To quote Li'l John...WHAT? WHAT?

So the final issue of Blackest Night came out yesterday and I’ve read it. I enjoyed the event overall but the last issue kinda soured things. And that's largely because some of Geoff Johns's worst habits as a writer reared their ugly heads.

Y’know, in a weird way, I can’t help but think of Secret Invasion when I look back at Blackest Night. While a better story overall, Blackest Night also went on longer than it needed to, had a bunch of tie ins which really didn’t add to the story beyond “hey, this guy is a Skrull Black Lantern” and in the end, all it seemed to accomplish is set up the next big storyline. In fact, thinking back, that's how a whole lot of stuff Geoff Johns writes has ended. That The Flash: Iron Heights one shot just setup a bunch of new villains for the last year or so of his Flash run. Green Lantern: Rebirth set up the Sinestro Corps War set up Blackest Night which is now setting up Brightest Day. Hell, Johns wrote Day of Judgement, the story that had Hal Jordan become the Spectre, so that might have setup Rebirth too. All the stuff he’s written between is pretty much just build up from one storyline to another. Sure, it’s ambitious and all, but hey, sometimes it’s okay to tell a simple, self-contained story that DOESN’T have Earth shattering consequences. It’s getting a little tiring. It also didn’t help that Blackest Night wasn’t really self-contained either. To get the whole story you had to read not just the mini-series but also the issues of Green Lantern that were published alongside it.

And of course, all the usual irritating Johns-isms pop up. There’s his trademark gratuitous graphic violence. Not just the all the heart ripping but impalments, people getting bludgeoned, heads being blown off and Black Lantern Firestorm turning Firestorm II’s girlfriend into a pillar of salt before punching her heart out. It was a scene so goshdarned wonderful that Johns dragged it out for 5 pages.

Hey, did anyone make a “Hey Kids…COMICS!” banner out of that?



Well, now they did.

There’s his need to show a complete lack of subtlety and lay out every point in as belabored a manner as possible so that the slow crowd can get it. Whenever he does this, it leads to some of the most teeth grating dialogue in recent memory. A good example of this is a scene where Damage, a hero who has to wear a mask because he got disfigured, talks about how he has a hard time facing anybody. Get it? GET IT? And I’m kinda reluctant to jump into Johns’s new Flash series because if the stuff he’s done with the Flash recently is any indication, there’s going to comments about how Barry needs to slow down and speed or motion being used as a heavy handed metaphor in every scene he shows up in.

Then we get to the other things that Johns has a really, really bad habit of doing and how the ending of Blackest Night pretty much exemplifies that. And to discuss that I’m going to have to drop some major, major spoilers for Blackest Night #8.



Okay, so yeah, after using a last minute swerve to make us think that Blackest Night was not going to end the way everyone called it ever since it was announced, it turns out that YES, Hal Jordan saves the day by becoming the White Lantern and blasting Nekron. And then the white light resurrects some people. Now, we all knew that Blackest Night was going to end with people being resurrected...and it did. Just not as many or who you thought would be. Let's take a look at those, shall we:



I'll totally admit that Ivan Reis's artwork is really good. He drew the hell out of this series.

Okay. Martian Manhunter and Aquaman were pretty much gimmies. So were Hawkman and Hawkwoman, even though nobody gives a damn about them. And now it seems Hawkwoman is a composite of all the different Hawkwoman / Hawkgirls or something. Makes about as much sense as anything to do with Hawkman. Also, it's weird that they were supposed to have died in Final Crisis, only for Johns to say they didn't...then kill them...only to resurrect them again. What was the point of all that?

But the rest, what the hell?

So, the original Hawk is back in his old form. I wonder if Johns is going to reveal that whole Monarch / Extant thing was also him being mind controlled by a giant yellow space bug.

The Ronnie Raymond Firestorm. Hey remember back when DC was damn near slaughtering whole swaths of white characters and replacing them with new minority versions? They did the same with Firestorm during Identity Crisis, replacing him with black teenager Jason Rusch. Well, it looks like they've started to swing back the other way now. Cassandra Cain, the Asian Batgirl, got replaced with boring-ass spunky blonde Stephanie Brown and now, Ronnie Raymond's Firestorm again. Only this time, he has to join with Jason Rusch to become Firestorm. Hmmm...black high school student must combine his powers with those of the white college student who brutally murdered his girlfriend to become a superhero. I smell a sitcom. Jason's girlfriend didn't get brought back but hey, her corpse did get molested by zombie Dr. Light. That's...something. It's shit like that which keeps When Fangirls Attack running on pure anger for years to come.

Osiris - "Who?" you may ask. He's Black Adam's adopted brother who appeared during the 52 Weekly series. The only things of note that I remember him doing was killing a member of Suicide Squad by flying through him and spent the rest of the scene trying to justify his actions while the dude's entrails were still hanging on him. I'm pretty sure Geoff Johns wrote that scene too. Then Osiris went and got eaten by a crocodile demon. That's the sum total of things that he's done and out of all the people in the DC Universe who could be resurrected, he got chosen. Oy.

Maxwell Lord - Much like Dr. Light being a brainwashed serial rapist, Maxwell Lord turning evil and becoming some radical anti-superhero guy for no damn reason at all is one of those really unpopular editorially mandate changes that DC keeps on bringing back up. Yep, despite all of DC's talk about how they're going to focus on brighter, happier stories from now on out, Ted Kord, the smiling, jokey easy going and bright superhero stays dead, but the psychopath who blew his head off gets to come back.

Not to mention the way he gets away really pissed me off:



Curse you and your mind control powers Maxwell Lord. If only Green Lanterns were people who were chosen because they had the willpower to overcome such things. Oh, wait. They are. Then again, this is a story written by Geoff Johns and so every other Green Lantern has to look incompetent in comparison to Hal. I'll get to that in just a minute.

Deadman - Jesus, I can't decide if that's the stupidest or most hilarious thing ever.

Jade - Daughter of Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, and one in a series of Kyle Rayner's dead girlfriends. Of course, this means there's all sort of wackiness in store for Kyle, who has a new girlfriend whose love for him was apparently so strong it brought him back from the dead and linked the two of them Dragonheart-style. Yep, Kyle Rayner's survival now pretty much hinges on his girlfriend staying alive as well.

He's fucked.

And now we get to worst offenders: Professor Zoom / Reverse Flash and Captain Boomerang I.

Remember what I said about Geoff Johns basically using every storyline to set up the next one? Professor Zoom is pretty much that in yellow spandex. He shows up in Flash: Rebirth with hints that he's going to be resurrected soon. (That's time travel for you.) That doesn't happen in Flash: Rebirth. Okay. Naturally, you think that might be covered in the Blackest Night: Flash tie-in that Johns wrote...but nope. That's just more setup. Then, we get to the end of Blackest Night and Professor Zoom gets resurrected by the deus ex machina white light. Do we get an explanation as to why he (or ANY of these characters) gets resurrected? Nope. That'll be touched on in the Brightest Day weekly series Johns is co-writing or his Flash relaunch...





AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!



I can't tell you guys how happy I am to have an excuse to post that picture again.

Also, due to time travel wackiness, there are TWO Professor Zoom's now. I think.

Of course, another problem with Professor Zoom being back also ties in with the original Captain Boomerang being back. (And not only is he back, he's young, healthy and in a new costume! That's one helluva resurrection.) Captain Boomerang got killed in Identity Crisis, (shit, how many people did get killed in that storyline?) where he was portrayed as over-the-hill and out of shape. After his death his illegitmate son Owen Mercer takes on the role. Owen was pretty interesting, as he was less of an outright villain and operated more in a grey area. He served with Rogues, the Suicide Squad and even the Outsiders. He's one of those successor characters who I think is better overall than his predecessor.

Unfortunately for him, he's not the version of Captain Boomerang that Geoff Johns grew up reading. Barry Allen The Silver Age Flash is back and so as far as Johns is concerned, all of Barry's old enemies have to be back. That's why the current Reverse Flash got depowered so Professor Zoom can step back into that role. And that's why, rather than doing something interesting like bringing back Captain Boomerang and have him and Owen become some father / son supercriminal team, he has Owen start feeding people to his Black Lantern daddy, including little kids, and has the other Rogues kill him. Goddamn it. Way to waste a good character.

Chris Sims of the Invincible Super-Blog pretty much hit the nail on the head when he said that Geoff Johns, as good of a writer as he can be, is pretty much the Anti-Jack Kirby. To explain, years ago, when some writer stated that they were going to take "The Jack Kirby Approach" to their run on The Fantastic Four, Kirby's famous response to that was "The Jack Kirby approach is to do something new."

Johns on the other hand, has pretty much made his career on bringing back the old stuff. Why? Because those are the versions he grew up with and those are the toys he wants to play with. That's why Hal Jordan is Green Lantern again, Barry Allen is the main Flash again (ironic when you consider Johns had a career and character defining run writing the Wally West version) and why Bart Allen ditched the Impulse identity and became Kid Flash. It's why the Pre-Crisis Legion of Superheroes is back. It's why Superman is back to an approximation of his Pre-Crisis origin. It's why the multiverse and the Anti-Monitor is back. It's why Johns has killed off, retconned away or shoved aside multiple successor characters or character developments he didn't like.

You want to know why these characters got resurrected? Forget whatever explaination Brightest Day gives you...it's because Geoff Johns wanted to use them.

And Johns has very bad habit of overselling the signifigance of and near fetishizing the stuff he likes. It's why he gave an explaination for Power Girl's boob window and Barry Allen's bowties. It's why, as johnny_kaos pointed out, the Green Lantern franchise pretty much exists at this point to suck Hal's dick. It's why, for the immediate future, Aquaman's wife is going to be treated as one of the, quote "strongest and most recognizable heroines" of the DCU. And it's why Barry has gone from The Silver Age Flash who died during Crisis On Infinite Earths to being the most selfless hero in the DC Universe who inspires hope in everyone.





What the hell am I? Chopped liver?



Except for when he pops up in a Green Lantern story, where he's basically Hal Jordan's biggest cheerleader.







Considering Hal also talks several times about how great Barry is, I realized I would have forgiven a lot of Blackest Night's problems if it had just come clean and ended with a full page splash of Hal and Barry cramming their tongues down each others throats. Childish, yes, but look at those panels and tell me you aren't thinking it.

They've also pretty much established that the Green Lantern mythos is pretty much tied to the creation of everything ever in the DCU with Blackest Night. I don't know about the rest of you, but to me, that would be like if Marvel one day up and said that Moon Knight or The Vision were the single most important superheroes ever!

And in doing so, trying to play up the importance of the Green Lantern mythology in DC's overall universe, he's actually diluted it. Before, the Green Lantern Corps were space cops that protected the universe and that's all. Then along came the Sinestro Corps / Yellow Lanterns. Okay, they were introduced as the rivals of the Green Lanterns, out to undermine their rule. That's fine. Now we've got the Red Lanterns (who, RageCat aside, might as well be called the Carnage Corps), Orange Lanterns, Violet Lanterns, Blue Lanterns, Ingido Lanterns, Black Lanterns, White Lanterns and they each draw their power from a different entity that was born as result of some major event in the creation of the universe....OY! I'm not saying that you can't expand on the histories or establish a legacy. Hell, Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction did a great job of that with Iron Fist and Jason Aaron did it with Ghost Rider but they also managed to do it without making it seem like a cross between your D&D alignment guide and somebody's REALLY AWESOME fan fic. Honestly, the Lantern stuff is giving me bad flashbacks to when the symbiotes were around and it wasn't enough to just have Venom...you also had to have Carnage, Scream, Hybrid, Lasher, Riot etc. etc. and they were all just slight variations on the same concept. There's a reason why most of those guys got forgetten / killed off.

And then there's one other thing that happened in Blackest Night that annoyed me and I bring it up here, even though it's only losely related to the other points I'm making and that's how Wonder Woman was handled. In fact, the whole "deputized lanterns" thing was a wasted oppourtunity because they didn't do anything. It was cool idea that he just threw in with no real idea of where to take it.

Anyway, getting back to Wonder Woman. Basically, she gets deputized into the Violet Lanterns / Star Sapphires, who weild the power of love and of course, just so happen to be a bunch of humanoid women who wear skimpy outfits and whose M.O. involve them trying to force people into changing. Wonderful.

Now, Wonder Woman, despite being the most recognizable superheroine, has always been somewhat controversial. One aspect of course is her costume, which is pretty damn revealing. So what do they do when they turn her into a Star Sapphire:



They put her in an even more stripper-esque outfit. I've seen some people call this a "Space Witchblade" getup but just for comparison, let's look at the costume that Witchblade, poster girl for gratuitous, exploitative T & A comics, is currently wearing.



It's GUYVER-LICIOUS!

'Nuff said.

Even dumber is the reason she's chosen as a Star Sapphire...because she has great love for the planet Earth and her fellow man and the blue sky and bunnies. Y'know what we call that kind of love? Compassion. Except there's a completely different group of Lanterns that weild the power of compasion. And what hero gets deputized into that group?



The Atom. A guy who in Cry for Justice, a series running side by side with Blackest Night, was straight up torturing people. Why was he chosen? Because he felt pity for his dead ex-wife, who went crazy and killed people because of editorial mandate and bad writing. Maybe it was really compasionate torture.

It's a symptom of a bigger problem that DC has, which is despite the fact that they try to pass Wonder Woman off as this big, important hero, most writers really have no damn clue what to do with her. Despite all the hype, she really can't be in the same league as Superman because she's does the exact same thing as Superman, be the outsider who comes to our culture to fight injustice and inspire people, and since Superman is the best at that, Wonder Woman can't be. (That's the reason why Batman and Superman can be equals, because Batman and Superman ain't trying to do the same thing.) I'm not saying she's a bad character, because when she's written right, she's great. It's just that she needs to given her own niche and not just treated as Superman with a rack. Especially since we already have Power Girl and a billion different versions of Supergirl.

Then there's the whole, 'we're going to be brighter and happier from here on out." I have a hard time believing that because Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis were also about how the DC Universe has gotten too dark and yet despite that, a "brighter" direction didn't take. And that's because the same people are in charge. The people who will be holding sway over "Brightest Day" are the same people who wanted a story which revealed Dr. Light was a brainwashed serial rapist and Jean Loring was a crazy murderer, who had Ted Kord's brains blown out and who had Cry for Justice rewritten so that it ended with Green Arrow's granddaughter getting killed so either he or Roy Harper can get turned into DC's answer to the Punisher. I have my doubts to say the least. So DC...prove me wrong.

After reading this, I have to end this with a little clarification. I don't hate Geoff Johns. I loved his run on the Flash and I loved his recent Superman work. Hell, his Brainiac storyline in that run could pretty much be the basis for a Superman movie. But Blackest Night's ending illustrates that writing BIG GAME CHANGING EVENTS don't play to his strengths as a writer. He's good at writing a tight, ongoing storyline and the thing with events is that they have to have a satisfactory ending. Unfortunately, it has become apparent that Johns really doesn't know how to END things and so every event he does has to build off of everything else and that's the reason why they usually have a handful of plot threads left dangling for him deal with later. He's recently become the main creative director for DC Comics and I honestly think it's going to hurt him in the long run. I don't hate Geoff Johns...I just wish he'd do better.

And what do you know. All that time writing that and Mighty God King does his own write up that says the exact same thing a helluva lot better. FOILED AGAIN! *shakes gauntleted fist.*