I was quite excited to hear about this one-shot. Although I loved Blackest Night, there seemed to be a lot of unexplored ideas, especially considering the interesting characters who were not seen as Black Lanterns.

In that regard, the story I was most looking forward to was the Scarecrow's. Always one of my favourite mid-level Batman villains, I'm into anything involving Jonathan Crane, but I was somewhat disappointed here.

Seeing Scarecrow enduring the Sinestro Corps' "fear lodge" was intruiging, but while it touched on the whole "Batman is Scarecrow's worst fear" idea in more depth than usual, it still left it largely unexplored. If I'm being honest, then I was also expecting to see more ex-Gothamites as Black Lanterns, but the extreme shortness (and, if I'm being cruel, pointlessness) of this story robbed me of this.

In contrast, I thouroughly enjoyed the Animal Man story -- a character I have not read about since 52. Although, like the Scarecrow story, it adds completely nothing to the Blackest Night plot, it was a eye-opening look into Buddy's life, showing us a side to this everyman we have not seen before. And it had a teaser for things to come as well, which is always fun.

The Donna Troy story, I could not tell you anything about, despite having read it merely one hour ago. I never really cared that much about the character and this story did nothing to change that.

What surprised me the most though, was the Karu Sil story. Did not see it coming, and I did not see it leave as it knocked me off my feet. Black Lantern scary dog-things? Creepiest idea to come out of Blackest Night in my opinion, and expertly matched with an already terrifying character. I don't know if this is Ethan Van Sciver's first attempt at writing, but I'd definitely like to see more.

All of the respective artist were on top form, even if I am now blind to Black Lanterns having seen over a trillion of them, and it was a nice touch to see Geoff Johns' Ragman deleted scene get fully drawn.

All in all, I'd say that this was "okay" but I could have done with more stories in the vein of Animal Man's and less like the Scarecrow's.