Brightest Day/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: Black Manta, Deathstorm, and D'kay Drazz.
  • Crack Pairing: While it started in Blackest Night, there have been comments concerning Atrocitus and his... "attraction" to Mera. Carol Ferris even detects a spark of love in Atrocitus' heart that wasn't there before. It is absolutely not helped by the fact that Atrocitus' very first ring construct is Red Lantern!Mera.

Hal Jordan: So, you still have a sweet spot for the Queen of the Seas?
Atrocitus: I have nothing to explain to you, Jordan!

  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Dex-Starr and the new Rocket Red. Larfleeze continues to steal the show as well.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Batman the Brave And The Bold introduced a version of Firestorm that combined Jason Rusch and Ronnie Raymond before it happened in the mainline comics. Doesn't count as Canon Immigrant due to the use of re-imagined versions of Rusch and Raymond (a brainy high-schooler and his ex-jock teacher as the body and mind of Firestorm respectively).
    • Doubles with Blackest Night on this one, but there have been critics who have pointed out that Johns relies heavily on Alan Moore and his work on Green Lantern mythos. With the release of Brightest Day #23, this may appear more true: The Dark Avatar is Swamp Thing after the Green was corrupted by Nekron's attack. HOWEVER, one must take a step backward to see that this isn't completely true. While Johns owes Moore a bit (hey, did anyone just want to leave the fertile ground of story potential alone forever, just because Moore wrote it?), it's actually Len Wein that Johns has been honoring the most: Len Wein wrote just as much, if not more work for Green Lantern, created Nekron, AND created Swamp Thing.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Maxwell Lord. BIG TIME.

Fire: Slick. For a psychotic, he's got moves.

  • Rooting for the Empire: In Fandom; for Max Lord, who's mission is ostensibly to stop Magog from starting a war.
  • The Woobie: Dex-Starr and the JLI, most notably Ice, who's dreams of retirement and a relationship with Guy Gardner were savagely dashed.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Carrying over from developments in Blackest Night, Red Lantern leader Atrocitus.
  • Unfortunate Implications: How much of this is actually unfortunate and how much is Fan Dumb is open to interpretation, but this series has drawn some raised eyebrows for its frequent Legacy Implosions of minority and legacy characters like Ronnie Raymond replacing Jason Rusch as the lead Firestorm and Ryan Choi being killed off so Ray Palmer could retake the role of the Atom. (On the plus side, Rusch is still half of Firestorm and Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes is featured in Generation Lost.)
    • And then Jaime was killed off. Some fans were enraged, others just said "Like You Would Really Do It." The second group was right, he turned up fine a few issues later.
    • This is a great article about the matter, it also touches on the point that Unfortunate Implications doesn't mean a particular author or artist is consciously racist, but trends can be spotted.
      • Needless to say, when DC announced that Brightest Day would debut a new, black Aqualad, fan response was... cynical.
    • Some find Ice's recent "repressed memories" to be a tad stereotypical in their portrayal of Roma as thieves.