nekron'' who represents the forces of death on a cosmic level, and wishes to consume all positive and negative life force in the universe. To take it, he needs to draw everyone into his realm... effectively making him an [[Omnicidal Maniac]].

* [[Anyone Can Die]]: Seriously. They really aren't pulling punches with this one.

* [[Back Fromfrom the Dead]]: The Black Lantern Corps - [[Came Back Wrong|kind of]]. Previous resurrections are also deconstructed, as Nekron permitted them in order to have [[Manchurian Agent|Manchurian Agents]] among the living.

** Turns out Nekron ''allowed'' people to come [[Back Fromfrom the Dead]]. All so that he could eventually use them for his own purposes. See Kick The Dog.

*** Of course not before Superboy-Prime tries to kill [[Dan Di DioDiDio]] (and all the other writers and artists in the DC building).

* [[Comic Book Death]]: This series is a deconstruction of this trope. It turns out that the resurrections of various heroes in the DC Universe were part of a [[Xanatos Gambit]] on the part of Nekron to give him thralls to control. A character discussion at the end indicates that "death is death" from now on. We'll see if that holds.

* [[Death Is Cheap]]: It's not, or as Nekron puts it, "You owe me a life."

* [[Decoy Protagonist]]: Inverted with Deadman, who turns out to be the most important, non-Lantern Corps affiliated, character in the entire story. He's the one who figured out how to beat Nekron!

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: The various alien entities that are incarnations of the various colors of the emotional spectrum, which has led to some fan speculating that these beasts may be like infant Chaos Gods from [[Warhammer 4000040,000]] in training, all except for {{spoiler|The Entity, which was born on Earth}}. Nekron especially counts; born from the original darkness of the universe itself to consume life and the Emotional Spectrum it created, Nekron had been subtly been moving pieces to his advent since ''Hal Jordan'' first became [[Green Lantern]], and it has tried on one or two occasions to expend it's realm into ours. Nekron is fits the bill of an E.A. so much, '''''it shouldn't be able to exist in the physical universe.''''' It is only able to do so through an avatar, a link to the Living World: Black Hand.

* [[Evil Costume Switch]]: Justified, it happens automatically when you get a power ring.

** In the sense that they spend all their time talking vague nonsensical bollocks that's utterly uninteresting to anyone who listens to it... oh my god they ARE stoners!

* [[Heroic Dog]]: Krypto the Superdog saves Ma Kent and ''blasts the living hell'' out of a Black Lantern.

** It gets worse. In the next issue, [http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/File:Black_Hand_049.jpg he licks it].

* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: The Guardians of the [[Green Lantern Corps]]. Even without [[The Mole|Scar]] manipulating things, the rest of the Guardians (sans Ganthet and Sayd) just couldn't stop screwing up. With the useless [[Internal Affairs|Alpha-Lanterns]], [[Media Watchdogs|censoring of the prophecy of the Blackest Night]], [[Judge, Jury, and Executioner|polarizing]] [[No Hugging, No Kissing|new laws]] in the [[Great Big Book of Everything|Book of Oa]], and their hand in fully igniting the War of Light by directing Larfleeze and his Orange Lantern Corps to the location of the Blue Lanterns, the Guardians almost seemed to be '''begging''' for the [[Zombie Apocalypse]]!

** [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Strawman has a point]].

** There's even some internal variation of types: partway through the story Nekron manages to zombify all the heroes who have previously returned from the dead like Superman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman etc. by forcing black rings onto their hands, thus instantaneously "killing" and transforming them into Black Lanterns. However, these "living" Black Lanterns are apparently not really dead so much as "possessed" by their black rings (as evidenced by returning to a living state upon their removal like Connor, rather than becoming an inanimate corpse as with regular vanquished BL's). Thus they effectively qualify as a different category of zombie within the larger zombie ranks. This is partly indicated by these possessed-BL's not looking like decaying reanimated corpses like all the other BL's, but instead just have pallid gray skin, although this varies slightly [[Depending on the Artist]].

*** As a result you get a [[Fetish Fuel|"sexy undead goth]] [http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/files/2010/01/bn_7_revised.jpg Wonder Woman"]{{Dead link}} (plus Donna Troy, and Ice, who doesn't appear in the picture) instead of the "heinous rotting cadaver Wonder Woman" you might have expected/feared. Again [[Depending on the Artist]], some of the already dead female Black Lanterns do give off some [[Fetish Fuel]] as of their appearance (e.g. Jade).

* [[Took a Level Inin Badass]]: Before Geoff Johns took some [[Character Development]] to him, Black Hand was a seldom used character who had turned into more of a joke in his later appearances.

** Also his reaction to Hal getting the Parallax entity again instead of himself and the part around the end with his need to get the White Lantern battery.

* [[Writing for the Trade]]: While this crossover is not so bad on its own (the first few issues could've been condensed without missing much), this storyline lasted eight issues (nine months!) despite being only one night long. To make matters worse, Hal's storylines from ''[[Final Crisis]]'' to ''Blackest Night'' led right into one another, so a week at most passed for Hal while everything else in the DCU took place in clearly longer segments of time, even the nominally parallel ''Green Lantern Corps'' book. It's not a bad read, but it's clearly written with an eye towards the collections, rather than allowing any breathing room between stories or accounting for characters' appearances elsewhere in the DCU.

[[Category:Comic BookBooks]]