Well I sure hope not, because here’s another post on the subject (albeit one small aspect of it).

While I found little to be surprised or overly excited about in the first issue, given the fact that writer Geoff Johns was dealing with various story elements from throughout most of his time writing for DC Comics, and while it was pretty much exactly what I was expecting, it did seem like Johns would eventually get around to discussing the role of death in the DC Universe in general. The series may therefore have a lot more to say beyond “Wouldn’t it be cool if all the dead DC characters came to life to brutally murder the living ones?” by the time it really gets rolling.

It occurred to me while reading this issue that the scheduling difficulties involved with many of DC’s various events may end up hurting the way that whatever Johns might be trying to say ultimately gets received. Or, at the very least, that the big, event comics of the DCU line—particularly those written by Johns himself—really seem to be sucking the suspense away from one another.

If you’re not reading Blackest Night, the basic plot is that some characters from Green Lantern‘s cast have started a Black Lantern Corps in which the dead are given magic rings and matching costumes and then sicced on the living—characters who have escaped death seem to be special targets. The first issue is set during a national day of mourning in the DCU, a sort of Memorial Day for superheroes (and the normal folks that tend to die around them), allowing Johns to check in with a huge cast of characters.

Among these are a couple who are still in the process of being brought back to life in other books. Other books that should have wrapped up by now but haven’t, making aspects of the conclusions of those series somewhat foregone conclusions. I wouldn’t say that Blackest Night #1 ruins those stories, but they certainly change the way we’ll read them, essentially making us all read a bit more like editors and a lot less like excited fans (as well as encouraging a great deal of cynicism among the readership).

For example, one of the main characters in Blackest Night #1 is The Flash Barry Allen, a character who died in 1985′s Crisis On Infinite Earths and was recently brought back to life in last year’s Final Crisis. Well, it was actually a bit of a process. The intention to bring him back to life was announced in DC Universe 0 in spring of last year, Final Crisis ended up running through January of this year, and it involved various dimensions and alternate realities, as well as reality being de-created and re-created, making some of its events rather fluid. Anyway, the title that was devoted to really explaining the hows, whats and whys of Barry Allen’s return is The Flash: Rebirth, a five-part miniseries (also written by Johns) that’s only up to #3 at the moment.

Where the story left off, Barry Allen had become transformed into an avatar of death, The Black Flash, and the fates of the various other Flashes (particularly his successor Wally West, who was made awfully redundant by a returned Barry) was still up in the air.

Now, because of Blackest Night, we know that Barry is apparently back to stay for real, and this isn’t like one of those times he returned due to trickery or time travel, or Marvel’s fake-out regarding the return of their Captain Marvel during Civil War and Secret Invasion. If you were following Flash: Rebirth just to see if Barry’s actually back, well, you may still be interested in the last two issues of the series, but you’re not exactly going to be on pins and needles regarding whether Barry is going to live or die, or go back to being the Flash or if he’ll remain The Black Flash.

Within the pages of Flash: Rebirth, we also saw Kid Flash Bart Allen, restored to a younger age, despite having died as an adult in the pages of his own title. We’ve already seen him come back to life in the pages of Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, a book that’s fallen awfully far behind schedule. It was a five-issue miniseries that launched in October of last year, but the final chapter of that story hasn’t shipped yet, so how exactly Kid Flash got back to the present in order to appear in Rebirth and Blackest Night #1 isn’t entirely clear yet (If it stayed on schedule, that would have been settled in February, well before both series started). It’s not hard to figure out possible explanations, of course, but, again, it takes some of the drama out of the end of Legion of 3 Worlds (The fifth and final issue of which, by the way, is currently scheduled to ship next week).

Superboy II, who died in the pages of Infinite Crisis, also returned to life in the pages of Legion of 3 Worlds, and was also seen in a panel of Blackest Night #1, but, again, the story returning him to life is still ongoing, and should be resolved next week.

I don’t envy the editors whose job it is to make sure all these books ship on time. Obviously Johns put a lot of planning into his story, stretching as it has through all these titles (and others), and there apparently wasn’t much leeway built in should an artist fall behind schedule, or a book leading into another book ship a few months behind schedule, so that one thing going wrong turns into a couple other things going wrong, which turns into stories suffering (even if only a little).

I do think there’s a case to be made for limiting the number of big event stories running in any one year, if only to stop them from crowding each other off the shelves, as well as an argument for the importance of speed over detail among the artists chosen to work on these sorts of projects (Please don’t offer any variation of the “do you want it now or do you want it good” argument below; it’s a false choice, as there are plenty of great artists who can also draw fast).

It’s probably best not to even get into Justice League: Cry For Justice, a miniseries which has only shipped one issue, but apparently occurred entirely before pretty much everything DC has published these past few months. Trying to makes sense out of that time line just hurts my head.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 9:25 am and is filed under DC Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.