Well, I probably would have liked this issue more if I hadn’t been treated to about a hundred OTHER splash pages and double-page splashes, in Green Lantern and in Blackest Night proper, in the months leading up to this. When you keep hitting that one note over and over again, it ceases to be very meaningful.

For a while now I’ve sort of been plotting my exit from the regular, constant routine of being a monthly/weekly comic reader. It’s not that I’ve necessarily been unhappy with a lot of what I’ve read recently, but the habit’s just gotten boring to me. For many people it isn’t boring for the very reasons that, to me, it IS boring. Case in point: Blackest Night #8: For many this will be the epitome of excitement, but I actually think it’s fairly boring. Not bad–BORING. For a long time I’ve considered the conclusion of Blackest Night to be a fine point of departure for me as a weekly reader. Of course, if I was more impressed or interested in more comics these days, then I’d be sticking around. For a lot of people Blackest Night #8 will be the height of excitement, but the way I see it an issue like this is pretty average, par for the course, and predictable. It’s a comic pretty similar–in form, thematics and (intellectual?) content–to many others that are offered these days. It does many things very well, while completely ignoring other potentialities of the comics medium and of art or literature in general. The things it does very well, it does them very, very loudly, so loudly that readers aren’t really compelled to notice the inherent shortcomings of this sort of comic booking.

To start with the positive, this is a pretty damn fun story. As a “cinematic” experience, or a “big budget action movie”, this was gangbusters. Geoff Johns has thoroughly earned his stripes in terms of which comic writer gets the most fanboy love nowadays. The guy’s story and dialogue convey so much enthusiasm. This is definitely the author you want helming your superhero universe.

Also, it may seem routine to state this, but this issue really does seem like a good ending point for the Blackest Night event. As much as a piece of ongoing, serialized fiction, published across multiple magazines, can ever seem to have an ending…this issue does indeed present an ending. It’s an ending that posits a new beginning without seeming to twist the reader’s arm too much about picking up the continuation series. Put it this way: I’m obviously not going to be picking up Brightest Day, yet I felt satisfying, in-story closure. That in itself is commendable.

The art, in general, is of course fantastic. Ivan Reis deserves all the love he’s gotten as well. To cut to the chase, though–because I’m sure some people will balk at my giving it a “3”–I just wasn’t overly impressed with what I saw. I thought it was “Good”, pure and simple. I think Reis did a technically fantastic job, but the ways in which he used his skills didn’t really impress me. Isn’t conveying SETTING part of the artist’s job? Because there IS NO SETTING here. All I ever see are characters floating randomly in space–not “outer space”, either, just “space”, as in “page space”. I’ve had this problem throughout Blackest Night (and the recent Green Lantern issues to a lesser extent), but it was particularly apparent in this issue. At one point there’s a brief scene with a family cowering in a room; of course, I know the family is supposed to be physically in (or near) the same “city” in which most of the action is taking place, but you’d never know it based on the art. There’s an old adage about Rob Liefeld hating to draw feet; if that’s true, then I guess Ivan Reis must hate to draw backgrounds or to give his stories any sort of setting. Or maybe it’s that, throughout BN, Johns’ scripts conveyed no guidance as far as backgrounds went. Either way, it’s an artistic shortcoming. These characters may as well be in space, or in Hell, or in the 5th dimension. Sure, the art is cool and detailed as f—, but there’s also storytelling to consider. Reis is undoubtedly skilled and does a great job conveying emotion–so I give him tremendous props on one hand–but on the other hand, I have to consider HOW the detailed art is put to use, and the use it’s put to just isn’t great, in my opinion. The overall conveyance is a completely formless, amorphous cast of characters, whose physical proximity to each other is anyone’s guess, spinning around in limbo. After eight issues, that lack of setting got very boring to me, because I wasn’t endlessly thrilled with insanely detailed, pretty, jumbled pictures for the sake of insanely detailed, pretty, jumbled pictures.

This sense of formlessness and swirling randomness comes from the story as well. I almost want to put “story” in quotation marks here, because what passed for a story–though most individual panels or pages were in themselves cool–had slight overall meaning, cohesion or internal logic.

When you were a kid did you ever make up super powers or imaginary weapons with your friends? “I’m gonna blast you with the Death Ray! Boom–you’re dead!” “HAH, I resurrect myself with the Ring of Life! Now I blast you with the Solar Beam!” “Solar Beam doesn’t work on me because I have Invisible Cloud Forcefield! Now I combine my two Super Guns and blast you through Infinity!!!” That’s all Blackest Night was, every issue, over and over again. Obviously Johns must have planned a lot of the developments out, but the way he lead up to them (or DIDN’T lead up to them) in the story made it seem like he may as well have been making this stuff up on the spot. Though often cool to look at, it was difficult for me to tell whether there was any reason behind any character-change developments. What was the point of any of these color changes, or resurrections or deaths (before the final ones at the end), if they’re all just going to be changed a few pages later? For all the fanboy clamor, what was the point of Sinestro becoming a White Lantern? Just to provide a good cliffhanger at the end of issue 7? Because Sinestro as a White Lantern meant next to nothing and accomplished next to nothing. All it did was provide another flimsy excuse to have a few more pages of…different characters shooting slightly different-looking energy blasts around…at slightly different targets. And as little a point as White Lantern Sinestro had, the other “BIG CHANGES” mattered even less. It’s like BN was a story built on the premise that changes don’t matter, or built on the premise that readers will be impressed with whatever changes happen as long as they’re supposedly “BIG”, even though these changes are reversed a few pages later.

In this issue one of the major keys to the good guys’ victory comes in the form of information from Deadman. This was not lead up to. Deadman literally came out of nowhere and announced some vague psuedo-logic that gave the good guys a way to win. It’s a crucial plot turn, but it’s based on nothing: it doesn’t say or point out anything meaningful based on what we’ve seen. It seems completely random. I’d compare it to the puzzling emergence of Mandrakk the Dark Monitor toward the end of Final Crisis, but at least Mandrakk was introduced in the concurrent Superman Beyond 3D series, also written by Morrison. But here I’ve read all of the Blackest Night-related issues written by Johns and I couldn’t tell you where or how Deadman got his information or what exactly it MEANT. I remember Deadman showing up in a backup story in Green Lantern like three months ago–that’s it.

I guess Johns figures his readers aren’t even going to realize how random everything is because the splash pages just shock and awe them into fanboy submission? It’s all cool, and overall I DID enjoy the experience, but over eight issues (some of them extra-sized) the ironically narrow spectrum of emotion and diversity in his story has to be pointed out. Every issue was a clusterf—. The characters just took turns blasting each other with new, imaginary “powers” for eight issues. The new “powers” they acquired were all pretty meaningless and identical, since every one has to do with shooting forceblasts. This went on for well over three hundred pages. For all the story development that happened, it may as well have been one double-sized issue of Green Lantern.

I guess if you really like to follow fictional universes and get hyped and emotionally invested in them more than I do anymore, then you could really love this stuff. The perspective I have, I don’t really care who’s “dead” or “alive” since characters never really go away. If I wanted to read about Aquaman, I’d just go back and read Aquaman comics of the past–so bringing him back in “current continuity” doesn’t matter to me. (Although, if that’s an excuse to somehow tell a cool Aquaman story again, then great.) I guess I’m tired of being marketed to and told to think every new thing is terribly exciting. Is it really worth the time or emotional investment to follow this stuff anymore? For me, it really isn’t. There are already many people who have spent probably a HUNDRED TIMES more time discussing and speculating about the Green Lantern movie…than it will take to actually watch the Green Lantern movie.

And I loved the first 35 issues or so of Johns’ GL, because each of those issues actually had regular plot development, character development, and dialogue beyond stock one-liners. But to suggest (as Josh kinda did in his otherwise excellent PotW review) that Johns is somehow “validated” against Alan Moore because there wouldn’t be a GL movie without Johns’ reboot of the franchise…I think that misses the point. First of all, Alan Moore and many other wise people do not count big budget Hollywood movies as inherently good things. Second, what does it say about the value of comics themselves if they can only really be validated if a movie is made about them?

I’m getting off the subject. If you want “big cinematic fun”, Blackest Night was great. If you want stories with internal logic, with careful development and intellectual value, look elsewhere. Overall, though, like I say, I enjoyed myself, but the end fell short and the failings became way too apparent.