Brightest Day #0
Written by Geoff Johns & Peter J. Tomasi
Pencilled by Fernando Pasarin
Inked by Pasarin, John Dell, Cam Smith, Prentis Rollins, Dexter Vines & Art Thibert
Colored by Aspen MLT’s Peter Steigerwald & Beth Sotelo
Lettered by Nick J. Napolitano
Cover art by David Finch, Scott Williams & Steigerwald, or Ivan Reis & Chuck Pires
Additional art in the montage sequence by Pasarin, Mark Bagley, David Beaty, Ed Benes, Vicente Cifuentes, Scott Clark, Fabrizio Fiorentino, Patrick Gleason, Rob Hunter, Andy Kubert, Aaron Lopresti, Francis Manapul, Joe Prado, Reis and Ardian Syaf
Whew. After the credits, I don’t room to say much more!
This cast of characters suits the ensemble cast concept perfectly. There are about 10,000 people in the whole world who really want an Aquaman series. And maybe that many, but less because there’s considerable overlap, who really want a Hawkman series. A few less than that who want Hawk and Dove, or Deadman, or Osiris, whoever that is. But put them all together, add a popular writer to the mix, and you have the makings of a book with solid to plus sales potential.
This zero issue teases the whole thing – all these once-dead characters are back, and there’s some secret binding them together. The biggest worry, but it’s too early for that here, is that there are too many individual storylines to congeal toward a cohesive whole. There are twelve characters back from the beyond, and each of them brings some supporting cast baggage as they reintegrate into their past lives.
This issue, it’s solid tease, but it’s only a tease if you’re already enmeshed in the baggage. Brightest Day is, so far, a little caught up in the repetition of “we’re back, should we worry about why,” or “we’re back, time to embrace the living.” A little caught up in the nuances of past histories and the finer points of the all-important shared universe. But we’ll see where it goes.
Brightest Day #1
Written by Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi
Penciled by Ivan Reis, Ardian Syaf, Scott Clark & Joe Prado
Inked by Vicente Cifuentes, Mark Irwin, Oclair Albert & David Beaty
Colored by Aspen MLT’s Peter Steigerwald
Lettered by Rob Clark, Jr.
Cover art by David Finch, Scott Williams & Steigerwald, or Ivan Reis & Chuck Pires
And here’s where it goes: Among the many (many, many, many) issues I have with the “mainstream” comic book industry’s move toward weekly/twice monthly/thrice monthly publishing schedules are these two: 1. Even if I hadn’t transitioned to trades, going to the shop every week, even every other week – what a chore. Who wants to do that? 2. Excepting for the occasional Mark Bagleyesque freak (and I mean that in a good sense), there simply aren’t any artists who can maintain this pace, and you wind up with exactly what Brightest Day #1 – the official first issue, and it’s already noticeable – suffers from, choppy artwork.
The mysteries set up seem to be resolving into focus, with life and death being a not surprising theme. Aquaman’s controlling dead fish, and still being kind of lame. Deadman’s still not dead, which is a pretty intriguing idea, though so far he’s done little but whine. The Hawk couple, their old corpses got stolen. All right, their reincarnation theme seems to lend itself to that. It’s still a solidish C to C+ caliber superhero comic. Decent enough for what it is.
Brightest Day #2
Written by Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi
Penciled by Ivan Reis, Patrick Gleason, Ardian Syaf, Scott Clark & Joe Prado
Inked by Vicente Cifuentes, Tom Nguyen, Rebecca Buchman, David Beaty & Gleason
Colored by Aspen MLT’s Peter Steigerwald, John Starr & Beth Sotelo
Lettered by Rob Clark, Jr.
Cover art by David Finch, Scott Williams & Steigerwald, or Ivan Reis & Nei Ruffino
Art’s still choppy.
The other theme I see unfolding here is that supervillains would be model citizens without their enemies, because so far Aquaman and Martian Manhunter’s returns have prompted a couple of apparently harmless citizens to act out in your typical excessively violent comic book badass manner. Black Manta’s life-long dream of working in a butcher shop is quashed by the return of his orange-shirted foe, and well, I have no idea what Manhunter foe that is, but she gave up the whole dinner and video games family life thing when she saw J’Onn.
A little retconning of Martian Manhunter, a little retreading of the Hawk couple reincarnation jive, some more bad attitude from Firestorm. Three issues in, still nothing truly compelling going on.
—but the desire to make sure all of ‘em get mention probably means having to risk being too inclusive.
