Thursday, August 20, 2009

Superman Vs. Supermen (Blackest Night - Superman #1)


Hey guys, Jason Todd here with your continuation of Blackest Night Coverage. This week marks the beginning of Blackest Night Superman, and based on what issue you have, you may have the Variant cover listed above, which I used the picture of because it looks SO bad ass, I couldn't help it. So, before jumping right into things, I'm gonna go right ahead and say, I didn't used to be a big Superman fan but JLA/JLU and Superman/Batman comics changed that, either way I haven't been following the New Krypton series, but basically from my understanding, Planet Krypton is back with a bunch of Kryptonians and Earth isn't taking too kind to them. Either way, this is mentioned in BN Superman.

Our story starts off with the grave of Kal-L, Earth-Two's Superman, being resurrected from the dead like all the other Black Lanterns we've seen so far. Then we see the residents of what may be the most boring town on the place of the Earth, Smallville. Even they complain on the boring lives they live and how nothing ever happens. We see from the point of view of a Black Lantern for the first time, and we see that they see people based on emotion, and the colors correspond with the Lantern Corp of that emotion. Fear for example is yellow like the Sinestro Corps, Rage shows as Red, like the Red Lantern Corps, and Will of course is Green, like the Green Lantern Corps. It appears as if Black Lantern Superman is feeding off of the fear of these people in the city when he shows up, as each time his power level rises.

We then join the Kents, "Ma" Kent, Clark "Superman" Kent, and the recently resurrected Connor "Superboy" Kent. Their discussing the recent New Krypton news and the dinner their having in memory of the late "Pa" Kent. Then, The Kent boys and Krypto the dog hear something in town, so Clark and Conner go to check it out. They find the Black Lantern Superman resurrected and has dug up the grave of Pa Kent, and is intent on bringing him back as a Black Lantern.

Now as you guys know, I hate ruining the story, so I won't but I will say that I Loved the fact that Lanterns can see in emotion. That is what put this story into overdrive for me, the art was wonderful and the story is very very well written. As someone who hasn't been a fan of Superman for a longtime I was a bit weary about doing this review but the story sucked me in and I honestly don't know if Im more anxious for Blackest Night Superman #2 or Blackest Night Batman #2.

Now Superman isn't the only Black Lantern in this issue but I'll leave the surprise to you guys. But, Like I said earlier, The Art is excellent, the story is quite good, one of the Black Lanterns showing up kinds killed the momentum for me, I won't say which one, but that coupled with the fact that the story seemed so short, right when I was really getting into it, It just ended. It did leave me waning more so that was a big bonus. If you're following Blackest Night, it's definitely worth it to invest in one of the flagship heroes of DC, and check out Blackest Night Superman. Besides the momentum being slown down by the arrival of one of the Lanterns the story was great, the artwork was so detailed that this may be one of my favorite Tie-In's if not my current favorite. Thats why I give Blackest Night - Superman a solid 9/10.

See you guys next week when I continue my Blackest Night Coverage with Blackest Night Titans and Green Lantern #46.

- Jason Todd

2 comments:

  1. Wow Jason, I think we were in like 100% agreement about this issue. I scored this one a touch higher, but I'm an unabashed James Robinson fan, and I always tend to score his work on the high side.

    With that said though, this issue was awesome! I remember mentioning the exact same thing you did about how great it was to be able to see events from BL Superman's viewpoint. My favorite scene might have been when BL Supes was fighting SB and Supes went hurtling towards BL Supes full of several conflicting emotions. BN Batman has been really good, but so far this is my favorite BN tie-in.

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  2. Once again I gotta agree with you X-man, and that was also my favorite scene, I wanted to put a scan of it in the article but I couldn't find a good one. Just the way it was drawn with so much emotion, the numerous colors each representing that Kal was so conflicted by the fight was one of the best representations of showing how emotional Superman is when he's in the line of duty.

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