From the solicits a few months ago, I knew that Blackest Night would be the comic book cross over event that I would actually pull every book. Batman? Pull it. Wonder Woman? Pull it. Feo Boy? Eeehhhh….Pull it. I’m not normally a Batman reader, but I have always liked the Graysons, and I knew that Tim Drake’s family had to play into this. The Bat-Family has suffered some grievous blows the past few months with the death of Bruce, Damien being Robin, Tim taking the Red Robin Mantle, and Jason finally leaving. Well, the last one was a good thing. But, with such loss and mortal endings, Blackest Night should really resonate with these underpowered vigilantes. However, the first issue of this book suffers from the same Cross-Over problems that all side books suffer from. The first issue of a cruddy tie-in always makes the same mistake of having these characters take 22 pages to get YOU caught up on the action. Frankly, if you aren’t reading the main event, then why are you pulling the tie-in? Wouldn’t you know what’s going on? Skip to the good stuff man! “Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge” worked on two levels for being a good tie-in to a major event. 1) The first issue didn’t spend 22 pages getting you caught up on what’s happening. It just leapt into the action and meat of the story. 2) It had nothing to do with Final Crisis. Frankly, No one knew what the hell was going on in Final Crisis anyway, so a boring summary wasn’t possible. The artists did a fantastic job of illustrating the story as Deadman leaps from one body to another, but the way the acrobatics were illustrated, such as Brand/Damian back flipping onto the hood of the batmobile seemed a little too ethereal, and used the same convention for illustrating ghosts, rather than sequences of acrobatic maneuvers. Story-wise, I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Tomasi is doing a great job plate-spinning with Green Lantern Corps, and I’m sure that the story of our heroes confronting their dead relatives will be both heart-wrenching, and exciting to witness. Unfortunately, you just don’t get to the heart of the story until the last 2 pages of this issue.