Blackest Night, Forever Evil or Flashpoint?
Which Geoff Johns crossover is the best overall story?
Blackest Night, Forever Evil or Flashpoint?
Which Geoff Johns crossover is the best overall story?
Blackest Night was the logical end point of everything Johns was building to in Green Lantern, but I think it might feel like the final chapter of a long story rather than a self-contained event.
Flashpoint stands more on its own, but isn’t as much fun as the craziness of Blackest Night.
Forever Evil was fun, but I haven’t reread it, so I don’t know how well it holds up.
Blackest Night- Sucks
Flashpoint- Sucks
Forever Evil- It didn't make me want to punch anything or anyone, so its my favorite by default, even if its still not very good.
Winner: Forever Evil
Flashpoint was a crossover?
Besides Barry (and a brief guest appearance of Bruce in the last few pages of the final issue), were there any other regular DC heroes in it?
(I guess it technically had a crossover with the last few issues of Booster Gold, but that's all I can think of, and I don't really remember the Booster Gold issues having any impact on the main Flashpoint issues.)
Anyway, the answer is: None of the Above.
Blackest Night- One of my favorite DC stories. It was exciting, it was interesting, it was funny, and it featured a wide cast of characters that I love.
Flashpoint- Interesting and fine as a stand alone story, but because of what came after......I hate it.
Forever Evil- Didn't read it because it was in the New 52 and I hated everything about the new 52......except Aquaman.
Winner- Blackest Night.
Blackest Night: a logical story progression of Johns' Green Lantern magnum opus. Fun story with high stakes and great heroic moments. Pretty much THE event that catapulted Mera from "obscure Aquaman background character who hadn't appeared in years" to "one of the most consistently awesome women in all of comics." Story ended with good triumphing over evil and a hopeful message for the future.
(I'm tempted to knock off some points for the ridiculous "Wonder Woman's 'love' for Batman (which only exists in Greg Rucka's mind) saving her from a Black Ring" concept. But whatever. It had very little impact on the overall story and that ridiculous "romance" went absolutely nowhere.)
Flashpoint: interesting premise as a standalone story. Hated some of the characterizations, most notably Wonder Woman. Began the New 52, which in hindsight was a bit of a mistake. And seriously, did we REALLY need a story centering entirely on Barry Allen effing up the entire world because of his own selfishness? That story pretty much started the trend of portraying Barry as a selfish ass, which has continued through three seasons of the Flash show.
Forever Evil: a bleak, unfun story that ended with Lex Luthor looking more heroic than the real heroes, launched this ridiculous "heroic Lex" era, and generally crapped all over the real heroes of the DCU.
No contest. Blackest Night by a country mile.
EDIT: Blackest Night also wins the distinction of being one of the very few major events that didn't lean on Batman like a crutch. Dick Bats and the rest of the Bat Fam never even made it out of Gotham the whole time and they played no role in saving the day.
Last edited by Vanguard-01; 09-27-2017 at 07:24 AM.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
--Lord Alfred Tennyson--
I stopped buying comics during the new 52 and there has only been one other time I have done that. The other being around 2006-2009 when I was working on my undergrad as a music major and just didn't have time to keep up with weekly stuff. So I mainly waited for trades.
Do you mind me asking what you didn't like about Blackest Night? Just curious, I like hearing different perspectives.
For me with the Nu52, some things I wrote right off (Cass doesn't exist? F**k the Batbooks.) while other things I started and quickly dropped because of how much they sucked. The only starting book from the Nu52 that I stuck with was Aquaman, and even after going back to some of the stuff I skipped thanks to library trades? That stuff all sucked too! Without Aquaman, the Nu52 would have been the first time I could say DC was putting out NOTHING but crap. Even the 2004-2011 era, much as I HATE most of it still had some damn fine books coming out.
It reads like a dumb popcorn movie (Nothing wrong with that in it of itself) but coupled with more major problems, the fact that there's no meat to the story is a big hindrance. Those more major problems include: the dark humor being far too mean spirited given everything which had been going on at the time, the plot itself is really damn dumb, when it wasn't indulging in bad dark humor it was just continuing to piss on the parts of the DCU deemed not edgy enough by DC at the time, the fact that it centered around two characters whose returns were awful and ruined their franchises (this one's more subjective, I know), pointless deaths (Like MOST events), and of course, worst of all, that ballkicker of an ending, where they could have made this whole mess have a point, bringing back EVERYONE, but no, "Come by our NEXT year long event "Brightest Day" to see why these specific character are alive again".
It's not the worst comic DC's ever made. Not even close. I just think it's bad.
Yea Blackest Night for me then Forever Evil
Blackest Night easily wins.
Unlike the amazing Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night is just a bit harder to read because you have so many titles and tie-ins. Once I custom bound it with Tomasi's GLC and Johns tie-ins like Hawkman and Atom and such, it really is a fun epic. Not Sinestro Corps War great, but still very fun and worthy.
Things I love: Batman, Superman, AEW, old films, Lovecraft
Grant Morrison: “Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.”
Amazing . . . Zoom changed history by altering the past (HINT: Barry's mom hadn't previously been killed until Geoff Johns thought Barry needed some Batman-lite angst in his back story . . . Johns couldn't write a superhero who wasn't motivated by tragedy), but Barry gets the blame.
Typical disconnect with reality.
@Assam.
Gotcha, I can respect that. Blackest night got me excited again, but my excitement quickly waned when Brightest Day started. It was a convoluted mess and on top that the other stories coming out during that time were so bland and meaningless. Looking back on it, maybe it was because they knew they were about to blow it up and start over again with the horrific new 52.
Blackest Night.
It might help in my mind that it was the first .
No, no one knew they were rebooting until VERY close to the Nu52's launch. That's why it was so poorly planned out, by which I mean it was planned out at all. Its easy to tell from how plenty of stories were going, including a story MUCH better than Brightest Day, Blackest Night and all of Johns' other big GL events/events in general, Generation Lost, which while not perfect, was still excellent, but it DID have to rush its ending because of the reboot, and given the story's ending (The JLI is officially reformed), it's pretty clear that for the bulk of the book's production, the reboot was not in mind.