23 September 2009

DCU Blackest Night, so far

"The Blackest Night falls from the skies,
the darkness grows as all light dies,
we crave your hearts and your demise,
by my black hand - the dead shall rise!"
- the Black Lanterns' oath.

I've read through more than half of the DCU mega crossover event Blackest Night. I am finding that I like it.

Admittedly, it felt like a rip off and an attempt by DC to ride on the Marvel Zombies wave of success in the beginning. Ever character that has died or dies in Blackest Night may potentially return from the dead as a Black Lantern; a concept not too far from characters bitten to death by zombies and then returning.

Well, it did feel like a rip off of Marvel Zombies (which I thoroughly enjoyed I must add).

But. A thought struck me yesterday - Blackest Night is nothing like Marvel Zombies.

Why?

Because where Marvel Zombies takes place in Earth-2149 out of continuity with the main Earth-616 Marvel Universe, DC actually had the balls to allow Blackest Night to take place in current continuity.

Why is that significant?

For starters, everything counts (as much as they can in the fictional comics world).

I'm actually starting to freak out that the Black Hand is actually running around with the skull of Bruce Wayne; that the Martian Manhunter, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are really dead and now Black Lanterns; that eight of the Guardians of the Universe might be dead or incapacitated; I live with the fear that Dick Grayson is going to continue being Batman and that Bruce Wayne is well and truly dead.

Man, its so messed up. But it also why I said DC has balls to be doing this.

Marvel on the other hand just wrote their Zombies into an alternate universe (This was true until Marvel Zombies 3, but even there, I felt like they were threading carefully and with less abandon than Marvel Zombies 1 and 2). Since they are in an alternate universe and has no bearing on main continuity, the stories could be written with reckless abandon, but, so what if the Hulk bites off Silver Surfer's head; so what if the Zombies ripped up Magneto and ate him; so what if the head of the Wasp was bitten off by Hank Pym; so what if Marvel characters who managed to live through 70 years of rigid Marvel continuity die so easily? So-what? It doesn't count.

With that being said, I applaud Blackest Night and will be interested to see how it concludes (and one can only hope that it concludes with a blast).

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